Bram Fischer

“It was to keep faith with all those dispossessed by apartheid that I broke my undertaking to the court, separated myself from my family, pretended I was a fugitive, and accepted the life of a man hunted by the police.”

“I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act.”

“My Lord, I am one of those who tried to vanquish poverty and misery. I am one of those who would have been prepared to give his life for it. For this I have been branded a criminal.”

“I can no longer serve justice in the way I have attempted to do during the past thirty years. I can do it only from the dock.”

“What is needed is for White South Africans to shake themselves out of their complacency, a complacency which I know allows them to accept prevailing standards, to lose sight of the need for change.”

“But I know that what I did was right, and I have no regrets.”

“All the conduct with which I have been charged has been directed towards the replacement of the present state with a new state, a state in which all South Africans will be entitled to live a free life.”

“The glaring injustice of it all has made me realize that I must identify myself with the prosecuted and not with the prosecutor.”

“It is the daily humiliation of the black man, his exclusion from all benefits, his relegation to a position of inferiority, which makes him say: ‘Our country must be free’.”