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Hard labor
For years, many of the political prisoners spent their days breaking rock in
this limestone quarry. In Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela recalls: "Warders
with automatic weapons stood on raised platforms watching us. Unarmed warders walked
among us, urging us to work harder. Go on! Go on!, they would shout, as if we were
oxen. By eleven, when the sun was high in the sky, we would begin to flag. By that
time I would already be drenched in sweat.... We worked until four, when we carted
the lime to the waiting truck. By the end of the day, our faces and bodies were caked
with white dust. We looked like pale ghosts except where rivulets of sweat had washed
away the lime." Mandela worked in the quarry for 13 years.
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