Ndebele offered a radical redefinition of strength in his Wesleyan address. He described how South Africa's white leaders — who had built the most powerful military machine on the continent and terrorized an entire subcontinent into submission — and Black leaders — who had told their followers for decades that freedom would come only at the barrel of a gun — both chose to abandon their positions of apparent strength. This was not weakness, Ndebele argued, but a harder, truer form of toughness. It was easy to go to war; both sides had the means and the righteousness to justify it. What was infinitely more difficult was to step back from the brink, to expose yourself to accusations of betrayal and cowardice from your own people, and to choose an uncertain path of negotiation over the familiar certainty of violence.