My Association with the African national congress has taught me that a broad national movement has numerous and divergent contradictions, fundamental and otherwise.  The presence in one organization of various classes and social groups with conflicting long term interests that may collide at crucial moments brings its own train of conflicts.  Contradictions of a different kind may split from top to bottom an otherwise homogeneous class or group, and the prejudices arising from different practices in regard to circumcision are amongst these. I still remember well my first reaction, and even revulsion, at fort hare when I discovered that a friend had not observed the custom. I was twenty-one then and my subsequent association with the African national congress and progressive ideas helped me to crawl out of the prejudice of my youth and to accept all people as equals.  I came to accept that I have no right whatsoever to judge others in terms of my own customs, however much I may be proud of such customs; that to despise others because they have not observed particular customs is a dangerous form of chauvinism.  I consider myself obliged to pay proper respect to my customs and traditions, provided that such customs and traditions tend to keep us together and do not in any way conflict with the aims and objects of the struggle against racial oppression.  But I shall neither impose my own customs on others nor follow any practice which will offend my comrades, especially now that freedom has become so costly.