Nelson Mandela's Speech At Rivonia Trial

Throughout Nelson Mandela's speech that was given at Rivonia Trial in 1965, he first started off talking about two main points/ hardships that involve Africans living in South Africa, which includes poverty and the lack of human dignity. He points out poverty by talking about how rich South Africa really is apart from the rest of the world, yet here the Africans are being treated poorly and how they aren’t even able to make enough to put food on the table or send their family somewhere. The problems with how poverty connects with disease and malnutrition and how that widely affects the people of Africa. Just because a disease does not kill someone does not mean that it is not affecting them. He states that even though some of these diseases
don’t kill them but it does result in mental conditions. He also talks about how Africans are complain just because they are poorer than the whites but it is more because of the law and how unfair it really is. The fact that it’s made so the whites preserve. Not just that but he continues this as he talks about the lack of human dignity due to the fact that Africans made to be inferior to whites according to white supremacy. Due to white supremacy, whites treat Africans differently viewing them as another species or justly. He then talks about the things Africans want too. Being able to get paid enough to live off of or to do something they are capable of not something that the government gives them. How they want to be able to go out at night instead of being kept inside like children. How women want to be with their husbands. How Africans simply just want to live equally with the whites and share South Africa. By using this document we can better understand how although the ANC has fought against racism, it is still subtly done to the Africans via white supremacy. We also have a better understanding of what the Africans want and how they find things unfair due to the law favoring the whites. Not just that but the way the Africans are treated in the year of 1965, is a more subtle and hidden version of slavery due to the fact that they, “When anything has to be carried or cleaned the white man will look around for an African to do it for him.” This connects with how when slavery was still very present and visible, the Africans did everything for their white masters and how they get paid little is comparable to how slaves don’t get much working out in the field either.