Long Walk to Freedom

by Nelson Mandela

The following day I joined a secret meeting of the ANC National Executive Committee and the joint executives of the Congress movement in Durban to discuss whether the planned action should take the form of a stay-at-home or a full-fledged strike with organized pickets and demonstrations. Those who argued for the strike said that the stay-at-home strategy we had used since 1950 had outlasted its usefulness, that at a time when the PAC was appealing to the masses, more militant forms of the struggle were necessary. The alternative view, which I advocated, was that stay-at-homes allowed us to strike at the enemy while preventing him from striking back. I argued that the confidence of the people in our campaigns had grown precisely because they realized that we were not reckless with their lives. Sharpeville, I said, for all the heroism of the demonstrators, allowed the enemy to shoot down our people. I argued for stay-at-homes even though I was aware that our people around the country were becoming impatient with passive forms of struggle, but I did not think we should depart from our proven tactics without comprehensive planning, and we had neither the time nor the resources to do so. The decision was for a stay-at-home.