Why I Was Prepared To Die?

The date was April 24th, 1960. I am prepared to die. These were the last words of my speech three-hour speech in court. I was later found guilty of recruiting people to train in guerrilla warfare, conspiring to commit acts to aid foreign military units, furthering communism, and soliciting money from sympathizers. I had already been found guilty of escaping the country and inciting workers to strike. The five year prison sentence from those charges had not even started, and the ninety day incarceration without trial had just ended, as the government wanted to contain us for as long as possible. ("The Rivonia Trial." Www.ANC.org. The African National Congress, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2015. .) I was indeed prepared to die. Since the very start of my life I was destined to create an apartheid-free South

Although I did not die that day, I did spend the next twenty seven years of my life in a jail cell. I did this in the name of equality and opportunity. I did this so the black children of South Africa would be educated, happy, and healthy. I did this so the black children of South Africa did not have to see new, pristine and better places with “white only” signs posted above them, next to the run-down places they had to go to.

Many ask what my early life was like. I was born on July 18, 1918, in Mvezo, Transkei, South Africa, on the banks of the Mbashe River in Transkei, South Africa. My name was “Rolihlahla" in the Xhosa language, which literally means "pulling the branch of a tree," but more commonly translates as "troublemaker.” My father was going to become chief of the village, but lost that title and his fortune over a dispute with the local colonial magistrate. I was only an infant at the time, and my father's loss of status forced my mother to move the family to Qunu, an even smaller village north of Mvezo. My family lived in huts and ate a local harvest of maize, sorghum, pumpkin and beans, which was all we could