Why did Nelson Mandela make this journey
The purpose of Mandela’s trip was to seek political and financial support for the anti-apartheid struggle and training of MK recruits. Mandela’s plan was to meet African leaders, introduce the ANC and clarify its policies, and explain ANC’s strategic shift from non-violence to armed struggle. He also aimed to obtain university scholarships for young Black South Africans on the African continent and beyond.
In his Black Man in a White Man's Court speech following his conviction on the charge of incitement and for leaving the country without valid travel documents in November 1962, Nelson Mandela pointed out that travelling across the African continent ‘made a forceful impression on me. For the first time in my life I was a free man: free from white oppression, from the idiocy of apartheid and racial arrogance, from police molestation, from humiliation and indignity. Wherever I went I was treated like a human being.’