page 106 - Long Walk Original Manuscript [LWOM_106.jpg]

Chapter 5: The defiance Campaign

The National Day of Protest on June 26th 1950 was the first national campaign in which I took part and at the end of that day I felt the exhilaration that springs from the success of an important venture one has helped to plan. The sense of involvement and comradeship becomes particularly strong in moments of challenge and action, when you are part of an organisation which can influence the people in a particular direction, when you know that you can fight and win with battles. Now we could look forward to the next round with even greater confidence and more hope. That round was not far off and would constitute another milestone in our struggle.

Soon after coming into power the Nationalist government began to spell out the policy of apartheid and passed a series of notorious laws to implement their slogan of "Die Kaffer op sy plek en die Koelie uit die land" (The kaffir in his place and the coolie out of the country. Both terms derogatory).Among the laws that were passed in 1950 alone were the Suppression of Communism Act, the Population Registraion Act and the Group Areas Act. The first gave the government arbitrary powers in dealing with its critics and went a long way in destroying the meagre democratic rights in the country and was an admission on the part of the government that they were well aware that apartheid would be resisted by the overwhelming majority of the people of South Africa. The second authorized the government to classify people in official records according to its race concepts and in the implementation of this law there would be tragic cases where members of one family were to be classified differently, some as whites and others as blacks, depending upon