See 13 Originals

Nelson Mandela began his oration on Monday, April 20, 1964, with seven momentous words.

My Lord, I am the first accused.

The first accused.

He was referring to his status and what was known as the Ravonia trial, which was being

held in the Pretoria Supreme Court in South Africa.

He spoke from the dock, a defendant, a man accused.

But the brilliance of his word showed that it was truly not he or his friends who were

on trial, but apartheid itself, the ruling order of white supremacy in South Africa in

the 20th century.

Since 1948, the government of South Africa has passed hundreds of laws and thousands of

regulations and proclamations concerning apartheid.

They regulate the lives of more than four fifths of the population of South Africa, that

is to say the 15 million non-whites.

Yet this great majority of South Africans has had no voice in the making of these laws

and no legal means to change them.

In myth and in memory, the end of apartheid and the public image of Nelson Mandela himself

can be one of the inevitable triumph of good over evil, justice over injustice, right

over wrong.

As is so often the case, however, the struggle was long, difficult, and its outcome was

far from foreordained.

And in Mandela's 1964 speech, we can chart the complications and yes the passions that

...