Legendary fighter [Walter] Sisulu,

Highly esteemed Premier [M.A. Motshekga] of Gauteng province - as you all understand, with us not speaking the same language, we need translation to communicate,

Distinguished guests,

I'm not going to give a speech. I've come to chat with you for a few minutes. A speech would have to be very long, as long as your history, as long as the glorious resistance that these peoples of Africa offered the conquerors, settlers and slave traders. A speech would have to be so long, as long as the list of problems that we have in today's world and it would have to be as long as the list of all those who have fallen in this continent and in other parts of the world for freedom and justice, although we still can't say that true freedom and justice exist in this world. So I'll talk briefly about some things that might help grow our awareness on the idea that freedom and justice in our world may perhaps be closer than ever.

Victory is not achieved only with arms. It's also achieved many times without arms. And I don't practice the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, but history has shown that many and great battles have been won fundamentally with ideas (Applause and exclamations). That's why I always say that the first thing is the idea; the second, to struggle for ideas; and the third is to triumph with sweat and blood, if necessary, for those ideas (Applause).

I thought about that when I arrived here, when I arrived in South Africa and when I visited that modest monument to the memory of those who would deserve a monument as high as Mount Everest, which is said to be the highest in the world.

That boy deserves a Himalayas mountain as a monument - that boy and the children who fought and died like him (Applause). Who was that boy? How old was he? Why did they kill him? What crime did that boy commit for him to be murdered? What ideas was he defending? It's just that, more than an idea, little Hector was defending a feeling, that feeling with which we're all born - everyone without exception - which is a sense of human dignity (Applause). That boy was sacrificed for that dignity. And millions of children have been sacrificed for that dignity - just like hundreds of millions, you could say thousands of millions, throughout history, of children, old people, men and women, those who suffered as a result of exploitation, injustice, those who died of hunger, those who died at the hands of other men, because, since man made some progress in production and started to get organized, the exploitation of some men by others practically started then - the enslaving of some men by others, the strongest against the weakest.

That's how history began before writing even existed, when human beings, in relatively more numerous communities, entered into different relations after roaming the jungles in small family groups or in small clans, until this world of today, in which we all know that we live in a planet that, for a long time, was thought to be flat and which, one day, was found to be round. The Greeks knew it already but the Greeks were forgotten. A lot of books were burnt in the Alexandria library.

Other men, a few centuries ago, wanting to get to India by the shortest route, as it was said, and presuming that the Earth could be round, set sail and were lucky not to arrive in China because, if they had, history would have been different (Laughter and applause). Our hemisphere, according to what geology tells us, was at one time joined to Africa. Apparently, it was a single land mass which due to a series of natural and physical phenomena began to split long before there were human beings around. It was not known that there was a continent here.

Then the Conquistadors, with 12 horses, disembarked and sowed panic with superior technology. The arquebus - which was a kind of nuclear weapon at that time because it made a lot of noise - the gunpowder, the crossbows and, fundamentally, the horses were enough for them to take possession of that land in the name of a king. Who gave the king those lands? (Applause) Why did they arrive there putting up a flag in the name of a king who was thousands of miles away, who never even set foot there? I don't remember any king from among them all, over centuries, having even visited our hemisphere.

But the soldiers arrived with their superior weapons in countries that were very backward technically - not culturally, because, in that hemisphere, there were already cultures that were older than European culture. Works of art, architecture - they had enough knowledge. Mexico City, for example, was bigger than any city in Europe, but it was conquered with those weapons and those horses.

I've often smiled when thinking about what would have happened if Christopher Columbus hadn't made a mistake and had landed in China, which, at that time, according to what Marco Polo says - and it seems that it's true, history has confirmed it -, had cavalry armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The 12 Spanish horses would have disappeared in a matter of seconds (Applause). But they found what they called Indians there. That's why there are two kinds of Indian - the Indians from India and the Indians that they baptized Indians in the hemisphere that was later called America. Many millions of people lived there. However, 70 million died during the conquest and colonization.

Man discovered that the Earth was round, that there was a round planet, that ships didn't fall into the abyss. Those who fell into the abyss were those who were living there peacefully in that territory when they discovered the Europeans. In other words, with the discovery that we were inhabiting a round planet, so began one of the cruelest and most unjust historical stages in the history of humanity. And, if slavery had already disappeared in the Middle Ages, with the discovery, slavery arose anew, around 500 years ago.

That history has a lot to do with us and it has a lot to do with all of you. Since then, science has advanced greatly - knowledge, mechanics, physics, the exact sciences. Man made extraordinary technological discoveries. He constructed telescopes that discovered planets and even explored them from a distance. They discovered millions and millions of millions of stars. They discovered the universe and many more things.

Man has even launched vehicles into space, to the moon. He didn't conquer it because, on the moon, there was no oxygen or people. Otherwise, he would have taken possession of the moon in the name of the king of Washington (Laughter and applause). And perhaps the illustrious visitor who preceded me some time ago [meaning U.S. President William Clinton], instead of traveling to South Africa, would have traveled to the moon (Laughter and applause) Man explored the planets and discovered that they had no inhabitants. He got to Mars. It was always said that there was intelligent life on Mars. They haven't found it - just rocks and an absence of the essential elements for life.

Other planets have been explored. There are some on which the temperature - I think it's Venus, the one that they called the Goddess of Love, making it another deity in Greece. Anyone would imagine a sweet paradise and what the automatic vehicles have found is that there is a heavy atmosphere with a heat of 400 degrees, which is not really a temperature at which you could make love (Laughter). But the Greeks, at least, awakened the illusion that that planet, which wasn't so far away - they could see it with the naked eye -, was the Goddess of Love.

What we know today, which is what's important, is that we have one single inhabitable planet in our solar system, which is this one, where there is still an atmosphere, a little oxygen, a little fresh water from time to time, a bit of nature, which has been surviving the destruction provoked by societies that call themselves civilized.

Yes, maybe there were inhabitants on Mars. Perhaps there was intelligent life there. Maybe they managed to develop a civilization and destroyed that planet, just like some are going to destroy this planet if we don't stop the destroyers of nature - not just of people - because, at the rate they're going, they could end up effectively making this an uninhabitable planet. That's not a fantasy. That's shown by science. It's shown by mathematics, everything.

So, this relatively long tour of the universe brings me to the idea that human beings - you and us, all of us - have to save two things: We have to save the natural environment in which we live and we have to save the human species to which we belong.

I understand that those who have to live in great poverty and who have the problem every day of looking for a job and earning a living don't have the time or even the possibility to meditate very much on these problems of the environment because, before the moment comes in which nobody can live, the next hour could come for them when they'll die of disease, poverty and hunger.

What a world this is where we need to persuade those who go hungry that to save mankind the natural environment must be saved, so that man can live in a world where there is neither injustice nor poverty, where there is no hunger and where children like these don't need to die for dignity, freedom and justice!

Yes, we have to win justice, full justice, full freedom for man. But we have to win a world without enemies, a world without some people trampling others underfoot, a world that doesn't have a few people owning everything while the vast majority has absolutely nothing (Applause).

We know today that there's one inhabitable planet and that, on that planet, we are six billion inhabitants living on it - six billion! And before that boy [he points to a boy in the public] is 17 years younger than the age that I might be and approximately 30 years younger than Sisulu's age, those 10 billion inhabitants that the Earth will have within 50 years on this round planet will have to live and we'll have to make it so that they can live with dignity and justice, with freedom and bread, with freedom and clothes, with shoes and a roof over their heads, with freedom and schools, with freedom and hospitals, with freedom and medical care, with freedom and recreation, with freedom and culture.

If I'm talking to you about this, it's because I think that the heroic men and women of this famous and legendary township that we're visiting today didn't die just for the well-being of Soweto. They died for the well-being, dignity and freedom of all people in South Africa (Applause) and they died for the independence, freedom and well-being of all the peoples of Africa and they died for the dignity, freedom, equality and well-being of all the men and women in the world (Applause).

That's how I see them and that's why I say that their monument should be as high as the highest mountain. (Applause and exclamations). But high monuments aren't just made of stone. They're made of ideas and they're made of justice.

Many like them have died elsewhere and, one day, they'll have that monument of justice, that monument of brotherhood, that monument of peace for which we struggle for all the human beings of the Earth (Applause).

That's what I see here in Soweto because, for a minute, I think that you, rightly proud of the heroism and courage of this township's sons, do not yet realize the full grandeur and the full worth of their sacrifice. I fear that you might not understand the full magnitude of the historic role of Soweto and of those children and young people who died on 16 June 1976, whose pictures we've just seen in that humble museum that you've created, so that those who come here can live, even if just for a second, that 16 June not when Soweto rose up but when the freedom of the oppressed, the dignity of the oppressed rose up.

It happened in Soweto that dignity revolted against all the injustices here and in the rest of the world. And, 22 years later, nobody forgets them. Rather, everybody remembers them and loves them even more. And this is how, throughout the years, the world will remember that there was a Soweto and there were young people who sacrificed for the dignity of all mankind.

It could be rightly said that this was the birthplace of the liberation of South Africa (Applause). But, one day, it will be considered the birthplace of dignity for all Africa. And it's not a question of Africa not having struggled. It's not that Africa doesn't have thousands and tens of thousands of heroic deeds but this remained the most painful place in a system of slavery and injustice that has lasted thousands of years but which, especially in Africa, Latin America and the Third World, lasted hundreds of years.

Apartheid didn't begin in 1948. Apartheid began in that same century, 500 years ago, when the inhabitants of these lands, like America or a large part of Asia, were conquered and colonized. It began when Africa was conquered and colonized centuries ago. It can never be forgotten that millions and millions of Africans were snatched from their villages and their homes in this continent. There are said to have been 12 million, not counting those who died of disease on the crossings or drowned in those seas. Twelve million Africans were put in chains and sold at auction for a few miserable pesetas to work as slaves for a period that extended for centuries. So, in America, it wasn't just the extermination and enslaving of their natives. They also took over there as slaves many Africans who are now part of our blood, our identity and our peoples.

That's why no-one should be surprised by that one day sons and daughters of a people like Cuba, in a beautiful gesture of solidarity, traveled to cooperate and to fight in this continent that contributed so much to our struggles - because the first to upraise against the colonial system in America, long before the British settlers in North America, were the African slaves, in the 16th century; they were the first. And, later in the middle of the 18th century, when there were already millions in Jamaica, Barbados and other countries, they revolted against the colonial system and were savagely repressed. Some were free. They escaped to the mountains and lived in freedom for a long time, because they couldn't accept slavery. None of them accepted it but not all of them could escape the shackles and the persecution of the dogs hunting them like wild animals in the jungle.

The sons and descendants of Africa went through all that suffering for centuries. They rebelled there. Like here, there were many Sowetos in that hemisphere and they sowed the seed and showed the way to our peoples freedom (Applause), the way toward our countries independence, that even now, unfortunately, has not been fully achieved because we have an extremely powerful neighbor who likes to dictate orders, impose conditions and exploit those peoples.

We don't need to mention - I've hardly said a single word - about some things you've said here. I did say something yesterday in the parliament simply to express our feelings of solidarity with Africa, the effort that our little country, our little blockaded country was willing to make in order to fulfill a duty to Africa (Applause) and consistent with our ideas, consistent with our duties, consistent with our consciences.

A lot of people now come to South Africa and to Africa. Don't think that they come because they're interested in Africa's poverty. Don't think that they come because they're interested in the starving in Africa, the sick people who don't have medicine or the children who don't have schools. We know very well and you know it too that they come because they're interested in Africa's gold (Exclamations), in Africa's diamonds, Africa's nickel, Africa's aluminum, Africa's platinum, Africa's uranium, Africa's manganese, Africa's iron, Africa's chromium, and so on; in Africa's timber, until not a single tree is left and the continent is a vast desert; and because they're interested in the cheap labor force Africa can provide (Exclamations).

They say that they bring capital but what's capital? (Exclamations) In the past, gold was capital. If you had a green note that said "10 dollars", you could go to the United States Treasury and be handed so many grams of gold because, for each banknote, there was a gold reserve. Now, they don't bring gold. No, no. They bring bank notes and take away the gold (Exclamations). Now, they bring bits of paper, a fiction, a lie, a sham (Applause).

I'm not going to try to give an economics lesson here. No (Laughter). I know a few things about economics and, above all, those things that have to do with the way our peoples are exploited and cheated. I'd just like to say that those who now hegemonically dominate the world are buying the world's riches with bits of paper. But those are their bits of paper which, thanks to the riches accumulated with the plundering of our peoples and the development achieved at the cost of our underdevelopment, constitute a typical mechanism of those economies, an instrument of domination. With them, they buy and take possession of the world's riches. Yes. And what do they pay with? Often with trinkets. Often with things that we could produce here in Africa, with our cotton... Why do we have to buy a suit in New York if all that they produce are made with raw materials from our countries? (Laughter and applause) All those fine polyester fabrics are made with the oil that comes out of Africa, that comes out of Latin America, that comes out of Asia.

The energy that they consume comes from our raw materials and the vast majority of Third World countries don't have electricity in many places or telephones or household electrical appliances. All that is produced with our raw materials, extracted from our mines, on the basis of very low wages and in order to export goods to us that they produce with very sophisticated machinery where, often, by pressing a button, out comes a series of plastic shoes or artificial leather, objects, parts, automobiles, planes and everything - pressing a button with a finger. And the finger pressing it belongs to a guy who went to grammar school and studied high school, who went to college, although you don't need so much knowledge to press a button (Laughter). Engineers too - those who press buttons are now sometimes engineers. And they also press buttons when they launch rockets in whatever direction, with whatever excuse, and they press buttons when they start their space voyages.

I wonder: Don't we have any intelligence? Didn't that boy who died there have intelligence? Didn't he have fingers? Didn't he have arms? Didn't he have a heart? And who has prove that some are more intelligent than others? Before a culture existed in, for example, the United States, the Mayans in Central America already had a developed culture and knew about astronomy.

Long before they had a civilization, thousands of years ago, in the Middle East and in Mesopotamia, even before Greece and Rome, they already knew how to construct big buildings. They already had a form of writing. They already had libraries. They already had a civilization. And in Egypt, for example, they were already building pyramids, which have continued to exist for thousands of years. And, to build a pyramid, you need intelligence. For the pyramid to be straight and perfect, you need to know a lot about geometry, about architecture and about mathematics. That knowledge existed when, in Europe, there were no more than savage tribes, who came in waves from Central Asia. They weren't more civilized than us and they didn't know more than us.

Everybody has heard about the seven wonders of the world. Any of those seven wonders existed 2,000 years - maybe I'm wrong; maybe 2,500 years or 3,000 - before Paris and New York existed.

Who says that civilization and intelligence are the heritage of one group of human beings? I say this in all sincerity. That's what I think and I said it yesterday because I know it's so. I'm not going to say that one race of humans is more intelligent than another. But I can tell those who, with racist views, looked at the peoples of Asia and Africa and the Indians of Latin America as inferior people that - due to our close relations with those peoples over many years of this century - we are witnesses to the intelligence, the extraordinary ability and talent of the African peoples, the peoples of Latin America and Asia.

What's more - not just talent but ideas, heroism. Because, to spend 27 or 30 years in a jail, like Sisulu, and decades in a solitary 3 by 2 meters cell, where there wasn't a bathroom or a bed, just the naked floor, abuses, humiliation, isolation from the family, things as terrible as those that Mandela was telling me yesterday, to explain to me the experience with one of his daughters, who he hadn't seen since she was 18 months old and he couldn't see her until she was already a woman because, in that solitary cell, he couldn't even receive the solace of a daughter after she was two years old. I wonder: Why such cruelty?

So, when I saw with my own eyes and had the honor and the privilege of knowing men like them, who never renounced their ideas, I wonder how many heroes Europe or the United States had, how many heroes those who despise us had who could have spent 27 or 30 years in such terrible and painful conditions without renouncing their ideas.

What a monument to the dignity of man! What monument to the honor of Africa and to the honor of all the peoples of the Third World! What a monument to the human conscience!

Is it perhaps the case that men who are capable of that would not be capable of creating a better world, a truly human world, a world that is truly capable of equality, a world that is truly worthy of man?

I don't want to say anything that might seem to any of you to be simple flattery, although I know that you would never see it like that. But, out of respect for that shyness any man feels, I'll refrain from saying anything that might sound like simple praise or flattery. I might offend you if I did and I hold you in too much esteem to use demagogy or falsehood. I just want to express, with all the modesty in the world, my view our peoples have the capacity to build civilizations as great as those and even greater, civilizations at the service of man and a thousand times more human. We can't simply accept some people's right to have everything while others have nothing.

And I ask myself a question, remembering, for example, an outstanding man like Einstein, the famous physicist who created the doctrine of relativity. It then occurs to me to think that, if Einstein, instead of having been born in an already cultured and supposedly civilized Europe - supposedly civilized, I reckon - only a few years before the concentration camps and the Holocaust of millions and millions of human beings, showing how questionable that mechanical civilization is, that technological civilization lacking a human heart, had been born in Soweto, where Hector Peterson was, would Einstein have been Einstein? Perhaps they would have called him Hector. But would he have been able to discover the theory of relativity? Would he have been able to reach sixth grade or junior high school? Would he have managed to graduate from senior high school?

So, how can all that potential talent be developed if, in Africa, for example, more than half the population cannot read or write, do not have schools, do not have universities, do not have research centers, do not have the equipment?

How can the population have the equipment? How can they train the doctors and engineers Africa needs? That's how they continue to nurture the hope that they're going to have billions of human beings at their disposal solely as cheap labor force but living in poverty, humiliation and neglect. That's what they dream of, I tell you.

I've already told you what they look for when they travel. Right now, there are conflicts in the [Democratic] Republic of the Congo. Why? And why did Lumumba die there? (Exclamations) Why was he murdered? Because he wanted to defend the rights of Congo and because Congo had a lot of gold too and a lot of diamonds and a lot of platinum and a lot of uranium. It's perhaps one of the regions of the world with the most natural resources. That has been the bone of contention. And what has the West taken to Congo over 40 years? More poverty, more backwardness than when Lumumba was alive. Billions and billions of dollars were stolen from there. And where did it end up? In the Western banks. And who stole it? Those who served the interests of the West.

In those 40 years, which are almost the years of the Cuban revolution, our blockaded and poor country, which doesn't even have oil, has trained more than 70,000 medical doctors (Applause), out of which - because some of them retire, some of them die - the country now has 63,000. One doctor for every 174 people (Applause).

There are many Third World countries that have one doctor for every 10,000. In Africa, for example, there are countries with one for every 15,000, one for every 20,000. Is that what Western civilization brought us? Is that what they have in store for the peoples of Africa?

Oh! In our country, there was also 30 percent illiteracy when the revolution triumphed, when we freed ourselves from the empire that was the master of all our riches. And we now have between 250,000 and 300,000 grammar and junior high school teachers (Applause) and the grammar school teachers are now university graduates. I'm not saying this to boast in any way at all. I'm saying it, simply, to show from experience how different it has been for those who were unable to free themselves from imperial and colonial domination. I've mentioned only two things.

Cuba, a Third World country, also has tens of thousands of scientists. That's why we know what our countries can do and that's why we've had the possibility of sending doctors and teachers to other countries. In a period of approximately 30 years, there have been in Africa - as I said yesterday - more than 80,000 civilian collaborators (Exclamations and applause) and 381,000 soldiers and officers who fought alongside African soldiers and officers. The number is so high because, in a country like Angola, we were there for 15 years (Applause and exclamations of "Long live Cuba!"), exercising Sisulu's patience, never to give up, retreat or renounce our duties of solidarity (Applause).

We've shared the trenches and we've worked in the hospitals and in the schools with our African brothers and sisters. Who can know their hearts and their talent better than their Cuban brothers? And who can speak more honestly, without a single word of demagogy, about the worthy peoples of Africa, what they can do and what can be done by other peoples with whom we've collaborated in these years?

In Africa alone, there have been over 26,000 Cuban medical doctors, nurses and other health workers. And, if Africa needs more doctors, we've got more doctors because they continue to graduate from our universities (Applause) - and good doctors, because they do not just work in the cities. They also work in the countryside and they go to the mountains. What's more, not just the countryside and mountains of Cuba but any countryside and any mountain in any country in the world (Applause). That's political consciousness! That's internationalist consciousness! (Applause)

That's how we've tried to educate our people, because you can't think of a better tomorrow, you can't think of a fair world in this planet for all human beings, without a profound idea and a profound consciousness of solidarity, fraternity and internationalism. Let's educate man in that sentiment. The society that exploits us doesn't instill that sentiment in man but, instead, hatred, selfishness, ambition.

And when they travel through the world, they travel accompanied by a large retinue. They bring their planes full of businessmen because their journeys are to look for business and natural resources - minerals and profits.

Not a single businessman came with the Cuban delegation. And, when we've traveled to whatever country in Africa, not a single businessman has come with us.

It's enough for us to be able to feel - always, in whatever country we visit - that we're unselfish friends who do not go around looking for material resources (Applause).

We believe in that world we were speaking of and we believe the people of that world must one day be the masters of the planet. We can't conceive of a world in which a handful of transnational corporations are the absolute masters of the world. That's why I talk about the problems of globalization.

Globalization is inevitable, but not the globalization that they want to impose on us, not that neo-liberal globalization. (Applause). Globalization is a product of science, technology and the development of the production forces that should be at the service of man.

The idea that we defend, above all else, is the right of every human being to develop his talent and his intelligence, his qualities, his best qualities. This is the right of all human beings to freedom, justice, dignity, respect - the right of all human beings to those things indispensable for life.

It's not like every citizen should have a yacht or a plane. We're not talking about the consumption model of the developed capitalist societies that sow that poison among us every day through television, the radio, the cinema, even destroying our cultures - "Drink Coca Cola" (Laughter). And I don't expect to get paid anything at all for the advertising. "Drink Pepsi Cola", "Eat McDonald's " (Laughter). And you'll now find that, even in China and India, they drink Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola and eat McDonald's (Laughter).

What we aspire to for man is that he is adequately nourished to develop and preserve his health; that he has the possibility of being educated, as I said before; of acquiring culture; that he has a roof over his head, a secure job. Yes, a secure job. What do they blame for unemployment? The productivity of machinery. Very well, I accept that. I'm happy that machines produce a lot at the touch of a button. Right. But why press the button for 40 or 50 hours a week? (Laughter) Better to press it for 10 hours (Laughter)

In short, intelligence and scientific and technological advances shouldn't be at the service of a tiny minority of transnational corporations. They should be at the service of man. And the machines with computers and automation should not take man's place (Applause). What we aspire to is there being work for all people, men and women, in different kinds of jobs.

Today, there are all those resources for saving nature, for nourishing, educating and providing well-being to all people, for getting them to organize rationally, for applying family planning too. But we need to grow aware of that.

What is actually happening? The rich don't multiply. They have one child, two children at most, or none. They keep the population balanced. The poor haven't been able to go to school. They are not aware of these problems. In many Third World countries, they want to have more children as a guarantee for old age. But that would not be necessary if culture and well-being were universal. And we could all have electricity without polluting the atmosphere and we could have means of communication. And we could even have household electrical appliances and we could have a roof over our heads. And we could have medicine, medical care and we could all have health, for example, and a longer life. You see what I mean? That is within man's reach.

If the machines produce a lot, I repeat, then let man work less, let the old people live longer and do what they like, without the need to be pressing buttons. If a small number of us can produce a lot for a lot of people, let's all produce a lot for a lot of people with a minimum of physical effort since even pressing a button for eight hours every day can be stressful. Let people have more time for sport, for walking, for leisure.

In short, I believe man can do it. I believe that world is possible. I believe that we can make it if we understand it, if we win the battle of ideas and of consciousness.

That, fundamentally, is how you won the really difficult battle against apartheid and there's a lot of apartheid in the world. The symbol has disappeared but thousands of other ways of apartheid remain throughout the world, under different disguises. There's apartheid in a world of rich and poor. There's apartheid in a world where some countries have a [per capita] gross domestic product of 30,000 dollars per year while others don't even have 200 or 300, or maybe 400 or 500. And who are those with tens of thousands of dollars of [per capita] gross domestic product? Those who conquered us when we were free, although we lacked some articles of the so-called civilization. Those who colonized us, exploited us and enslaved us - they're the ones who have the great riches. And who among us has the great poverty? Those who were conquered, colonized and enslaved.

Let's put our heroic will, our extraordinary intelligence to the test in order to win that battle. A battle that - I say again - can find tremendous weapon in ideas. You can't imagine how much sympathy and support arose in the world when the news of the Soweto uprising against apartheid was known throughout the Earth. Solidarity with the people of South Africa was multiplied by 10, by 100, and it was a decisive factor in that battle, in that victory that, when all's said and done, you won.

That's what I wanted to talk to you about today - although I overextended - and tell you that, in my mind and in my heart, I'll always carry the memory of this land, of this people and of those who sacrificed themselves for such a just cause, a human cause for which it is our duty to fight and for which we will all fight.

Thank you very much! A million thanks, heroic citizens of Soweto! (Applause and exclamations of "Fidel, Fidel!" and "Long live Cuba!")