Something which almost everyone gets wrong about me was that i fighting apartheid for the black South Africans but i was fighting for all South Africans regardless of colour, it was just that the Black South Africans were the most downtrodden.Before i took up the fight i trained as a lawyer but i was always inspired by the writings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong where the overiding emphasis was on everyone being equal and the Communist Party gatherings was the only place that Europeans, Africans, Indians, and Coloured's mixed as equals.
I joined the ANC after the whites only government established apartheid after a general election in which only whites were permitted to vote, and i began advocating action such as boycotts and strikes.
We then turned to more direct action such as acts of sabotage, bombing military installations, power plants, telephone lines, and transport links at night, when civilians were not present.
The police, acting on a CIA tip off of where i was hiding arrested me, the Americans had me down as a Communist and US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher both considered me and the ANC a terrorist organisation and supported the South African regimes suppression.
It was on my approaching 70th birthday that things began to change with the new President, F. W. de Klerk, releasing me in 1990 after 27 years in prison.
Together we negotiated an end to apartheid which resulted in the general election which led the ANC to victory and i became President.
I preached forgiveness with the emphasis on reconciliation between the country's racial groups and gave many speeches declaring our commitment to peace between the black and white communities.
During my lifetime, I dedicated myself to fighting against white dominating blacks and blacks dominating whites, my dream was of a democratic and free nation in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities and we have some way still to go.
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