Bram Fischer Quotes
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.
Fischer, Bram. "Statement from the Dock." From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, Vol. 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964-1979, edited by Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, Indiana University Press, 1997, pp. 367-378.
This speech is often referred to as the “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. It was the first time that Malcolm X used the “Ballot or the Bullet”. He was not the first African American to use the “Ballot or the Bullet” phrase. See {624102} for a use over 100 years ago. However, he was really arguing to allow Blacks to vote in the South where it was almost impossible at the time. There was no Voting Rights Act at that time and it was his actions that helped pass one shortly thereafter.
She and a number of other whites, mostly British, sided with the majority Blacks to end the white, Afrikaner-dominated rule of South Africa.
Abraham Louis Fischer was a South African lawyer of Afrikaner descent, notable for anti-apartheid activism and for the legal defence of anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela, at the Rivonia Trial. Following the trial he was himself put on trial accused of furthering communism. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and diagnosed with cancer while in prison. The South African Prisons Act was extended to include his brother's house in Bloemfontein where he died two months later.
