It is well known that the state’s response to our legitimate democratic demands was, among other things, to charge our leadership with treason and, in the beginning of the sixties, to use indiscriminate massacres. That and the banning of our organisations left us with no choice but to do what every self-respecting people, including the Cubans, have done – that is, to take up arms to win our country back from the racists.

Nelson Mandela