I can see quite clearly that if there was a single event that launched me on the road to ultimate involvement at the heart of South African politics, it was an assault on an African woman by her white employer in a kitchen in Fort Hare.
Whites, like ourselves, belong to our country. They are compatriots, fellow citizens... we see them as Africans.
The results showed that Joe Mokoena and I had made history. For the first time in the history of education in South Africa, two African students had passed the JC with a First Class degree, regarded as a rare achievement for any student.
This uprising of 1976-77 was, of course, the historic watershed... Within a short period of time, it propelled into the forefront of our struggle millions of young people.
We were very lucky. My mother and stepmothers were on very, very good terms, and so we, the children, grew up as brothers and sisters.
I would not hesitate to vote for a white person as president if I thought he was the best person for the job.
I am convinced that the world-wide protests during the Rivonia trial saved Mandela and his fellow-accused from a death sentence. But in South Africa, a life sentence means imprisonment until death - or until the defeat of the government which holds these men prisoner.
The violence associated with the A.N.C. is minimal, infinitesimal next to the violence of the apartheid regime.
In May 1961, South Africa was to be declared a Nationalist Republic. There was a white referendum, but no African was consulted.
Our target is not negotiations, it is the end of the apartheid system. There can be no compromise about that.
It was becoming clear that, from being at the top at Holy Cross, we were at the bottom at St. Peter's. Objectively, this was very good, for it offered us a challenge and an opportunity to grow if we were ready to take it; and we surely were.
How do you deal with a criminal that will not listen to what you have to say and who continues his policy of violence? Some say you continue to talk and let him tire himself out. But nearly 40 years after the institution of apartheid, is there anyone who still believes that verbal persuasion will work?
My problem in calling for pressures on South Africa is to convince the youth to convince their governments and people that it is not the South African goods that are cheap, but the forced labor of the Africans.
If apartheid is removed, then the violence that is necessary to maintain it will be removed along with the pressures from apartheid which create a violent response.
Using the power you derive from the discovery of the truth about racism in South Africa, you will help us to remake our part of the world into a corner of the globe on which all - of which all of humanity can be proud.
There is no way a spirit of resistance that has sunk so deep in the population can be repressed.
For decades, we resisted violence - until Sharpeville.
I didn't really want to be a teacher, but there was nothing else I could be. Most of those who went to the university became teachers. It was just the racial restriction on Africans.
The sanctions will not kill us. It's apartheid that's killing us.
The struggle to conquer oppression in our country is the weaker for the traditionalist, conservative, and primitive restraints imposed on women by man-dominated structures within our movement, as also because of equally traditionalist attitudes of surrender and submission on the part of women.
