Unit 3: Vocabulary from Readings

Small and demure, he spoke little, and except for occasional mirth in his pale blue eyes, he revealed few emotions.

He went on trial for treason in 1956–1961 and was acquitted in 1961.

His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity.

At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased, and go where I chose.

It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk.

Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade

For what Mandela had reckoned, in that half instinctive, half calculating way of his, was that the World Cup might prove helpful in the great challenge of national unification that still lay ahead.

Mandela never made his purpose overt in that first meeting with Pienaar, but he did edge closer to the main theme when he switched the conversation to his memories of the Barcelona Olympic Games, which he had attended in 1992 and recalled with great enthusiasm.

The gods at that moment were Mandela and Pienaar, the old man in green, crowned king of all South Africa, handing the cup to Pienaar, the young man in green, anointed that day as the spiritual head of born-again Afrikanerdom.

Morne du Plessis, standing close by, looked at Mandela and the Afrikaner prodigal together, he saw Pienaar raise the cup high above his shoulders as Mandela, laughing, pumped his fists in the air, and he struggled to believe what his eyes were seeing.

We do not believe that this Nobel Peace Prize is intended as a commendation for matters that have happened and passed.