Oliver Tambo

In South Africa, I feel I am a stranger, at best an animal.

The more pressure you bring from without, the less internal pressure is necessary.

The sanctions will not kill us. It's apartheid that's killing us.

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?

The U.S. is the last country that should see itself as an ally of the apartheid system.

It was of limited usefulness to head great rallies. The government did not listen, and, soon enough, the tear gas and the muzzles of the guns were turned against the people. The justice of our cries went unrecognized.

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.

Whites, like ourselves, belong to our country. They are compatriots, fellow citizens... we see them as Africans.

We had to forge an alliance of strength based not on colour but on commitment to the total abolition of apartheid and oppression; we would seek allies, of whatever colour, as long as they were totally agreed on our liberation aims.

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.

For decades, we resisted violence - until Sharpeville.

In Holy Cross, I came to like school, to like studying in a way I had never done before.

We all belong to South Africa, and South Africa belongs to us all.

The violence associated with the A.N.C. is minimal, infinitesimal next to the violence of the apartheid regime.

The land on which the cattle grazed was communal property. It was owned by no one. It was nobody's private farm. It was the common property of the people, shared by the people. So the practice of sharing was central to the concept of ownership of property.

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.

Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.

There is no way a spirit of resistance that has sunk so deep in the population can be repressed.

In May 1961, South Africa was to be declared a Nationalist Republic. There was a white referendum, but no African was consulted.

It is often suggested that the A.N.C. is controlled by the Communist Party, by Communists. Well, I have been long enough in the A.N.C. to know that that has never been true.

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.