Long Walk to Freedom

Mandela returns to Liliesleaf Farm. The news he brings of African leaders’ suspicion of the ANC requires the group to discuss changes to the alliance. Mandela is sent to Durban to meet with Chief Luthuli and his confidantes.

Luthuli is resistant, arguing that the ANC’s policy of nonracialism was developed for sound strategic reasons and that their policies should not be dictated by foreign leaders. Mandela counters that they will not change the ANC’s policy of nonracialism; they will merely place the ANC in the preeminent public role among the alliance member organizations.

Luthuli mulls the question over, and Mandela meets with MK cell members in Durban. On August 5, 1962, while returning to Liliesleaf Farm with white MK member Cecil Williams, police stop their car, and they are apprehended.

Mandela is brought to the jail in Marshall Square in Johannesburg. Although jailed by himself, he discovers Walter Sisulu is in the next cell, and they catch up through the night. At the arraignment, Mandela notices that the magistrates and lawyers he has dealt professionally with for years still treat him with deference and respect. He further realizes that the magistrates and prosecutors are vaguely embarrassed to put someone on trial for their political beliefs, so he decides to use his trial as a chance to put the state on trial.