Long Walk to Freedom: Parts Four–Five

by Nelson Mandela
In this autobiography, the South African president describes his childhood, education, and the battles against Apartheid that led to his imprisonment for nearly thirty years.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Part One, Parts Two–Three, Parts Four–Five, Parts Six–Seven, Parts Eight–Nine, Parts Ten–Eleven
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. punctilious
    marked by precise accordance with details
    I was punctilious about all court regulations, but I sometimes used unorthodox tactics with witnesses.
  2. efficacy
    capacity or power to produce a desired result
    Nonviolent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do. But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end.
  3. disparity
    inequality or difference in some respect
    Yet, even before the Nationalists came to power, the disparities in funding tell a story of racist education. The government spent about six times as much per white student as per African student.
  4. promulgate
    state or announce
    The charter does not speak about the eradication of classes and private property, or public ownership of the means of production, or promulgate any of the tenets of scientific socialism.
  5. demur
    politely refuse or take exception to
    Before we began, Daliwonga invited Mda and Letlaka and his brother, George, to participate, but they demurred, preferring to listen to the two of us.
  6. enclave
    an enclosed territory that is culturally distinct
    The government’s policy was to try to put Africans into ethnic enclaves because they feared the power of African unity.
  7. acrimonious
    marked by strong resentment or cynicism
    The altercation threatened to descend into an acrimonious civil war, and I did my best to prevent a rupture.
  8. peremptory
    offensively self-assured or exercising unwarranted power
    Just after dawn, on the morning of December 5, 1956, I was awakened by a loud knocking on my door. No neighbor or friend ever knocks in such a peremptory way, and I knew immediately that it was the security police.
  9. aphorism
    a short pithy instructive saying
    For the first time, the truth of the aphorism “clothes make the man” came home to me.
  10. tenable
    based on sound reasoning or evidence
    When I would tell her that I was serving the nation, she would reply that serving God was above serving the nation. We were finding no common ground, and I was becoming convinced that the marriage was no longer tenable.
  11. ululate
    emit long loud cries
    We were met by a great chorus of local women ululating with happiness, and Winnie and I were separated; she went to the bride’s house, while I went with the groom’s party to the house of one of Winnie’s relations.
  12. callow
    young and inexperienced
    A philosopher once noted that something is odd if a person is not liberal when he is young and conservative when he is old. I am not a conservative, but one matures and regards some of the views of one’s youth as undeveloped and callow.
  13. polemic
    a verbal or written attack, especially of a belief or dogma
    I thought that once the heated polemics had cooled, the essential commonality of the struggle would bring us together.
  14. habeas corpus
    the right to a writ protecting against illegal imprisonment
    Rioting broke out in many areas. The government declared a State of Emergency, suspending habeas corpus and assuming sweeping powers to act against all forms of subversion.
  15. redoubtable
    worthy of respect or honor
    In October, the redoubtable Professor Matthews was called as our final witness.
Created on Tue Apr 15 20:54:48 EDT 2014 (updated Wed Jul 02 14:22:57 EDT 2025)

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