I must return however, My Lord to June 1961. My tour was successful beyond all our hopes. For instance, Umkhonto members were forbidden ever to go armed into operation. Death sentences cannot cure the festering sore. "The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight. Although I have never been a member of the Communist Party, I myself have been named under that pernicious Act because of the role I played in the Defiance Campaign.
And the article which I want to refer to appears on the first page. This campaign was based on the principles of passive resistance.
I stressed, just as he said, that the most important thing was to study our history - our own history and our own situation. "The statement said that the NCL was not aligned with ["the Assegai of the Nation" - inaudible] - I presume My Lord, that it is the Spear of the Nation, which is the translation of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
I will also deal with the relationship between the African National Congress and Umkhonto, and with the part which I personally have played in the affairs of both organizations.
Are you sure? I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training.
In the United Nations and other Councils of the world the communist bloc has supported the Afro-Asian struggle against colonialism and often seems to be more sympathetic to our plight than some of the Western powers. One of the chief allegations in the indictment is that the ANC was a party to a general conspiracy to commit sabotage. In order to explain these matters properly, I will have to explain what Umkhonto set out to achieve; what methods it prescribed for the achievement of these objects, and why these methods were chosen. Umkhonto remained a small organization recruiting its members from different races and organizations and trying to achieve its own particular object. People who believe in equality are not desirable teachers for Natives. Another of the allegations made by the State is that the aims and objects of the ANC and the Communist Party are the same. This is not true of the time when I was there.
I shall deal also with the part played by the Communist Party. It has always been my custom to reduce to writing the material which I have been studying. The Court will see that I attempted to examine all types of authority on the subject - from the East and from the West, going back to the classic work of Clausewitz, and covering such a variety as Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara on the one hand, and the writings on the Anglo-Boer War on the other. Evidence dealing with volunteers and their pledges has been introduced into this case, but completely out of context.
But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights. Mandela: I was saying, My Lord, after I had read I told him that they seemed far too complicated for the ordinary reader in that the language was obtuse and they were full of usual communistic clichés and jargon. People are afraid to walk alone in the streets after dark. Civil war would mean the destruction of what the ANC stood for; with civil war, racial peace would be more difficult than ever to achieve. The non-violent policy of the ANC was put in issue by the State, but when the Court gave judgement some five years later, it found that the ANC did not have a policy of violence. But, on the contrary, I am an admirer of such a system.