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Richard Stengel on Mandela: The Lost Tapes

We the People

CHAPTER

The South African Constitution and the Trial of Nelson Mandela

Mandela was tried under British common law of sedition in 1961. He had been taught this idea of British fair play from when he was a young boy. When he came to Johannesburg and he was treated as a subhuman, spat upon, victim of every racial slight you can imagine, he said, my god, if I, Nelson Mandela, the son of a chief with this elite upbringing is treated like this? And that is what changed him. That is what set him on this course as one of the greatest democratic freedom fighters in human history.

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