BRAM: Met vertrouwen leggen wij onze zaak open voor de gehele wereld. Het zij wij overwinnen, het zij wij sterven: de vrijheid zal in Afrika rijzen als de zon uit de morgenwolken.

I am on trial, My Lord, for my political beliefs and for the conduct which those beliefs drove me to. My Lord, whatever labels may have been attached to the 15 charges brought against me, they all arise from me having been a member of the Communist Party and from my activities as a member of that party. I engaged upon those activities because I believed that in the dangerous circumstances which have been created in South Africa it was my duty to do so.

My Lord, when a man is on trial for his political beliefs and actions, two courses are open to him. He can either confess his transgressions and plead for mercy or he can justify his beliefs and explain why he acted as he did.

The laws under which I am being ‘persecuted’ were enacted by a wholly unrepresentative body, a body in which three-quarters of the people of this country have no voice whatsoever. These laws were enacted not to prevent the spread of communisim but to silence the voices of the large majority of our citizens from being heard by a government intent on depriving them, solely on account of their colour, of the most elementary human rights.

My first duty, then, is to explain to the court that South Africa's problems can only be satisfactorily solved by the application of that scientific system of political knowledge known as Marxism. [Aside] I didn't use the word blood bath or war, but it was implied.

I have to cast my mind back more than a quarter of a century in order to precisely ascertain what my motives were for joining the Communist Party.