BACCALAUREAT
ANGLAIS LV1 - SERIE S - SESSION 2008
Oral du second groupe
TEXT 7
The Long Walk to Freedom
The following text is the very end of Nelson Mandela’s 750-page autobiography. It took him nearly
20 years to write it.
5
10
15
20
I was born with a hunger to be free. I was born free – free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields nears my mother’s hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies1 under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls. As long as I obeyed my father and abided by2 the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God.
It was only when I began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion, when I discovered as a young man that my freedom had already been taken from me, that I began to hunger for it. At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night in Johannesburg. I yearned3 for the basic and honourable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family –the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life.
But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free. I saw that it was not just my freedom that was curtailed4, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did. That is when I joined the African National Congress, and that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was the desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and selfrespect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk5. I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and