Leadership Quote by Joe Slovo

“Some may seek revenge, but this is not our policy” is the kind of sentence that tries to do three jobs at once: cool a boiling public mood, reassure anxious opponents, and set a moral frame for what comes next. Joe Slovo, speaking from the charged terrain of South Africa’s negotiated transition, isn’t denying the desire for payback; he’s naming it. That first clause concedes a combustible reality: after decades of apartheid violence, revenge is not a hypothetical temptation but a social force. By acknowledging it upfront, Slovo preempts critics who might dismiss calls for restraint as naive or detached.

The pivot - “but this is not our policy” - is where the real work happens. Slovo shifts the conversation from emotion to governance. “Policy” is cold, institutional language, and that’s the point: it signals that the movement aspiring to rule will be bound by discipline, not impulse. It’s also a message aimed across the divide. To those invested in the old order, the line functions as a guarantee that political change won’t automatically mean personal annihilation. That assurance isn’t sentimental; it’s strategic, designed to lower the stakes enough to make compromise possible.

The subtext is hard-edged: justice will be pursued, but not as vengeance; legitimacy will be built, but not through humiliation. In a moment when a single retaliatory spiral could have derailed democracy itself, Slovo’s sentence acts like a seal on the future, insisting that the new state must be constructed with restraint as a founding principle.