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I might be out of jail, I said, but I was not yet free.
I said that there was a middle ground between white fears and black hopes, and we in the ANC would find it.
The right to assemble and demonstrate in support of our just demands was not a favor to be granted by the government at its discretion.
I brought up the appalling behavior at Sebokeng and the police’s unequal treatment of blacks and whites; police used live ammunition with black demonstrators, while they never unsheathed their guns at white right-wing protests.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
We knew early on that the government was fiercely opposed to a winner-takes-all Westminster parliamentary system, and advocated instead a system of proportional representation with built-in structural guarantees for the white minority.
Like an Electoral College and/or the U.S. Senate?
Harlem, as my wife said, was the Soweto of America.
To us, Harlem symbolized the strength of resistance and the beauty of black pride.
Television had shrunk the world, and had in the process become a great weapon for eradicating ignorance and promoting democracy.
TV also an instrument for spreading nasty shit but let's skip that for now.
The parties agreed that decisions would be taken by “sufficient consensus,” which was never defined, but in practice meant an agreement between the government and the ANC and a majority of the other parties.
To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.
Perhaps it requires such depth of oppression to create such heights of character.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.
The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
