“A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it”

This Friday belongs to Nelson Mandela. Here’s Desmond Tutu’s remembrance (“When he went to Britain on his farewell state visit, the police had to protect him from the crowds, which might have crushed him out of love”), a history of the anti-apartheid movement through its posters, a 2008 report from when the Nobel Peace Prize-winner was taken off America’s terror watch list, Elizabeth Alexander’s poem for the leader (“my life is black and filled with fortune/ Nelson Mandela is with me because I believe/ in symbols; symbols bear power; symbols demand/ power; and that is how a nation/ follows a man who leads from prison. and cannot speak to them”), Mandela’s 1994 essay for Granta called “African Renaissance” (“In the distant days of antiquity, a Roman sentenced this African city to death”), and lastly, his incredible, resolute, all-powerful speech from 1964, delivered at his trial for sabotage, which begins, “My Lord, I am the first accused,” lays out a case for violent resistance as an avenue for justice (“A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it”), and ends with those famous lines:

During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.