Recorded Delivery
eskalith cr lithobid Later that day, he gave a speech from the balcony of the city hall in Cape Town, where some 50,000 people had gathered to hear him speak. In an indication of the challenges ahead, the fringes of the gathering were marred by fierce clashes between riot police and members of the crowd. But in his address, Mr Mandela showed his deft ability to both satisfy his core black supporters and reassure South Africa’s nervous whites. First, he defended the right of the ANC to continue the armed struggle for which he had been imprisoned, leaving Mr de Klerk’s government in no doubt of what would happen if it tried to uphold white-only rule. But then he spoke of his desire for a future South Africa dominated by neither one race nor the other, saying: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.” It was a near-verbatim repeat of the the famous speech he had made from the dock in 1963 - this time, though, said in the spirit of defiance, but of reconciliation.