Within a month's time we shall have passed another milestone on the long and tedious journey to freedom. Others, too, will have passed a milestone. But they will be travelling on the treacherous and slippery road to doom. In both cases there applies the law of inevitability. But the goals are different and so is the spirit of the travellers. The forces of ‘Tokoloho ka nako ea rona’ are marching on, buoyant and confident, not looking at their hill, but climbing it: On the other hand, the forces of retrogression, stagnation and ‘man's inhumanity to man’ are administering the last desperate kicks of a dying horse. Their doom is sealed; and they [know] it. The dawn of the glory of freedom is breaking, when man shall establish control over things and not over other men: And we know it. And thus we move into 1958.

The passing year has witnessed historic events, chief among which have been the women's militant struggle against ‘Passes for Women’ and the militant disciplined struggle of our nurses against nursing apartheid. There have been the long-drawn-out Treason Trials and the magnificent June 26th ‘Stay at Home’ observance. There has been the glorious Bus Boycott side by side with the abortive ‘Economic Boycott of Cigarettes and Tobacco’. We have witnessed during 1957 a desire for unity and solidarity among the masses and a tendency towards crippling and contemptuous bureaucracy on the part of our leaders. It is a known fact that the Bus boycott was sabotaged by some unnamed individual ‘higher-up’, acting under certain influences. It is equally well known that quite a number of branches in the Transvaal heard about the planned Economic Boycott after the police and the manufacturers had been informed about it by ‘New Age’ and ‘The Star’ and ‘Die Transvaler’ etc. In fact, 1957 has been a year of ‘Directives’ and ‘Counter-Directives’ from a variety of sources. But the struggle continues.

It continues, because the African masses today owe loyalty to the movement for liberation, to the concept of a disciplined, principled struggle for freedom, rather than to a particular individual or to a particular organisation.