No Easy Walk to Freedom

In this 1955 article, Mandela begins by recounting the story of Rachel Musi and her family: Black South Africans facing poverty, persecution, and exile as a result of government policy. He goes on to discuss his own arrest and that of 50 others for organizing and participating in the Defiance Campaign, as well as their experience of police brutality. He also shares the story of a young African man arrested and jailed for seven years for not having sufficient proof of work. These stories illustrate state-sanctioned violence against the Black population and other “foul misdeeds committed against the people by the Government” (22). Mandela sees the government’s methods as weapons against mass mobilization and efforts to maintain the interests of the white elite. 

However, he is clear that these methods have not deterred the freedom movement but rather increased the people’s awareness of the need for solidarity across racial, religious, class, political, and ideological differences. The collective adoption of the Freedom Charter exemplifies this solidarity. Mandela notes that the government’s response to this mass mobilization has been to increase its reign of terror, but he insists that the solidarity of the people is stronger and will defeat the government.