THE
FREEDOM
CHARTER
AFRICAN
\ NATIONAL
ACONGRESS
/POWER
TO THE PEOPLE!
A SECHABA
COMMEMORATIVE PUBLICATION
Votes
Wrfn,
(•u* J
y~ttor*) I
SELECTED WRITINGS ON
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
1955 - 1985
A SECHABA Commemorative Publication
Published by the African National Congress
London, 1985
Demonstrator at
Hegina Mundi
%urch, Soweto,
J 6 June 1985.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................(i)
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
Adopted at the Congress of the People, Kliptown, South Africa,
on 26th June, 1955 ......................................................1
REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMME
OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
An analysis of the Freedom Charter
Adopted at the Morogoro Conference, 1969 ................................5
JUNE 26, SOUTH AFRICA FREEDOM DAY.......................................15
DRAWING UP THE DEMANDS OF THE FREEDOM CHARTER
This article was first published in Sechaba, June 1976..................20
FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME
Article on the Freedom Charter by Nelson Mandela in Liberation,
the newspaper of the Congress Movement, June 1956 ......................23
DOES THE FREEDOM CHARTER MEAN SOCIALISM?
This article appeared in New Age on November 17th, 1957 ................28
SOUTH AFRICA FREEDOM DAY
A call to all revolutionary forces to rally behind the struggle against
fascist tyranny in South Africa, by ANC President O R Tambo, June, 196
7.32
THE HISTORICAL INJUSTICE
Paper delivered by Thabo Mbeki, member of the NEC of the ANC,
in Ottawa, Canada, 1978.................................................36
MANDELA AND OUR REVOLUTION
Extracts from an article in Sechaba, Third Quarter, 1978................51
1980, YEAR OF THE CHARTER
Extract from the address to the South African people delivered by
President Tambo on behalf of the NEC of the ANC on January 8th, 1980..
..56
ORGANISATION OF AFRICAN UNITY ON THE FREEDOM CHARTER .
58
YOUTH AND THE FREEDOM CHARTER
Extract of an article inspired in large measure by the discussion held at t
he
ANC Youth Summer School in Hungary, 1980 ...............................59
THE FREEDOM CHARTER,
A BEACON TO THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA
By Alfred Nzo, Secretary General of the ANC, first published in the
African Communist, Second Quarter, 1980 ................................61
QUESTION ON THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
This article was first published in Sechaba, October 1982 ..............72
THE FREEDOM CHARTER AND ITS RELEVANCE TODAY
Article written by Mzala on the occasion of the
Thirtieth Anniversary of the Freedom Charter............................78
THE FREEDOM CHARTER - EQUAL RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
Article by Jack Simons, March 1985 ................................... 102
(i)
INTRODUCTION
This year the people of South Africa commemorated the 30th anniversary
of the Freedom Charter. That was on June 26th. All over the country peo
ple
pledged their commitment to the ideals enshrined in the Freedom Charter
.
The Second Consultative Conference of the ANC, held in Zambia in June
this year, did the same thing. Sechaba, the official organ of the ANC, ran
a series of articles to commemorate this event. So did other journals of th
e
movement.
This was an important occasion for the people of South Africa. This was
important because, though the idea of the Freedom Charter emanated fr
om
the ANC, it was adopted by the people of South Africa - hence it is a people's document. Even its contents came from the people themselves demands made at innumerable meetings, some written on scraps of pape
r.
The people accepted their document at Kliptown on June 25 and 26 wher
e
about 3 000 people gathered. This was the most representative gathering
in the history of South Africa. Even after that, in 1960, during the peasant
s
revolt in Pondoland, the resisters independently came to adopt the
Freedom Charter - in the jungles of Pondoland.
The thirty years that have passed since the adoption of the Freedom
Charter were years of struggle, sacrifice and deprivation. Many of those
who worked tirelessly for the Congress of the People did not live to see
it implemented. The 'Call to the Congress of the People', issued by the
National Action Council, was heard loud and clear the length and breadth
of our land. It read, in part:
'We call the people of South Africa black and white - let us speak
together of freedom!
We call the farmers of the reserves and trust lands. Let us speak of the
wide land, and the narrow strips on which we toil. Let us speak of brother
s
without land, and of children without schooling. Let us speak of taxes and
of cattle and of famine. Let us speak of Freedom!
We call the miners of coal, gold and diamonds. Let us speak of dark shifts
,
and the cold compounds far from our families. Let us speak of heavy labo
ur
and long hours, and of men sent home to die. Let us speak of rich master
s
and poor wages. Let us speak of Freedom!
We call the workers of farms and forests. Let us speak of the rich foods
(ii)
we grow, and the laws that keep us poor. Let us speak of harsh treatment
and of children and women forced to work. Let us speak of private prison
s,
and beatings and of passes. We call the workers of factories and shops.
Let us speak of the good things we make, and the bad conditions of our
work. Let us speak of the many passes and the few jobs. Let us speak of
foremen and of transport and trade unions; of holidays and of houses. Let
us speak of Freedom!
We call the teachers, students and the preachers. Let us speak of the
light that comes with learning, and the ways we are kept in darkness. Let
us speak of the great services we can render, and of the narrow ways tha
t
are open to us. Let us speak of laws, and governments, and rights. Let us
speak of Freedom!
We call the housewives and mothers. Let us speak of the fine children
that we bear, and of their stunted lives. Let us speak of the many illnesse
s
and deaths, and of the few clinics and schools. Let us speak of high price
s
and of shanty towns. Let us speak of Freedom!
Let us speak together. All of us together - African and European, Indian
and Coloured. Voter and voteless. Privileged and rightless. The happy a
nd
the homeless. All the people of South Africa; of the towns and the
countryside.
Let us speak together of freedom. And of the happiness that can come
to men and women if they live in a land that is free. Let us speak of freed
om.
And how to get it for ourselves, and for our children'.
But the younger generation - some bom after 1955 - are continuing the
struggle of their predecessors. Recently, the South African Allied Worker
s
Union (Saawu), banned in the Ciskei, the now-banned Congress of South
African Students (Cosas), the General and Allied Workers Union (Gawu)
and the Azanian Students Organisation (Azaso) declared;
'We reiterate our uncompromising commitment to the historic Freedom
Charter as the only democratic document drafted in the history of the
liberation struggle. The Charter stands out from all other alternatives
for change in South Africa, not only because of the manner in which
it came into being, but also because of the demands reflected in it.
It can therefore never be substituted without the will of the majority.
Any attempt by an individual or group to discredit or undermine it can
only be seen as an act of betrayal to the aspirations of all the people
of South Africa'.
This statement was issued in 1983 - 28 years after the adoption of the
Freedom Charter and 23 years after the banning of the ANC. The people,
even today, are demanding the implementation of the Freedom Charter
whose prerequisite is the destruction of the system of apartheid.
When the racists in our country are talking a lot about 'reforming' apartheid, abolition of pass laws, common citizenship - in short tinkering with
apartheid or at best removing the 'hurtful aspects' of apartheid - the
(iii)
demands enshrined in the Freedom Charter are more relevant than befor
e.
The demands enshrined in the Freedom Charter are the demands of the
people; the abolition of apartheid, land reform, franchise, democracy, participation of everybody at every level of the political sphere, solution of
social and welfare problems, democratisation of the education system,
abolition of child labour and the 'tot system' - in short, all that the ANC
stands for. In other words, the Freedom Charter demands the national
liberation of the blacks, especially the Africans, and the social emancipation of all South Africans, black and white.
Sechaba publishes this booklet in the hope that the international community will understand what we are fighting for. This is one of the prerequisites for the support of our struggle. It is only when people understand
us that they will support us. Most of the articles printed here have appear
ed
in the columns of Sechaba.
This is one of the ways of commemorating the 30th anniversary of the
Freedom Charter - a document for which many of our comrades have
fought, served terms of imprisonment, and even died.
Students on the march, Durban, 1983.
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
We, the People of South Africa, declare for
all our country and the world to know:
that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that
no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of
all the people;
that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and
peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality;
that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live
in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities;
that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secu
re
to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;
And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together
- equals, countrymen and brothers - adopt this Freedom Charter. And
we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor
courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.
THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN!
Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a
candidate for all bodies which make laws;
All people shall be entitled to take part in the administration of the country
;
The rights of the people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or s
ex;
All bodies of minority rule, advisory boards, councils and authorities shall
be replaced by democratic organs of self-government.
ALL NATIONAL GROUPS SHALL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS!
There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the
schools for all national groups and races;
All people shall have equal right to use their own languages, and to deve
lop
their own folk culture and customs;
All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race
and national pride;
The preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination and
contempt shall be a punishable crime;
All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.
1
THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE COUNTRY'S WEALTH!
The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall b
e
restored to the people;
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry sha
ll
be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of
the people;
All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufac
ture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.
THE LAND SHALL BE SHARED AMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT!
Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all th
e
land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land
hunger;
The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and da
ms
to save the soil and assist the tillers;
Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land;
All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose;
People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labour and
farm prisons shall be abolished.
ALL SHALL BE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW!
No-one shall be imprisoned, deported or restricted without a fair trial;
No-one shall be condemned by the order of any Government official;
The courts shall be representative of all the people;
Imprisonment shall be only for serious crimes against the people, and sha
ll
aim at re-education, not vengeance;
The police force and army shall be open to all on an equal basis and shal
l
be the helpers and protectors of the people;
All laws which discriminate on grounds of race, colour or belief shall be
repealed.
ALL SHALL ENJOY EQUAL HUMAN RIGHTS!
The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organise, to meet
together, to publish, to preach, to worship and to educate their children;
The privacy of the house from police raids shall be protected by law;
All jhall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town,from
T'rovince to province, and from South Africa abroad;
Pass Laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be
abolished.
THERE SHALL BE WORK AND SECURITY!
All who work shall be free to form trade unions, to elect their officers and
to make wage agreements with their employers;
The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full
unemployment benefits;
2
Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work;
There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid
annual leave, and sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on full
pay for all working mothers;
Miners, domestic workers, farm workers and civil servants shall have the
same rights as all others who work;
Child labour, compound labour, the tot system and contract labour shall
be abolished.
THE DOORS OF LEARNING AND OF CULTURE SHALL BE OPENED!
The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent fo
r
the enhancement of our cultural life;
All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchang
e
of books, ideas and contact with other lands;
The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and
their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace;
Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children;
Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means
of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit;
Adult illiteracy shall be ended by a mass state education plan;
Teachers shall have all the rights of other citizens;
The colour bar in cultural life, in sport and in education shall be abolished
.
THERE SHALL BE HOUSES, SECURITY AND COMFORT!
All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently hou
sed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
Unused housing space to be made available to the people;
Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no-one shall go hung
ry;
A preventive health scheme shall be run by the state;
Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with specia
l
care for mothers and young children;
Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transpor
t,
roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centres;
The aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for by th
e
state;
Rest, leisure and recreation shall be the right of all;
Fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished, and laws which break
up families shall be repealed.
THERE SHALL BE PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP!
South Africa shall be a fully independent state, which respects the rights
and sovereignty of all nations;
South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all
international disputes by negotiation - not war;
Peace and friendship amongst all our people shall be secured by upholdi
ng
3
the equal rights, opportunities and status of all;
The people of the protectorates - Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swazil
and
- shall be free to decide for themselves their own future;
The right of all the peoples of Africa to independence and self-governmen
t
shall be recognised, and shall be the basis of close co-operation.
Let all who love their people and their country now say,
as we say here:
'THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR,
SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES,
UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY.'
Adopted at the Congress of the People
Kliptown, South Africa, on 26th June, 1955.
4
Delegates arriving at the Congress of the People.
An Analysis of the Freedom Charter
REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMME
OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
Adopted at the Morogoro Conference, 1969
For over two hundred and fifty years the African people fought wars of
resistance against the European invaders in defence of their motherland
- South Africa. Despite their heroism, courage and tenacity our people
were defeated on the battlefield by the superior arms and organisation of
the Europeans.
Although the conflicts and problems of South Africa have largely centred
on the relationships between the Africans and the Europeans, they are no
t
the only peoples who form the South African population. The Coloured
and Indian people are, like the Africans, oppressed by the dominant Euro
pean minority.
The South Africa of today is the product of the common labour of all its
peoples. The cities, industries, mines and agriculture of the country are
the result of the efforts of all its peoples. But the wealth is utilised by and
for the interests of the white minority only.
The African National Congress was formed in 1912 to unite the Africans
as a nation and to forge an instrument for their liberation. From the outset
the African National Congress asserted the right of the African people as
the indigenous owners of the country, entitled to determine its direction
and destiny. Simultaneously our forefathers recognised that the other
groups in the country - the Europeans, Indians and Coloureds - were
historically part and parcel of South Africa.
Democratic Principles
The ANC rejected the claims of the European settlers to domination, and
fought against all attempts to subjugate them in the land of their birth. But
in the face of the gravest injustices the ANC never once abandoned the
principle that all those who had their home in the country of the Africans;
were welcome, provided only that they accepted full and consistent equali
ty and freedom for all. In this the ANC was not merely bowing to history
and reality but believed that it was correct in principle to make their position clear. Over and over again in the face of manifest inhumanity the AN
C
absolutely refused to be provoked into abandoning its democratic principles. The ruling white minority rejected the concepts of the ANC and
to that extent the movement and the people fought and will fight them.
5
Congress of the People
In the early fifties when the struggle for freedom was reaching new intensity, the need was seen for a clear statement of the future of South Africa
as the ANC saw it. Thus was born the Congress of the People campaign.
In this campaign the ANC and its allies invited the whole of South Africa
to record their demands which would be incorporated in a common document called the Freedom Charter. Literally millions of people participated
in the campaign and sent in their demands for the kind of South Africa th
ey
wished to live in. These demands found final expression in the Freedom
Charter. The Freedom Charter was adopted at the Congress of the Peopl
e,
representative of all the people of South Africa, which met at Kliptown,
Johannesburg on June 25 and 26, 1955. The three thousand delegates
who
gathered at Kliptown were workers, peasants, intellectuals, women, youth
and students of all races and colours. The Congress was the climax of th
e
campaign waged by the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Organisation, the South African C
ongress of Trade Unions and the Congress of Democrats. Subsequently all
these organisations adopted the Freedom Charter in their national conferences as their official programme. Thus the Freedom Charter became
the common programme enshrining the hopes and aspirations of all the
progressive people of South Africa.
'High Treason'
From the moment the idea of the Congress of the People and the Freed
om
Charter was mentioned, the white government of South Africa termed it
'High Treason'. After the Congress of the People was held and the Charte
r
adopted, fresh threats were uttered by the government. Eventually 156
leaders of the liberation movement were arrested on December 5, 1956
and charged with plotting to overthrow the state and to replace it by a ne
w
one along the lines laid down in the Charter. This long trial, which lasted
four and a half years, resulted in the acquittal of all the accused. By that
time the Freedom Charter had become one of the most famous documen
ts
in the history of man's struggle for freedom.
The Charter was not the statement of this or that section of the popula-
tion. It was a declaration of all the people of South Africa. It was a simple,
honest, unpretentious document reflecting the desires and ideas of millio
ns
of common people. Therein lay the power of its revolutionary message.
And always it should be borne in mind that both in its wording and intent
the Charter projected the view not of present-day South Africa but that of
the country as it should and will be after the victory of the revolution.
Today the ANC and its allies are engaged in an armed struggle for the
overthrow of the racist regime. In its place the ANC will establish a
democratic state along the lines indicated in the Freedom Charter. Altho
ugh
the Charter was adopted as long ago as 1955 its words remain as fresh
and
relevant as ever. Some who have forgotten its actual terms or the kind of
6
document it is, or who detach this or that phrase from the document take
n
as a whole, imagine that the conditions of armed struggle somehow invalidate some provisions of the Charter. What we believe is that the Char
ter
may require elaboration of its revolutionary message. But what is even m
ore
meaningful, it requires to be achieved and put into practice. This cannot
be done until state power has been seized from the fascist South African
government and transferred to the revolutionary forces led by the ANC.
The Preamble of the Freedom Charter
The first lines of the Charter declare that South Africa belongs to all who
live in it, Black and White, and that no government can justly claim author
ity
unless it is based on the will of the people.
The expression 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White
'
embodies the historical principle that has characterised the policy of the
ANC towards the peoples who have settled in the country in past centurie
s.
The African people as the indigenous owners of the country have accept
ed
that all the people who have made South Africa and have helped build it
up, are components of its multi-national population, are and will be in a
democratic South Africa one people inhabiting their common home. No
government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will, not jus
t
of the whites, but of all the people of the country. The Freedom Charter
thus begins by an assertion of what is and has been a cardinal democrati
c
principle that all can live in South Africa, whatever their origin, in equality
and democracy. That the South Africa of the future will not be a country
divided unto itself and dominated by a particular racial group. It will be
the country of all its inhabitants. It is the white people who, in the past as
now, have rejected this principle leaving the people no alternative but to
convince them by the truth of revolutionary struggle.
The preamble ends by calling on the people, Black and White, as equals,
countrymen and brothers to pledge to strive together sparing neither
strength nor courage until the democratic demands set out in the Freedo
m
Charter have been won.
The preamble couched in terms similar to many famous documents
reflecting man's aspiration for freedom called for a new state resting on
the will of the people - a repudiation of the existing state and a call for
revolution. Hereunder we examine, briefly, each section of our Charter.
The People Shall Govern!
The Republican constitution of South Africa, passed in 1961, is a monum
ent
to racialism and despotism. In terms of this constitution supreme legislati
ve
authority is vested in the White fascist State President, the House of
Assembly and the Senate. Only a White person can be elected State Pres
ident. The House of Assembly and the Senate consist exclusively of Whit
e
representatives elected by an exclusively White electorate. Therefore the
power to make laws in our country is a monopoly of the White minority.
7
The same applies to other organs of government such as the four provincial councils of Natal, Cape, Orange Free State and Transvaal which are
headed by a White Administrator assisted by an all White Executive Coun
cil. Organs of local government, such as District Councils, Municipal Cou
ncils, boroughs are manned entirely by White people. Such organs of local
government as there are for non-Whites consist of the Transkei Legislati
ve
Council and an executive; the Indian Council; the Coloured Council, urba
n
Bantu athorities; Territorial Authorities and other such bodies. These are
all undemocratic institutions, with little or no power and serving merely
as a sounding board for the White minority government. The administration in South Africa is similarly maimed at all significant levels by White
persons.
A successful armed revolution will put an end to this state of affairs. The
Parliament of South Africa will be wholly transformed into an Assembly
of the People. Every man and woman in our country shall have the right
to vote for and stand as a candidate for all offices and bodies which make
laws. The present administration will be smashed and broken up. In its
place will be created an administration in which all people irrespective
of race, colour or sex can take part. The bodies of minority rule shall be
abolished and in their place will be established democratic organs of selfgovernment in all the Provinces, districts and towns of the country.
All National Groups Shall Have Equal Rights!
In South Africa not only does the system at present enforce discriminatio
n
against individuals by reason of their colour or race, but in addition some
national groups are privileged, as such, over others. At the moment the
Afrikaner national group is lording it over the rest of the population with
the English group playing second-fiddle to them. For all the non-White
groups - the Africans, Indians and the Coloureds - the situation is one
of humiliation and oppression. As far as languages are concerned, only
Afrikaans and English have official status in the bodies of state such as Pa
rliament or Provincial Councils; in the courts, schools and in the administration. The culture of the African, Indian and Coloured people is barely
tolerated. In fact everything is done to smash and obliterate the genuine
cultural heritage of our people. If there is a reference to culture by the oppressors it is for the purpose of using it as an instrument to maintain our
people in backwardness and ignorance.
Day in and day out White politicians and publicists are regaling the world
with their theories of national, colour and racial discrimination and contempt for our people. Enshrined in the laws of South Africa are a host of
insulting provisions directed at the dignity and humanity of the oppressed
people.
A democratic government of the people shall ensure that all national
groups have equal rights, as such, to achieve their destiny in a united So
uth
Africa. There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts an
d
8
in the schools for the African, Indian, Coloured and White people as far
as their national rights are concerned. All people shall have equal right
to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and
custom; all national groups shall be protected by laws against insults to
their race or national pride; the preaching and practice of national, racial
or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime; and
all laws and practices based on Apartheid or racial discrimination shall be
set aside.
The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth!
Today most of the wealth of South Africa is flowing into the coffers of a
few in the country and others in foreign lands. In addition the White minor
ity
as a group have, over the years, enjoyed a complete monopoly of econo
mic
rights, privileges and opportunities.
An ANC government shall restore the wealth of our country, the heritage
of all South Africans, to the people as a whole. The mineral wealth benea
th
the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the own
ership of the people as a whole.
At the moment, there are vast monopolies whose existence affects the
livelihood of large numbers of our people and whose ownership is in the
hands of Europeans only. It is necessary for monopolies which vitally affect the well-being of our people, such as the mines, the sugar and wine
industries, to be transferred to public ownership so that they can be used
to uplift the life of all of the people. All other industry and trade which is
not monopolistic shall be allowed with controls to assist the well-being of
the people.
All restriction on the right of people to trade, to manufacture and to enter
all trades, crafts and professions shall be ended.
The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!
The indigenous people of South Africa, after a series of resistance wars
lasting hundreds of years, were deprived of their land. Today in our country all the land is controlled and used as a monopoly by the White minority
.
It is often said that 87% of the land is 'owned' by the Whites and 13% by
the Africans. In fact the land occupied by Africans and referred to as
'Reserves' is state land from which they can be removed at any time but
which, for the time being, the fascist government allows them to live on.
The Africans have always maintained their right to the country and the
land as a traditional birthright of which they have been robbed. The ANC
slogan Mayibuye i'Afrika was and is precisely a demand for the return of
the land of Africa to its indigenous inhabitants. At the same time the libera
tion movement recognises that other oppressed people deprived of land
live in South Africa. The White people, who now monopolise the land, ha
ve
made South Arica their home and are historically part of the South Africa
n
population and as such entitled to land. This made it perfectly correct to
9
demand that the land be shared among those who work it. But who work
the land? Who are the tillers?
The bulk of the land in our country is in the hands of land barons, absent
ee
landlords, big companies and state capitalist enterprises. The land must
be taken away from exclusively European control and from these groupings and divided among the small farmers, peasants and landless of all r
aces
who do not exploit the labour of others. Farmers will be prevented from
holding land in excess of a given area, fixed in accordance with the concrete situation in each locality. Lands held in communal ownership will be
increased so that they can afford a decent livelihood to the people and
their ownership shall be guaranteed. Land obtained from land barons and
the monopolies shall be distributed to the landless and the land-poor
peasants. State land shall be used for the benefit of all the people. Restri
ctions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended and all land shall
be open to ownership and use to all people, irrespective of race.
The State shall help farmers with implements, seeds, tractors and dams
to save soil and assist the tillers. Freedom of movement shall be guarant
eed
to all who work on the land. Instruments of control such as the 'Trek Pass'
,
private gaols on farms and forced labour shall be abolished. The policy
of robbing people of their cattle in order to force them to seek work
in order to pay taxes shall be stopped.
All Shall Be Equal Before The Law
In terms of such laws as the notorious Suppression of Communism Act;
the Native Administration Act; the Riotous Assemblies Act; the Terrorism
and Sabotage Acts and many other laws, our people suffer imprisonment
,
deportation and restriction without fair trials. These laws shall be abolished. No one shall suffer imprisonment, deportation or restriction without
fair trial.
In our country petty government officials are invested with vast powers
at their discretion to condemn people. These powers shall be ended. The
courts of South Africa are manned by White officials, magistrates, judges.
As a result the courts serve as instruments of oppression. The democrati
c
state shall create courts representative of all the people.
South Africa has the highest proportion of prisoners of any state in the
world. This is because there are so many petty infringements to which a
penalty of imprisonment is attached. In a new South Africa, imprisonment
shall only be for serious crimes against the people, and shall aim at reeducation, not vengeance.
It has been a standing policy of White governments in South Africa to
prevent Africans and other non-Whites from holding responsible positions
in the police force. The present police force and army are instruments of
coercion to protect White supremacy. Their whole aim is punitive and terroristic against the majority of the population. It is the major aim of the a
rmed
revolution to defeat and destroy the police force, army and other
10
instruments of coercion of the present state. In a democratic South Africa
the army and police force shall be open to people of all races. Already
Umkhonto we Sizwe - the nucleus of our future people's army - is an
armed force working in the interests of people drawn from the land for
their liberation. It consists of people drawn from all population groups in
South Africa.
All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights!
South Africa has numerous laws which limit or infringe the human rights
of the people. One need only mention the notorious Suppression of Communism Act; Proclamation 400 which imposes a state of emergency in th
e
Transkei; the Proclamation of 1953 which bans meetings of more than te
n
Africans in scheduled areas; the Native Laws Amendment Act which introduces racial discrimination in churches and places of worship; the Ban
tu
Education Act which makes education without a government permit an of
fence - surely an offence unique in the world - to educate without a
permit!
All the above Acts and regulations will be swept away by a people's
government. The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organis
e,
to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship and to educate their
children.
The Pass Laws of South Africa result in the arrest of an average of 1 000
persons a day. These laws control and prohibit movement of our people
in the country. There are also laws which restrict movement from one pro
vince to another. As part of their checking of the people numerous police
raids are organised during which homes are broken into at any time of th
e
day or night. Many laws give the police powers to enter people's homes
without warrant and for no apparent reason except to terrorise them.
All this shall be abolished. The privacy of the home from police raids
shall be protected by law. All shall be free to travel without restrictions
from countryside to town, from province to province and from South Afric
a
abroad. Pass laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms
shall be abolished.
There Shall Be Work and Security!
As with everything else, the rights of collective bargaining of workers in
South Africa have been twisted and warped by racial ideas and practices.
Africans do not have the right to form registered trade unions and are pro
hibited from going on strike. Other workers are forced to belong to racially divided unions. The government has the power to determine what jobs
shall be reserved for what racial groups. People of different races are pai
d
differential wage rates for the same work. Migratory labour is a chief feat
ure
of the South African economy and leads to massive social upheaval and
distress, particularly among Africans. In the Democratic State the ANC is
determined to achieve, all who work shall be free to form trade unions,
11
to elect their officers and to make wage agreements with their employers.
The State shall recognise the right and duty of all to work and to draw
full unemployment benefits. Men and women of all races shall receive eq
ual
pay for equal work. There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national
minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers and mat
ernity leave on full pay for all working mothers. Miners, domestic workers,
farm workers, and civil servants shall have the same rights as all others
who
work, to form trade unions and join political organisations. The use of chil
d
labour, the housing of male workers in single men's compounds, the sys
tem
whereby workers on wine farms are paid tots of wine as part payment on
their wages, contract labour - all these pernicious practices shall be
abolished by a victorious revolutionary government.
The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened!
One of the biggest crimes of the system of White supremacy is the dama
ge
it has done to the development of the people of South Africa in the fields
of learning and culture. On the one hand, the minds of White people have
been poisoned with all manner of unscientific and racialist twaddle in their
separate schools, colleges and universities. There has been made availa
ble
to them all the worst forms of so-called Western culture. The best creations of art, writing, the theatre and cinema which extol the unity of the
human family and the need for liberty are only made available in dribs an
d
drabs, whilst the general position is one of a cultural desert.
As far as the non-White people are concerned the picture is one of
deprivation all along the line. One has to think hard to discover whether
or not there is even one single theatre, drama school, ballet school, college of music to which non-Whites are admitted in South Africa. In Cape
Town there is some ridiculously slight opening for Coloured people. Other
wise eighty percent of the people of South Africa are by and large confined to patronising the few cinemas whose fare is the most inferior type of
American cinema art.
A vigilant censorship system exists to ensure that these racially separate
cinemas do not show non-Whites anything that is considered to be bad
for them by the authorities. It is not only that non-Whites are virtually deba
r-
red from the cultural production of mankind, but in addition everything
has been done to prevent them developing their own national cultures.
Publishing is strictly controlled. Apart from the most banal forms of music,
the people are not encouraged or allowed to produce such music as
enhances their spirit. Such music as contains protest against conditions o
f
life is searched for and prohibited. The languages of the people are not
permitted to be developed by them in their own way. Ignorant and officio
us
White professors sit on education committees as arbiters of African
languages and books without consultation with the people concerned. Th
e
grotesque spectacle is seen of the White government of South Africa pos
ing as a 'protector' of so-called Bantu culture and traditions of which they
12
know nothing. The arrogance of the fascists knows no bounds! They
apparently love African culture more than the Africans themselves!
The truth is that they wish to preserve those aspects of the African tradition which contain divisive tendencies likely to prevent the consolidation
of the African people as a nation. The forces represented in the present
state, after combating education of non-Whites for over one hundred year
s,
suddenly decided to take over all education as a state responsibility. The
result was the introduction of a racially motivated ideological education;
a lowering of standards; the emergence of tribal colleges; and the intensification of racial separation in university education. Science and
technology are hardly taught to non-Whites. The training of doctors and
other medical personnel is derisory.
The Democratic State shall discover, develop and encourage national
talent for the enhancement of our cultural life; all cultural treasures of
mankind shall be open to all by free exchange of books, ideas and contacts with other lands. The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to
love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty
and peace.
Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children.
Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means
of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit. Adult
illliteracy shall be ended by a mass state education plan. Teachers shall
have the rights of other citizens to organise themselves and participate in
political life. The colour bar in cultural life, in sport and education shall
be abolished.
There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!
Migratory labour and its concomitant of separation of families, social
problems and distress is one of the tragedies of South Africa. Residential
segregation is the order of the day throughout South Africa, with massive
shortage of and bad housing for non-Whites, and huge homes and flats
most
of which are either empty or not fully used, for the White minority. The
infant mortality rate in our country is among the highest in the world, and
the life expectancy of Africans among the lowest. Medical services are
haphazard and costly.
The Democratic State established after the victory of the revolution shall
ensure the right of people to live where they choose, to be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security. The vast unused
housing space in such areas as the flatlands of Hillbrow and Johannesbu
rg
shall be made available to the people. Rent and prices shall be lowered,
and adequate amounts of food shall be made available to the people. A
preventative health scheme shall be run by the state. Free medical care
and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with medical care for mothers
and young children. Slums, which have to some extent been demolished
in the nine major centres of the country, shall be eliminated in the middle
13
of towns and rural areas where the majority of the people live. New subur
bs
shall be built where proper facilities shall be provided for transport, lightin
g,
playing fields, creches and social centres.
The aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for by
the State. Every person shall have the right to leisure, rest and recreation
.
Fenced locations and racial ghettoes shall be abolished and laws which
result in the break-up of families shall be repealed.
There Shall be Peace and Friendship!
In the wake of the victorious revolution a Democratic People's Republic
shall be proclaimed in South Africa. This shall be a fully independent stat
e
which respects the rights and sovereignty of nations. South Africa shall
strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of international dispute
s
by negotiation - not war. Peace and friendship amongst all people shall
be secured by upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all.
The Democratic State shall maintain close neighbourly relations with the
states of Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland in place of the present veiled
threats and economic pressure applied against our brothers and sisters
in these states by White supremacy. Democratic South Africa shall take
its place as a member of the '''AU and work to strengthen Pan-African uni
ty
in all fields. Our country will actively support national liberation movement
s
of the peoples of the world against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. Diplomatic relations will be established with all countries
regardless of their social and political systems on the principles of mutual
respect for each other's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity
.
The economic and cultural interests of those countries which sympathise
with and support the struggle of South Africa for freedom shall be
respected.
The revolutionary struggle is in its infancy. It will be a long, hard road.
To accomplish the glorious task of the revolution, maximum unity among
all national groups and revolutionary forces must be created and maintain
ed. All South African patriots whatever their race must take their place in
the revolution under the banner of the African National Congress.
Forward to revolution and the victory of
the people's programme of liberation!
14
JUNE 26
SOUTH AFRICA FREEDOM DAY
June 26th is South Africa Freedom Day,
a day on which we rededicate ourselves
to the fight for liberation.
1950 - The May Day Strike
When we look back to the year 1950 the Afrikaner government had been
in office for two years, and it was already engaged in its now familiar prac
tice of passing a series of more and more repressive laws; laws designed
to make more rigorous the system of racial discrimination already in force
in the country, and to safeguard white economic privilege; laws intended
to paralyse political opposition. For by that time political opposition had
become a matter in which the mass of the people were concerned.
The African National Congress in particular, from its beginning as an
organisation in 1912, had become a mass organisation; the South African
Indian Congress had gained wide support among Indians during the
Passive Resistance Campaign in 1946 against legislation which further ci
rcumscribed the rights of the Indian people. In the Unlawful Organisations
Act, the regime was framing legislation against organisations which see
med
likely to become a real threat to its security.
May Day Strike
The Defend Free Speech Convention was formed to organise black protest against the new legislation of 1950, and it represented a number of
organisations. A mass rally held in Durban at this time, under the auspice
s
of the ANC, the Natal Indian Congress, the African People's Organisation
and the Communist Party of South Africa, was the first occasion on which
all these organisations had come together to make a joint protest against
the racial policies of the government. The Convention made plans for a
national stoppage of work on May 1st, 1950, and for meetings and rallies
all over the country.
Then began a pattern of events that has become familiar to us in South
Africa; when faced with a show of hostile opinion, the regime threatened
to take 'forceful' action against its opponents. The statement made by the
Defend Free Speech Convention certainly did not call upon the people
to show any violence. It said simply: 'We request all South Africans, irrespective of race or colour, to lodge a protest by demonstrating ... and
by demanding freedom of speech'.
15
However, the then Deputy Commissioner of Police, J P Coetzee, announ
ced
that the police would protect those who wished to go to work on 1st May,
and said that 'force will be met with force when necessary'. C R Swart, th
en
Minister of Justice and later President of South Africa, told the House of
Assembly that he had banned the May Day rally arranged for Pretoria, an
d
if he received representations from magistrates on the Rand he would ba
n
the protest meetings there as well.
18 People Killed
White South Africans in the cities first became aware of the stoppage of
work on May 1st when the milk was not delivered in the morning. The So
uth
African progressive weekly, The Guardian of May 4th, reported a success
ful
stoppage in most cities and peaceful rallies and demonstrations througho
ut
the country. In the late afternoon, however, there was violence and on th
e
Rand eighteen people died. On May 11th, The Guardian printed three eye
witness accounts of the killings. One, from Benoni, told the story of how
a crowd, told to disperse, had begun to do so when the police moved in
with bayonets and guns: 'They slaughtered the people like cattle, stabbing them from behind and shooting them in their backs as they ran. 1 swe
ar
there was no provocation from the people'. Another, from Sophiatown, tol
d
of another crowd that had been told to disperse, and of one eighteen-year
old boy who had not moved away with the others, but had remained wher
e
he was and was shot dead. The eye witness, who ran to pick him up, was
struck down with a baton and arrested. Another account from Alexandra
Township described how a woman had thrown a stone at a passing polic
e
van. This was evidently enough provocation for the police, who then open
ed fire and in a few seconds eight people were dead, including one fifteen
year-old schoolgirl.
First Freedom Day Protest
These events caused deep resentment and indignation among the people
.
The ANC called a national day of protest and mourning on June 26th. Thi
s
call was supported by the African People's Organisation (an organisation
of Coloured people which was later replaced by the South African Coloured People's Organisation) and the South African Indian Congress.
The Guardian of June 29th reported another successful stoppage of work
,
most successful in Port Elizabeth and Durban. The National Day of Prote
st
Co-ordinating Committee issued a statement afterwards in which it spoke
of its satisfaction at the splendid response to its call.
Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws
In 1951, the conference of the ANC adopted a resolution to rally the people into mass action in defiance of apartheid laws. This resolution had be
en
drawn up by the Joint Planning Council, a body which had previously bee
n
appointed at a meeting of the executives of the ANC and the South Afric
an
16
Indian Congress, and representatives of the Cape Franchise Action Coun
cil, a body which had been organising protests against the Separate
Representation of Voters Bill. The mass action, which was planned for th
e
following year, was intended as a protest against such laws as the Pass
Laws,
the Group Areas Act, the Separate Representation of Voters Act, the Ban
tu
Authorities Act and the Suppression of Communism Act (under which the
Communist Party of South Africa had already been banned in 1950).
The situation was beginning to harden into the one familiar to us today.
The Separate Representation of Voters Bill became law, and the Suppres
sion of Communism Act became harsher as a result of further amendmen
ts.
In July the police intensified their persecution of organisations opposed
to the government by raiding the offices of the ANC, the Indian Congress,
the Iron and Steel Workers' Union, the Bakers' and Confectioners' Union
and the Newspaper and Publishing Workers' Union - all African unions.
The Guardian of July 12 reported that during such a raid the then Secreta
ry
General of the ANC, Walter Sisulu (later sentenced and still serving life
imprisonment), had been 'removed under the escort of two detectives to
Marshall Square police station for questioning', and added that: 'Detectiv
es
have visited the head office of the ANC on several occasions recently
demanding to know the race of Mr Sisulu and the names of the members
of the Congress national executive'.
1952 was the year of the Defiance Campaign. At meetings held in April
in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth, it was decided
that groups of volunteers would defy apartheid, and that this action shoul
d
spread throughout the country. When arrested, the volunteers would serv
e
sentences rather than pay fines. This action was, as the Congress empha
sised, based on disciplined non-violence. At a press conference on April 17t
h,
Dr Yusuf Dadoo, President of the South African Indian Congress, was ask
ed: 'Do you think there will be any incidents?' He replied: 'Not from our
side. Ours will be a controlled, disciplined movement'.
Early in 1952 certain leaders of the ANC, the South African Indian Congress and the trade union movement were 'named' under the Suppressio
n
of Communism Act. Under this law they were forced to resign from their
organisations and were forbidden to attend meetings. On June 26th, Yusu
f
Dadoo, Moses Kotane and others defied this ban by addressing a meetin
g
and were brought to trial.
Defiance Begins
The Defiance Campaign began on June 26th, when the first volunteers in
cluding Nelson Mandela, Yusuf Dadoo, Walter Sisulu and others defied
apartheid laws in Johannesburg and other major city centres. The movement continued to spread. From June till December groups of volunteers
all over the country defied the law by entering African areas without permits, entering the European sections of post offices and railway stations,
defying the nightly curfew for Africans in the cities. Volunteers' comments
17
were that they were defying unjust laws that have oppressed our people
for three hundred years. When brought to court the volunteers pleaded
not guilty and made statements explaining why they had done what they
did. Some parties of volunteers were acquitted - it was found, for example, that those who defied railway apartheid had not, in fact, broken the
law at all - but the rest served various terms of imprisonment. As the early volunteers began to come out of jail, there were reports of political
prisoners being maltreated. As the jails grew full the authorities tried to fo
rce
payment of fines by confiscating the money of prisoners. By October 9th,
the number of volunteers had passed the 5 000 mark, and magistrates b
egan
to sentence volunteers to corporal punishment. Sentences grew harsher,
and there were other reprisals as well. The police carried out more raids
on the offices of the organisations concerned and on the homes of the
leaders.
Luthuli Dismissed as Chief
The home of Ahmed Kathrada (then an Indian youth leader in Johannesburg, subsequently sentenced and still serving life imprisonment), wa
s
raided while he was not present. One of the detectives involved reportedly said: 'It is our country, we can do what we like'.
The Department of Native Affairs told Chief Luthuli he must resign either
from the ANC, of which he was then Natal President, or from his chieftain
ship of the Amakholwa tribe. He later made a statement saying: 'As a chi
ef
I regarded myself as a servant of my people and I therefore decided that
I could not withdraw from the struggle for freedom by resigning either fro
m
Congress or the chieftainship'. The paper Advance (successor to The
Guardian which by then had been banned) reported that 'When the tribe
was told that Luthuli was dismissed because of his association with the
ANC,
spokesmen asked the Native Commissioner what would happen when th
e
new chief was appointed because all the tribesmen were members and
supporters of the African National Congress.
This persecution of leaders was intended to intimidate them, and to find
charges to get them out of the way. Twenty leaders were brought to trial
in September for their part in the Defiance Campaign. Of the offence they
were charged with, the People's World said: 'The Crown must prove that
the campaign aims at bringing about a change in the industrial and social
structure of the country through unconstitutional and illegal methods'. The
twenty accused were eventually sentenced to nine months' imprisonment
,
suspended. Police action grew more brutal. In Durban they carried out
a baton charge against people from the spectators' gallery leaving a Defiance Campaign trial. White personnel of the Defence Force had been
put on emergency duty. The regime was determined to crush the campaign by the use of violence against the people. Congress decided that
the police and army must be given no excuse to exercise their armed
strength against the people, who were neither armed nor prepared for
18
armed action. The National Action Committee, of which Chief Luthuli was
president, issued a leaflet appealing to all Black people not to be provoked and 'avoid rioting, follow the lead of the Congress, be peaceful,
disciplined and non-violent'.
In 1953 Chief Luthuli, who had by then been elected President General
of the ANC, called on the African people and their allies to mark June 26
as a national day of commemoration and dedication to the cause of free
dom.
Each family was asked to commemorate the day by recounting in its own
home the story of the struggle for freedom of the black oppressed people
of South Africa. Each family was asked to light a bonfire outside its home
at nine in the evening, or to place a lighted candle or lamp as 'symbols
of the spark of freedom we are determined to keep alive in our hearts, an
d
a sign to other freedom lovers that we are keeping vigil on that night'.
In 1954, June 26 and 27 were marked throughout South Africa by mass
meetings and by an anti-apartheid conference in Johannesburg. The call
went out for organisers for the forthcoming Congress of the People. The
year before the Congress of the People was one of extensive nationwide
activity: preparatory meetings were held all over the country and the people gave concrete expression to their aspirations, which became embodi
ed
in the Freedom Charter. The emblem of the campaign was a four-spoked
wheel, representing the four organisations in the Congress Alliance, nam
ely
the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the S
outh
African Coloured People's Organisation and the Congress of Democrats.
The South African Congress of Trade Unions, after its formation in 1955,
became the fifth member of the Congress Alliance. This emblem was to
be seen chalked on many a wall during late 1954 and 1955, and was to b
e
seen on the banner over the speakers' table when the Congress of the
People took place in Kliptown on June 26, 1955. Delegates came from vir
tually every centre in the country, from the reserves and locations, the fa
rms
and the cities. They came by train, car, lorry and bus, even on foot.
Delegates entered the closed strip of veld where the Congress was held,
marching and singing, under their banners and ANC flags. In one way or
another the delegates wore the Congress colours.
The highest award of the people of South Africa - that of IsitwalandweSeaparankoe - was made to ANC President, Albert Luthuli, South African
Indian Congress President, Yusuf Dadoo, both of whose banning orders
prevented their being present, and Trevor Huddleston, who was then wor
king in Johannesburg. The Congress adopted the Freedom Charter, the
document that enshrines the wishes and aspirations of our people in a fre
e,
democratic and non-racial South Africa.
19
DRAWING UP THE
DEMANDS OF THE FREEDOM CHARTER
Adopted at the Congress of the People
on June 26, 1955.
This article was first published in Sechaba, June 1976
The time comes for every radical movement when to talk of 'freedom' is n
ot
enough. One has to paint a picture of it, give it substance, fill in the details
.
We reached that moment in South Africa in 1955. Since the First WorldW
ar
there had been talk of 'freedom' and of 'liberation'. It had remained a vag
ue
promise somewhere over the horizon, a glow in the sky, nothing more. Bu
t
now we felt the time was coming. Our movement was advancing at a rate
undreamt of before. The African people were united solidly with the move
ment for freedom, against oppression. We had felt our strength in the Defiance Campaign. We were building an alliance with Indian and Coloured
South Africans, starting to create bonds with the radical white minority. W
e
felt we were coming to the crest of a hill, and that our freedom now lay so
close to hand that we would see it for ourselves, 'in our lifetime', as we sa
id.
It was no longer good enough to know only what we were against: apartheid, race discrimination, poverty, oppression. This was the enemy and
we
had all seen its face for ourselves, and learnt to oppose it relentlessly. Th
is
was what we were against. But what were we for? Freedom in our lifetim
e?
What was this freedom? What was its shape and colour, and what would i
t
be like to live in?
In 1954 we knew the time had come to give the 'freedom' shadow a Sout
h
African substance. We were going to draw the picture of our future in as
much detail as we could.
This was the origin of the campaign for the Freedom Charter. As in all
joint actions, the ANC took the lead. We put a plan before our allies in
the other Congresses, and from it came the idea for a 'Congress of the
People'. The idea itself was simple enough. We, the political leaders of
our people, would not simply give a directive as to the meaning of freedo
m.
We would get the people to tell us. They would draw up a Freedom Chart
er
as a guide for us. We would consult the people in town and country, in
every occupation, and across all the race and colour barriers of oppressi
on.
We would ask what shape they wished to give the freedom that was coming. And finally, we would compile what they demanded into a single
20
Charter. A simple idea: but we were not so simple as to believe that in
South Africa it would be easy. What we were doing smacked too much
of democracy. We were asking people to draw up their own constitution
for the future - in a country where only one in six adults (whites only) had
the right to vote. We were going to ask them to speak of freedom and its
meaning - in a country which had never known free speech for the oppressed majority. And finally, we were going to ask them to send delegat
es
to vote for that Charter of the future - in a country which had never known
a freely-elected assembly of the nation's representatives. What we were
doing would be treason to white supremacy, treason to South African apa
rtheid and reaction.
Speak of Freedom
Nevertheless, we did it. Bannings, banishments and proscriptions of our
active workers and propagandists multiplied. Meetings were banned,
gatherings disrupted by armed police, leaflets confiscated, posters torn
down. War was declared on us. But we did it. We issued the 'Call for the
Congress of the People' to every group of people in the country: 'We call
the farmers. Let us speak of the rich lands and the people who are poor.
Let us speak of Freedom!' That was the watchword, and the country rang
with it: 'Let us speak of Freedom!' And at thousands of gatherings, large
and small, at factories and on farms, in suburban squares and at bus stop
s,
in halls and under the sun, our active workers gathered the people togeth
er
to speak of freedom.
As the terror gathered and the persecution grew more intense, the little
slips of paper recording the talk of freedom at all these meetings began
to flow back to campaign headquarters. 'We want freedom to stay in our
houses even when our men are unemployed'. 'We want to be able to leav
e
the farms to work in town'. 'We want seed'. 'We want a fifty-hour week'.
'We want all children at school'. 'We want ...'
The People Decide
For weeks, while the meetings talked, delegates were elected and money
collected for fares, a Congress commission faithfully read, classified, indexed and grouped all the demands, all the thousands upon thousands
of variously sized and variously coloured papers that came through
precariously by hand. Could this be freedom, this claim 'Our location
superintendent must be sacked'? Or 'Foremen must not swear at us'? Th
e
drafting commission sorted them all, grouped them, classified them.
And as the delegates prepared to travel to the Congress of the People,
the substance began to emerge from the mountains of paper. Up to the
very day of the Congress of the People - June 26, 1955 - no one except
the drafting committee saw the finished effort. It was revealed all in one
piece, as a draft for the delegates' decision there at Kliptown in the
Transvaal. Over three and a half thousand delegates made their way thr
ough
21
the police roadblocks, the obstructions, arrests and difficulties, to take par
t
in the discussions on the draft. The substance was read out amidst crash
ing
cheers. This was the reality of freedom: our blueprint for our tomorrows.
We Shall Win With Arms
Here was our Freedom Charter proclaimed on the very day our freedom
fighters had made their own by many epic struggles - June 26, Freedom
Day. We proclaimed it proudly amidst cheers. Nothing could damp the
day. Not the hundreds of police, standing all about the clearing where we
sat. Not the Sten guns all around. Not the deliberate, drawn-out hooting
by hostile loco-men, drowning out our speakers as their trains rolled by
just beyond the speakers' rostrum.
And finally, not even the police raid made in massed force near the end
of the day, with all the thousands of delegates surrounded, forced to give
their names and addresses, surrender their papers, turn out their handba
gs
and their pockets. Even then in the midst of that hostile army the day was
ours. We sang endless freedom songs as they filled their little dossiers.
It was our day, and freedom was just over the hill!
What we were doing was treason to apartheid and race oppression. This
we knew. Within eighteen months, 156 of our most prominent people wou
ld
be on trial for treason. Even now, when we are taking arms in our hands,
we know freedom is there, and that we will see it in our lifetime. Now, we
are stronger than we were, because we know the shape our freedom will
take when we win it. It is in our Freedom Charter.
22
FREEDOM
IN OUR LIFETIME
Article on the Freedom Charter by Nelson Mandela in Liberation,
the newspaper of the Congress Movement, June 1956
The adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People was
widely recognised both at home and abroad as an event of major political
significance in the life of this country. In his message to the Congress of
the People, Chief AJ Lutuli, the banned National President of the ANC,
declared:
'Why will this assembly be significant and unique? Its size, I hope, will
make it unique. But above all its multi-racial nature and its noble objectives will make it unique because it will be the first time in the history
of our multi-racial nation that its people from all walks of life will meet
as equals, irrespective of race, colour and creed, to formulate a freedom
charter for all people in the country'.
The Congress of the People was the most spectacular and moving
demonstration this country has ever seen; through it the people have giv
en
proof that they have the ability and the power to triumph over every obsta
cle
and win the future of their dreams. Alfred Hutchinson, reporting on the
Congress, coined the magnificent title A New World Unfolds... which accurately summarised the political significance of that historic gathering.
The same theme was taken up by Liberation of September last year when
,
in its editorial comment, it predicted that the textbooks of the future would
treat the Kliptown meeting as one of the most important landmarks in our
history. John Hatch, the Public Relations Officer of the British Labour Par
ty, in an article published in the New Statesman and Nation of 28 January
1956, under the title 'The Real South African Opposition', conceded that
some degree of success was achieved by the Congress movement when
it approved the Charter. Finally, in his May Day message published in N
ew
Age Moses Kotane reviewed the political achievements of 1955 and cam
e
to the conclusion that the most outstanding one was the Congress of the
People which produced the world-renowned document - the Freedom
Charter - which serves as a beacon to the Congress Movement and an
inspiration to the people of South Africa.
Few people will deny, therefore, that the adoption of the Charter is an
event of major political significance in the life of this country. The inten-
sive and nationwide political campaigning that preceded it, the 2 844
23
elected delegates of the people that attended, the attention it attracted far
and wide and the favourable comment it continues to receive at home an
d
abroad from people of diverse political opinions and beliefs long after its
adoption, are evidence of this fact.
Never before has any document or conference been so widely acclaimed and discussed by the democratic movement in South Africa. Never
before has any document or conference constituted such a serious and
formidable challenge to the racial and anti-popular policies of the country.
For the first time in the history of our country the democratic forces irrespective of race, ideological conviction, party affiliation or religious
belief have renounced and discarded racialism in all its ramifications,
clearly defined their aims and objects and united in a common programm
e
of action.
The Charter is more than a mere list of demands for democratic reforms.
It is a revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisage
s
cannot be won without breaking up the economic and political set-up of
present South Africa. To win the demands calls for the organisation, laun
ching and development of mass struggles on the widest scale. They will be
won and consolidated only as a result of a nationwide campaign of agitation; through stubborn and determined mass struggles to defeat the
economic and political policies of the Nationalist government; by repulsin
g
onslaughts on the living standards and liberties of the people.
The most vital task facing the democratic movement in this country is
to unleash such struggles and to develop them on the basis of the concre
te
and immediate demands of the people from area to area. Only in this way
can we build a powerful mass movement which is the only guarantee of
ultimate victory in the struggle for democratic reforms. Only in this way
will the democratic movement become a vital instrument for the winning
of the democratic changes set out in the Charter.
Whilst the Charter proclaims democratic changes of a far-reaching nature
,
it is by no means a blueprint for a socialist state but a programme of the
unification of various classes and groupings amongst the people on a
democratic basis. Under socialism the workers hold state power. They an
d
the peasants own the means of production, the land, the factories and th
e
mills. All production is for use and not for profit. The Charter does not con
template such profound economic and political changes. Its declaration
The People Shall Govern! visualises the transfer of power not to any sing
le
social class but to all the people of this country, be they workers, peasant
s,
professional men, or petty-bourgeoisie.
It is true that in demanding the nationalisation of the banks, the gold
mines, and the land, the Charter strikes a fatal blow at the financial and
gold-mining monopolies and farming interests that have for centuries
plundered the country and condemned its people to servitude. But such
a step is imperative because the realisation of the Charter is inconceivabl
e,
in fact impossible, unless and until these monopolies are smashed and t
he
24
national wealth of the country turned over to the people. To destroy these
monopolies means the termination of the exploitation of vast sections of
the populace by mining kings and land barons and there will be a general
rise in the living standards of the people. It is precisely because the Chart
er
offers immense opportunities for an overall improvement in the material
conditions of all classes and groups that it attracts such wide support.
But a mere appraisal of a document, however dynamic its provisions or
content might be, is academic and valueless unless we consciously and
conscientiously create the conditions necessary for its realisation. To be
fruitful such appraisal must be closely linked up with the vital question of
whether we have in South African society the requisite social forces that
are capable of fighting for the realisation of the Charter and whether in
fact these forces are being mobilised and conditioned for this principal tas
k.
The democratic struggle in South Africa is conducted by an alliance of
various classes and political groupings amongst the non-European people supported by white democrats, African, Coloured and Indian workers
and peasants, traders and merchants, students and teachers, doctors an
d
lawyers, and various other classes and groupings; all participate in the st
ruggle against racial inequality and for full democratic rights. It was this allia
nce
which launched the National Day of Protest on 26 June 1950. It was this
alliance which unleashed the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws
on 26 June 1952. It is this same alliance that produced the Freedom Char
ter.
In this alliance the democratic movement has the rudiments of a dynamic
and militant mass movement and, provided the movement exploits the initial advantages on its side at the present moment, immense opportunitie
s
exist for the winning of the demands in the Charter within our lifetime..
The striking feature about the population of our country and its occupational distribution is the numerical preponderance of the non-Europeans
over Europeans and the economic importance of the former group in the
key industries. According to the 1951 population census the population
of the country consists of 2 643 000 Europeans as against 10 005 000 no
nEuropeans, a numerical disparity which is bound to have a decisive bearing on the final outcome of the present struggle to smash the colour-bar.
According to the 1953 Official Year Book of the Union of South Africa the
re
were 46 700 Europeans employed by the gold mines and collieries at the
end of 1952. The number of Africans and Coloureds employed on the mi
nes
for the same period was 452 702, a proportion of one European employe
e
to nearly ten non-European employees. The racial composition of industri
al
employees in establishments with over ten employees during the period
1948-49 was as follows: Europeans 33%; Africans 51.5%; Asiatics 3% an
d
Coloureds 12.5%. According to the same Year Book, during 1952 there
were
297 476 Europeans employed on farms occupied by Europeans and
2 188 712 Africans and 636 065 other non-Europeans.
The figures reveal the preponderant importance of the non-European
people in the economic life of the country and the key task of the
25
movement is to stimulate and draw these forces into the struggle for
democratic reforms. A significant step was taken in Johannesburg on 3
March 1955, when a new trade union centre - the South African Congres
s
of Trade Unions (SACTU) - was formed with delegates from 34 unions wi
th
a total membership of close on 42 000 and when, for the first time in the
history of trade unionism in south Africa, African, Coloured, European an
d
Indian workers united for a fighting policy on the basis of absolute equalit
y.
With 42 000 organised workers on our side and fighting under the flag of
a trade union centre that has completely renounced racialism and committed itself to a militant and uncompromising policy, it remains for us to
redouble our efforts and carry our message to every factory and mill
throughout the country. The message of the new centre is bound to attrac
t
the support of the majority of the workers for they have no interest whatsoever in the country's policy of racial discrimination.
The workers are the principal force upon which the democratic movement should rely, but to repel the savage onslaughts of the Nationalist
government and to develop the fight for democratic rights, it is necessary
that the other classes and groupings be joined. Support and assistance
must
be sought and secured from the 452 702 African and Coloured
mineworkers, from the 2 834 777 non-European labourers employed on
European farms and from the millions of peasants that occupy the so-call
ed
Native Reserves of the Union. The cruel and inhuman manner with which
they are treated, their dreadful poverty and economic misery, make them
potential allies of the democratic movement.
The non-European traders and businessmen are also potential allies, for
in hardly any other country in the world has the ruling class made conditions so extremely difficult for the rise of a non-European middle class as
in South Africa. The law of the country prohibits non-Europeans from own
ing or possessing minerals. Their right to own and occupy land is very m
uch
restricted and circumscribed and it is virtually impossible for them to own
factories and mills. Therefore they are vitally interested in the liberation
of the non-European people, for it is only by destroying white supremacy
and through the emancipation of the non-Europeans that they can prospe
r
and develop as a class. To each of these classes and groups the struggl
e
for democratic rights offers definite advantages. To every one of them the
realisation of the demands embodied in the Charter would open a new
career and vast opportunities for development and prosperity. These are
the social forces whose alliance and unity will enable the democratic mov
ement to vanquish the forces of reaction and win the democratic changes
envisaged in the Charter.
In the present political situation in South Africa when the Nationalist
government has gone all out to smash the people's political organisation
and the trade union movement through the Suppression of Communism
Act and its anti-trade union legislation, it becomes important to call upon
and to stimulate every class to wage its own battles. It becomes even mo
re
26
important that all democratic forces be united and the opportunities for
such a united front are growing every day. On 3 March 1955 a non-colour
bar trade union centre is formed. On June 26 the same year in the most
spectacular and moving demonstration this country has ever seen, 2 844
delegates of the people adopt the Charter, and four months thereafter mo
re
than 1 000 women of all races stage a protest march to put their demand
s
to the government - all this in the course of one year.
The rise of the Congress movement and the powerful impact it exerts
on the political scene in the country is due precisely to the fact that it has
consistently followed and acted on the vital policy of democratic unity. It
is precisely because of the same reason that the Congress movement is
rapidly becoming the real voice of South Africa. If this united front is
strengthened and developed the Freedom Charter will be transformed int
o
a living instrument and we shall vanquish all opposition and win the Sout
h
Africa of our dreams during our lifetime.
Delegates arriving at the Congress of the People.
27
DOES THE FREEDOM CHARTER
MEAN SOCIALISM?
In the course of the campaign to win a million
signatures for the Freedom Charter, South Africans of
all races and classes are discussing the aims and
objects of the Charter and its implications.
This article appeared in New Age on November 17th, 1957.
The Freedom Charter, adopted four months ago at the Congress of the P
eople, is a stirring document, embodying all the deepest and most pressing
needs of the people and charting a new course for a free South Africa. T
he
programme is not a sectarian one, the property of any single political party or movement. In its phrases and demands the Charter is as old as the
people's struggle in South Africa. Its calls for security, an end to discrimin
ation, for work, housing and education re-echo the demands of the many
hard battles the people have waged on all these fronts.
Yet the Charter is unique. It differs from all previous political documents
of the liberatory movements in its completeness and all-embracing nature
.
Above all, it not only exposes all that is rotten, decaying and oppressive
in the present system, but it unfolds the vision and the shape of the new
life that will replace it.
The Charter is unique, too, in that it was adopted not at some restricted
leaders' or delegates' conference, but by the people themselves after ove
r
a year of prolonged and intensive discussion. The Charter thus, is of the
people and belongs to them.
Yet the Charter is more than a document. It is a political programme, and
political programmes which are not a guide to action are like a paralysed
limb. The people have entrusted the Charter to their organisations who
had the courage to call into being the Congress of the People, and a grea
t
campaign is now under way to get the Charter endorsed with a million
signatures.
Enthusiasm for the Charter must be born not of blind obedience to its
aims, but of the understanding that, taken together, these aims are the on
ly possible way out of the present impasse and towards the formation of
a people's government founded on justice and equality.
28
Doubts
Everywhere the people have received the Charter with enthusiasm. Yet,
in some quarters there have been doubts expressed about aspects of the
Charter. Some of our most respected leaders have expressed genuine
misgivings about that section of the Charter which reads:
'The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth. The national wealth
of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to
the people. The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a
whole. All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people. All people shall have equal rights to trade where
they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and
professions'.
The Charter does not propose merely a reform of the present system, a
patching-up of its worst evils, an amelioration of some of its conditions. T
his
Charter proclaims that only a complete change of state form can result in
the people achieving their aims. Some groups, like the Liberals, have the
illusion that real democracy can be achieved within the existing constitutional set-up. They believe that the repeal of certain laws on the statute
book is sufficient. Such a purely reformist attitude is unrealistic and takes
no note of history.
Every state form has been moulded to serve a particular set-up and
through the centuries, as one order made way for another, the emergent
ruling group had to erect quite new state forms to consolidate its power.
It had to do more than that. It had to break the stranglehold which the old
regime had on the economy of the country and, through the economy, on
the state apparatus. It would, for instance, have been impossible to do a
way
with serfdom and feudal social relations without breaking the economic
power of the land barons.
The Colour Bor
Why the system of colour discrimination in South Africa? Is it some natura
l
inhumanity of Whites towards Non-Whites? Is it just re-education in the spi
rit
of justice, and a change of heart that is needed among the Whites?
No. The system of White supremacy has its roots in the cheap labour ne
ed
of the major economic groups of the country. South Africa's economy is
dominated by giant monopolies in the gold mining industry linked with
big financial and farming interests, whose tentacles reach also into secon
dary industry. These groups have been responsible for the Reserve system
,
migratory labour, the low wage policy. These groups own and control the
national wealth of our country and determine the basic structure of the S
outh
African state. It would be a dream to pretend that the changes of the Char
ter
could be realisable if their economic grip were not loosened. Super-profit
s
are incompatible with a sharing by the people in the wealth of the
29
country. Migratory labour and the compound system cannot go hand in
hand with the right of the worker to receive equal pay for equal work, his
right to organise in trade unions, and so on.
There is another aspect. The mere acknowledgement in a phrase that
the people shall have the right to own the land and to manufacture is of
little value. The right to do these things is one thing: the opportunity is
another. Over 300 years the system of White supremacy has resulted in
the concentration of wealth in the hands of the present power group. To
allow this wealth to remain in the hands of the monopolies is to condone
the past, to perpetuate the lower economic status of the Non-Europeans.
First Tasks
Immediately after political changes have resulted in the establishment of
the sort of government envisaged by the Charter, those in power will be
faced with the major problem of raising the economic status of the NonEuropean and of doing away with the basic inequality of wealth which is
part and parcel of the present system. White supremacy is not only an
ideological catchphrase. In terms of the real lives of the mass of the peop
le
it has resulted in the accumulation of the basic wealth of the land in the
hands of a small section of the White caste. As long as this balance rema
ins
undisturbed, the inferior status of the Non-European cannot be radically
altered.
If tomorrow every discriminatory law on the statute book were repealed, but the mineral wealth, monopoly industry and financial empires were
not transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole, the system of
White superiority would in its basic essential be perpetuated for many
generations. The wealth of South Africa cannot be created by law. It is th
ere.
If it is left in the hands of the present dominant groups the new state will,
with a great deal of justification, be able to say it cannot 'afford' to provide
education, to do away with slum conditions, and so on.
Not Socialism
Some are concerned that this solution is in advance of what should be th
e
programme of a national liberatory struggle and that it might commit the
national movements to a socialist aim.
Whatever one's views might be as to the desirability of establishing a
socialist system in South Africa, the immediate aim of the liberatory move
ment is not and cannot be the establishment of socialism.
Does it therefore follow that the liberatory movement must automatically reject any part of a programme which happens to coincide with a sec-
tion of that of socialists? If this were so then 'votes for all' and all the othe
r
basic aims of the liberatory movement would have to be scrapped. It is
obvious that the sole test for the acceptability of an aim must be: Is it
possible to implement the programme without the inclusion of this aim?
In any event, socialism and the nationalisation of the basic wealth of a
30
country are not synonymous terms. In South Africa today the railways are
nationalised and serve the interests of the dominant group.
The Charter does not advocate the abolition of private enterprise, nor
is it suggested that all industries be nationalised or that all trade be controlled by the state.
'Allpeople shall have the right to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions', says the Charter. The
right to do these things would remain a dead letter without the restoration
of the basic wealth of the country to the people, and without that the
building of a democratic state is inconceivable.
f IHH ton
UMTU THt
FAC TORU
V. c i ' ^
31
SOUTH AFRICA FREEDOM DAY
A call to all revolutionary forces to rally behind
the struggle against fascist tyranny in South
Africa.
By ANC President O R Tambo, June 1967
Once more this year we call upon people of Africa and the world to commemorate June 26, the National Day of the oppressed and struggling peo
ple
of South Africa: a day observed by the liberation forces under the leadership of the ANC as an occasion for rededication to the revolutionary strug
gle to wipe away the scourge of racialism, fascist tyranny and imperialism
.
June 26, a symbol of the unshakeable determination of the African peopl
e
and their allies to seize power and banish oppression and exploitation, h
as
its roots in the history of the long struggle of our people against the violen
t
and brutal repression of white minority rule. It is the day of the oppressed
that was born in the crucible of bitter and fierce resistance.
Day of Rededication
June 26 is a day of rededication to the sacred cause of liberating our
motherland. On this day our people solemnly pledge themselves to aven
ge
the martyred heroes who gave their lives to redeem the national independence and human dignity of the African, and the gallant sons and
daughters of our land who, with unsurpassed courage and selflessness,
have
endured persecution and torture at the hands of ruthless racists.
On June 26 hundreds of thousands of our people, led by the ANC, embarked on militant mass actions which shook the citadel of white tyranny
and forced a frightened fascist minority to take cover behind batons, bulle
ts
and military tanks. But the flames of revolutionary struggle and the ardour
of resistance have grown bigger and stronger with every new instrument
of force and violence produced and used against the people by the enem
ies
of freedom, peace and harmony in our country. June 26 is our people's u
nchallengeable assertion that South Africa shall be free.
History of Massacres
To understand the value and significance of June 26 and appreciate its
meaning to millions of oppressed Africans in South Africa, it is necessary to rec
all
that the history of white rule in South Africa is a history of rule by force,
violence and massacres. There was shooting and killing of Africans durin
g
the 1919 Anti-Pass Campaign, during the strike by 80 000
32
Rand African Miners and the Port Elizabeth African Workers' Strike in 19
20.
In 1921 the notorious Bulhoek Massacre took place when 163 Africans w
ere
killed and 130 wounded. The Bondelswart Massacre of 1922 saw 100 pe
ople
shot dead and hundreds wounded. People were killed during the Durban
beer boycott in 1929, and at Potchefstroom and Durban during the 1930
Anti-Pass Campaign. There were killings at Worcester in 1930, Vereeniging in 1938, and during the Rand Africans Miners' Strike in 1946.
White fascist terror took the reigns of government in 1948 and an era of
intensified tyranny and brutal repression started. The introduction of the
Unlawful Organisations Bill (later renamed the Suppression of Communi
sm
Act) was followed by the shooting down of 18 Africans during May Day
demonstrations in Johannesburg on May 1, 1950.
Countrywide Stoppage
In the same year the ANC called on the African and all other oppressed
people and democrats of South Africa to join in unity and solidarity on Ju
ne
26 in a national stoppage of work - which, for the African, was an act of
mass defiance of the law - to honour the victims of decades of white
violence and massacres and to assert their resolve to pursue the struggle
for freedom despite brutal repression.
In their hundreds of thousands, the people responded to the call and
thus June 26 came to be accepted and recognised as our National Day,
symbolising the nature and objectives of our struggle for freedom, and pr
oviding the occasion for rededication to its noble cause.
There are many milestones along the path of struggle that followed June
26 1950 - a path strewn with the bodies of our martyred and maimed com
patriots. A few of these milestones are here recalled.
In 1952, determined to wage relentless resistance against fascist rule, th
e
ANC, acting in close co-operation with the South African Indian Congress
,
galvanised the masses into defiance of apartheid legislation, when, from
June 26 to December, more than 8 500 freedom fighters defied the unjust
and inhuman laws of South Africa and served jail sentences. This was th
e
finest hour in the development of national political awareness among our
people. It brought panic and consternation to the white oppressors and
their imperialist allies, and resulted in a spate of draconian legislation
designed to contain the revolutionary upsurge of the people.
Freedom Charter Adopted
But three years later, on June 26 1955, a heroic and epoch-making Congress of the People was convened in the face of intimidation and victimis
ation by the racist government and its police force. From every comer of
South Africa delegates and representatives of the people assembled at
Kliptown, and despite harassment and constant provocation by hundreds
of heavily armed police, they drew up a Freedom Charter, which was a
blueprint of the political, economic and social structure that the people
33
of South Africa demanded. The Freedom Charter, adopted on June 26 a
nd
acclaimed by freedom-loving people throughout the world as an historic
document, became the basis of a charge of high treason against 156 lea
ders
of the liberation movement arrested in 1956; some of these stood trial for
five years. In anger the people rose in militant action to assert the deman
ds
of the Freedom Charter. The political struggle raged more fiercely and Ju
ne
26 assumed an ever-increasing significance for the South African people.
A Shining Thread
It will be seen that in the struggles launched on June 26, there is a shinin
g
thread which speaks of a determination to win, of dedication to a national
cause and to the principle of unity among the ranks of the oppressed. Pe
ace
and freedom cannot be achieved unless they flow from a relentless struggle based on a revolutionary programme. The Freedom Charter is a programme which bewildered the oppressors and exploiters. It compelled
them to seek and use, from the ranks of the oppressed people, those self
ish
and treacherous elements who are concerned only with their personal wel
fare.
Notwithstanding these imperialist tactics, June 26 has grown into an International Day of Solidarity with the cause of the oppressed people of S
outh
Africa. It has been adopted and is observed by the workers and peoples
of Africa, Asia and Latin America, by opponents of racism and white minor
ity rule, and by progressives and democrats, comprising millions of people
in many parts of the world.
Armed Struggles
This year, June 26 is of special significance for all opponents of coloniali
sm
and white minority rule in Southern Africa. In Mozambique, the allies of
fascist South Africa are suffering serious reverses from FRELIMO forces.
In Angola, the Portuguese are straining their resources to hold the march
of the MPLA militants. The Ian Smith regime, despite the British government's guarantees against the use of force, is in the throes of a rising arm
ed struggle. SWAPO forces have entered South West Africa and drawn
blood from the South African racists.
The African revolution has rolled down to South Africa's doorstep. It cannot be too long before the flames of freedom sweep in to consume the evi
l
forces that have plagued our country for centuries.
Certainly, our struggle will be hard and bitter. But certainly also, the sand
s
of time are running out for the racists and oppressors, and each year Jun
e
26 heralds the approaching hour of reckoning. To hasten that hour, the
ANC
summons any who have strayed away from the path of revolution to retur
n
to the fold. We call upon all our people in and outside South Africa, and
on all our friends and supporters throughout the world to rally behind the
struggle for liberation led by the African National Congress in South Africa
.
That is the call of June 26.
(Editorial Note; None of the 156 on trial for high treason were convicted)
34
All over South Africa the writing is on the wall.
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35
THE HISTORICAL INJUSTICE
Paper delivered by Thabo Mbeki,
member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC,
in Ottawa, Canada, 1978
Modem political science recognises the fact that social systems are foun
ded
on definite historical origins. If the saying 'out of nothing, nothing comes'
is true, then it must follow that the future is formed and derives its first impulse in the womb of the present. All societies therefore necessarily bear
the imprint, the birthmarks, of their own past. Whether to a greater or less
er
extent depends on a whole concatentation of factors, both internal and ex
ternal to each particular society.
The latter consideration has often led many observers of the process of
social development to over-emphasise the particularity of each society, to
deny that this social development is in any way reducible to a science
founded on observable facts, a science which has general laws, definitio
ns
and categories. In this way the relative is credited with the features of the
absolute. Each society is thus presented as unique, its birth and development products of accidental collisions and inter-connections and therefor
e
incapable of scientific prediction and cognition.
We consider this position constitutes a dereliction of intellectual duty.
Those of us who claim to be revolutionaries obviously cannot proceed in
this manner. Indeed we must resist all attempts to persuade us that our
future lies in the hands of an ungovernable fate. For the imperative of our
epoch has charged us with the task of transforming ourselves from the st
atus
of objects of history to that of masters of history. We must, by liberating
ourselves, make our own history. Such a process by its nature imposes o
n
the activist the necessity to plan and therefore requires the ability to
measure cause and effect: the necessity to strike in correct directions an
d
hence the requirement to distinguish between essence and phenomenon
;
the necessity to move millions of people as one man to actual victory and
consequently the development of the skill of combining the necessary an
d
the possible.
All this becomes attainable if we have succeeded to discover the
regularities of social development, if we have studied our own society
critically and in depth to discover the interconnections, the dynamic links
that knit together and give direction to what might at first appear to be a
chaos of facts, incidents and personalities thrown up by this particular soc
iety. For, to repeat, out of nothing, nothing comes.
36
Therefore, to eliminate the speculative element as much as possible whe
n
talking about the policies of a new South Africa, it is necessary to examin
e
the principal feature of the predecessor of that future reality, namely,
present-day South Africa. But again, a penetrating understanding of our
country today requires also that we look at its past. We hasten to assure
you that we shall not drown you in a plethora of historical detail.
Rise of Capitalism and Colonial Expansion
The first category of social science that we want to use tonight is that of
class. To understand South Africa we must appreciate the fact and fix it
firmly in our minds that here we are dealing with a class society. In South
Africa the capitalists, the bourgeoisie are the dominant class. Therefore
the state, other forms of social organisation and the 'official' ideas are con
ditioned by this one fact of the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. It would be
therefore true to say that in its essential features South Africa conforms t
o
other societies where this class feature is dominant.
Yet a cursory comparative glance around the world would seem to suggest that such a statement is hardly of any use in helping us to understan
d
the seemingly unique reality of apartheid South Africa. More, and perhap
s
better, explanation is called for. We return, therefore, to the category, a
class society, as well as step back into history.
The landing of the employees of the Dutch East India Company at the
Cape of Good Hope 326 years ago, in 1652, represented in embryo the
emergence of class society in our country. And that class society was
bourgeois society in its infancy. The settlers of 1652 were brought to Sou
th
Africa by the dictates of that brutal period of the birth of the capitalist clas
s
which has been characterised as the stage of the primitive accumulation
of capital.
Of this stage Marx wrote:
'The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in the mines of the aboriginal population, the
beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning
of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation'.'1'
'The transformation of the individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the
many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great
mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence and fro
m
the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass
of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises
a series of forcible methods ... The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless vandalism, and under the
stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest,
the most meanly odious',® so wrote Marx.
37
Such indeed was the slave trade. (Such also, incidentally, the eviction of
the Scottish Highland peasants, many of whom came to settle here in
Canada - vandalism of the most merciless kind). Such indeed was the ex
propriation of the African peasantry. It should therefore come as no surprise that six years after the arrival of the Dutch settlers, in 1658, the first
group of slaves arrived in the Cape Colony. In 1806, when England seize
d
the Cape Colony from Holland by force of arms, there were 30 000 slave
s
in the Colony as against 26 000 settlers. There were also another 20 000
'free
Coloured, Nama and Khoi in white employ
Equally, it should come as no surprise that these 20 000 African wageeamers had been compelled into this position by the process, described
by Marx and other historians of the period, as the 'expropriation of the gre
at
mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence and fro
m
the means of labour ...' Described as 'free' in relation to the 30 000 slaves
in the Colony, they were also 'free' in so far as they had been liberated
by force of arms, disease and starvation from their status as independent
producers with their own hunting, grazing and arable land, their livestock
and their working implements.
Writing of a British Governor-General in India, Marx says:
'His favourites received contracts under conditions whereby they,
cleverer than the alchemists, made gold out of nothing. Great fortunes
sprang up like mushrooms in a day; primitive accumulation went on
without the advance of a shilling'.
And there we have the reason why Europe carried out this early accumul
ation at home and abroad with such merciless enthusiasm and passion because the process assured men of property stupendous and immediat
e
profit. Brought up in this European hothouse of rapine, the settlers in Sou
th
Africa could not but continue this process in their colony. The result was
that when England abolished the slave trade in 1834, nearly two centurie
s
after the arrival of the first batch of slaves, the descendants of the original
colonists rebelled against this decision. Judging themselves too weak to
impose slavery by arms, the Boers resolved to take themselves out of the
area of British jurisdiction. Thus began the so-called Great Trek of the Bo
ers
into the interior of our country. Of course, all along, the Boers were determined that again they would have to seize our land and livestock and
enslave our people.
We see, therefore, that the methods and practices of primitive accumulation which represented a transitional phase in the development of capital
in Europe, assumed permanence in the South African economy and lifest
yle
of the Boers. They acquired a fixity characteristic of feudal society, legitim
ised by the use of force and sanctified by a supposedly Calvinist Christianit
y.
The South African settlers of 1652 had themselves been the expropriated
of Europe. But, as in America, here in Canada, in Australia and elsewher
e,
after a little while they were able to re-establish themselves as independent producers, acquiring land in the manner we have described, on the
38
basis of the expropriation of our people, despite the most fierce resistanc
e
of the indigenous people. It was exactly the blissful regaining of their stat
us
as masters of their own house, their re-emergence as independent producers, that froze the Boer community at a particular moment of historic
time and thereby guaranteed their regression.
Thrown up by the birth of a higher social system, they reverted precisely
to that natural economy which capital was so vengefully breaking up. But
capital had already taught them that in the pursuit of a better life, everythi
ng,
including murder, was permissible and legitimate.
A natural economy presupposes the absence of accumulation, 'consistin
g
of the petty dealings of peasants and craftsmen in the small market town,
where industry is carried on for the subsistence of the household and the
consumption of wealth follows hard upon the production of it, and where
commerce and finance are occasional incidents, rather than the forces
which keep the whole system in motion'.® Thus it is the direct opposite
of a capitalist economy even when the latter is at its primitive stage of
accumulation.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the fate that befell Calvinist theology.
Tawney has said that:
'Calvinism was an active and radical force ... (Its adherents were) disposed neither to idealise the patriarchal virtues of the peasant community, nor to regard with suspicion the mere fact of capitalist enterprise in
commerce and finance ... Calvinism was largely an urban movement
... (its teachings were directed primarily) to the classes engaged in trade
and industry, who formed the most modem and progressive elements
in the life of the age'.(6)
When they reverted to a patriarchal economy, the Boers therefore abandoned all that was dynamic and revolutionary in the formation of bourgeo
is
society and transmuted the rest into something stultified and reactionary.
The Boers had brought this Calvinism with them from Holland and were
joined later by the Calvinist French Huguenots. But when they grafted thi
s
eminently bourgeois theology onto their patriarchal economy, they in fact
transformed its content into a species of Lutheranism, which was essentially a theological school which sought to idealise feudalism and save it
from destmction by the capitalist mode of production which was springing up all around it. From Calvinism the Boers took the doctrine of
predestination and perverted it.
For Calvin, the chosen of God were those who survived the jungle of
capitalist enterprise in industry and trade and emerged as successful me
n
of business, without regard to race or nationality. In the patriarchal econ
omy
this was transmuted to read: the chosen of God are those who are white.
For his part Luther had said: 'An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, others serfs, some rulers, others
subjects'.<7) Racism, today so much part of South African reality, constituted a justification, an attempt to rationalise, to make acceptable the
39
enslavement and expropriation of the black people by the white. In Boer
society and in the end among almost all the whites, racism as an ideolog
y
acquired the attributes of a psychological fixation, with the characteristic
of fixated behaviour that an ineluctably irrational perception of a particular
set of relationships coexists with and distorts the perception of all other
sets of relationships. In the circumstance that, in any case, ideological for
mations bear a complex rather than a simple relationship with the materia
l
world, generating a momentum which carries them beyond the material
conditions that created them, we could expect that this racism would in
time present itself as an autonomous force, God-given or nature-given, a
s
an incontrovertible condition of human existence.
To go back to Calvin, where his theology has sanctified individualism
to detach the bourgeoisie from the narrow and rigid world of feudalism
and thrown them, unhampered by old prejudices, into the world market,
the Boers sang praises to a stultified individualism even narrower than th
at
of the feudal epoch, an individualism which drew its strength from the
economic self-sufficiency of each Boer family, the isolation of the
homesteads one from another and the isolation of the whole community
from the rest of the world; an individualism which became truly itself and
complete only to the extent that it despised and set itself in contrast to
everything that was black; an individualism therefore which was and is
characterised by a rampant racism.
British Involvement
British capital subdued this petrified and arrogant individualism during the
Anglo-Boer War. In 1910 Boer and Briton entered into a social contract in
which the Briton undertook to help ease the Boer out of the Dark Ages wh
ile
promising to respect his traditions. For his part, the Boer pledged not to
resist the advance and domination of British capital. Between them, Boer
and Briton agreed that they would share political power and, finally, that
the indigenous African population would not be party to this contract but
would be kept under the domination and at the disposal of the signatories
,
to be used by them in whatever manner they saw fit.
There were therefore written into this agreement, the so-called Act of
Union of 1910, the continuation of the methods and practices of exploitation characteristic of primitive accumulation of capital which had remained fossilised in the Boer economy but which British capital had outgrown,
certainly in Britain.
Why did the British ruling class, having won the war against the Volksraa
d,
thus regress?
One reason of course is that we are here dealing with the post 1885 Berli
n
Conference period. It could therefore be argued that the predominant colonialist practices and attitudes of the time made it natural and inevitable
that the British ruling class would do in South Africa what it was doing in
other colonies. Yet this explanation would not be complete. For Britain ha
d
40
maintained an uninterrupted colonial hold on South Africa, to one extent
or another, since 1806. The decisive point to bring to the fore is that Briti
sh
capital, throughout the one hundred years before 1910, had itself, in Sout
h
Africa, clung tenaciously to the methods and practices of primitive accumulation. Thus while in 1807 the British administration prohibited the i
mportation of slaves into the Cape Colony, in 1909 it introduced a Vagranc
y
Act directed at the Khoi people.® Under this law, all Khoi people not in
the employ of a white person were declared vagrants. Vagrancy was ma
de
an offence. To prove that one was not a vagrant one had to produce a pa
ss.
To get the pass you had to enter into a written labour contract with a whit
e
employer.
This measure was introduced to meet the labour short-fall created by the
non-importation of slaves. It was therefore used to drive those Khoi people who still maintained an independent existence off the land, to turn th
em
into permanent wage earners and to create the means to direct this labou
r
where it was needed.
In the end it was the British armies which defeated the African people,
the British who drove us off our lands, broke up the natural economy and
social systems of the indigenous people. It was they who imposed taxes
on the African peasants and, starting with the Masters and Servants' Act
of 1856, laid down the labour laws which govern the black worker in Sout
h
Africa today.
In Europe the economic freedom of the worker to hire himself out freely to the highest bidder, which came with and was part of the bourgeois
revolution, was of course connected with, accompanied and enhanced by
the political freedom of the worker to represent himself in matters of state
through the vote, itself an integral part of the victory of the bourgeoisie
over feudal society. In South Africa this was not to be. Here, the capitalist
inherited the rights of the feudal lord and appropriated to himself the right
to determine where, when, at what price and under what conditions the
African shall sell his labour power to the capitalist. He also appropriated
to himself the right to decide 'what is good for the native'.
It is therefore clear that British capital in South Africa differed from the
Boer patriarchal economy with relation to primitive accumulation in two
major respects. The first of these was that it outgrew chattel slavery and
therefore abolished it. The second that, as capital, its aim continued to be
that of greater and greater accumulation, through the pursuit of maximum
profit. It was therefore inevitable that British capital would be all that more
thorough in the expropriation of the African peasant, all that more brutal
in the exploitation of African labour, more scientific and less wasteful.
The historic compromise between the British bourgeoisie and the Boer
peasantry represented hence not an historical aberration but the continu
ed
pursuit of maximum profit in conditions of absolute freedom for capital to
pursue its inherent purposes. British capital had, at other times and in oth
er
cirucmstances, made other compromises. One of the most important of
41
these was undoubtedly that made with the British working class. In its str
uggle against its feudal predecessors, the British bourgeoisie had called up
on
and received the support of the working people. It therefore had to take
cognisance of the fact that its political victory did not belong to it alone.
It further took note of the fact that the denial of political freedoms to its
ally while claiming them as a natural right for itself posed the danger that
these working masses would pass beyond the struggle against the feudal
lords and take on the bourgeoisie itself.
While convincing the workers of the sacredness of private property,
especially its own bourgeois property, it nevertheless conceded them thei
r
political democracy. Thereby and mainly because of this concession, it
destroyed the possibility for capital to continue using primitive methods
of accumulation within Britain.
Capital within South Africa never had to contend with such a situation
Historically, it owes the working class nothing and has therefore concede
d
to it nothing (excepting of course the white workers, about whom later).
It is clear that during the war with the so-called Boer republics, the British
ruling class consciously avoided putting itself in a state of indebtedness
to the black people. For instance, in January 1901 Lord Milner, the British
High Commissioner 'told a Coloured deputation ... that he could not accept their offer to take up arms against the republican forces' .<9) The s
ame
thing happened when another Boer rebellion had to be put down in 1914.
That the bourgeoisie was aware that the denial of democratic rights to
the workers was in the interests of capitalism was evident when indentur
ed
labour was imported from China after the Anglo-Boer war. Then, the mine
bosses stated that 'a big body of enfranchised white workers would simply hold the government of the country in the hollow of their hand' and 'mo
re
or less dictate not only on the question of wages, but also on political
questions'.'[l0)
Translating the advantages of black worker disenfranchisement into cash
,
the Chamber of Mines stated in its 1910 Annual Report that it 'viewed the
native purely as a machine, requiring a certain amount of fuel'. It decreed
accordingly that the diet of the African miners living in the mine compoun
ds
should be determined in terms of the formula 'the minimum amount of foo
d
which will give the maximum amount of work'.(11)
Of the bourgeois countries, South Africa is unique to the extent that profit maximisation is the overt, unhidden and principal objective of state
policy, and can therefore be regarded with respect to this characteristic
as an almost perfect model of capitalism cleansed of everything that is
superfluous to its essential characterisation; a model which displays to all
,
in their true nakedness, the inner motive forces of this social system and
its fundamental inter-connections. The position that black people occupy
in this model can be defined as follows:
a) They are the producers of wealth;
b) They produce this wealth not for their own benefit but for its
42
appropriation by the white population; and
c) They are permitted to consume part of this wealth, but only that
proportion which will 'give the maximum amount of work on a
continuing basis'.
This may sound harsh and anti-human but it characterises 'pure capitalism
'.
Let us see for instance what Marcuse in his studies of Max Weber had to
say:
'The 'formally most rational' mode of capital accounting is the one into
which man and his 'purposes' enter only as variables in the calculation
of the chances of gain and profit. In this formal rationality, mathematimisa
tion is carried to the point of the calculus with the real negation of life
itself,..'<12)
If this sounds too abstract, the white South African Member of Parliament
,
GF Froneman translates it into the concrete when he says:
'(Within white society, Africans) are only supplying a commodity, the
commodity of labour... It is labour we are importing (into the white areas)
and not labourers as individuals ...'(13)
Froneman went on to say that the numbers of Africans to be found in socalled white areas therefore made no difference to the composition of Soc
iety - society with a capital S - precisely because the African is not an individual, comparable to a white individual. Rather, he is a repository of th
e
commodity of labour power, which can and must be quantified in a profit
and loss account to the point of the very 'negation of life itself'. In that ver
y
real sense the African, therefore, belongs to the category of commodities
to an equal extent as gold, diamonds and any other commodity you care
to mention, to be bought and sold, hoarded and even destroyed depending exclusively on the state of the market.
The denial of the humanity of the slave which occurred during the period
of primitive accumulation of capital is therefore repeated here, but at a
higher and more rational level. That rationality demands that to ensure m
aximum profit that portion of the national wealth which accrues to the black
people as consumers should be kept to the barest minimum.
Consequently, the real wages of the African miners are today lower than
they were in 1911.<14) Note also the almost total absence of social secur
ity
benefits for the African people. To provide these benefits would be to increase the cost of production of the producers and conversely to
decrease capital's share of the national cake.
It might be argued that our thesis might begin to collapse when we tackle
the question of the white workers.
Appearance would have it that in maintaining a white labour aristocracy,
capital is behaving in a most irrational fashion, that capital itself has bec
ome
so impregnated with racial prejudice that it cannot seek to extract maximum profit from a white worker. Yet we must bear in mind that the capital
ist
class does not view itself solely as the appropriator of wealth in contradistinction to our being the producers. The capitalist class is also heavi
ly burdened with matters of state administration. It has taken on itself the
43
task of ruling our country. As early as November 1899 Lord Milner said:
'The ultimate end (of British policy) is a self-governing white community,
supported by well-treated and justly-governed black labour from Cape
Town to Zambesi (sic)'.<15) A principal pre-occupation of this self-govern
ing
community must, therefore, be to ensure that the 'well-treated and justlygoverned' do not one day rise up and transform themselves also into a sel
fgoverning community. From the very beginning, British capital knew that
it had to face this possiblity and that if it fought without any allies it would
lose in such a confrontation. The historic compromise of 1910 has therefo
re
this significance: that in granting the vanquished Boer equal political and
social status with the English victor, it imposed on both the duty to defend
the status quo against especially those whom that status quo defined as
the dominated. The capitalist class, to whom everything has a cash value
,
has never considered moral incentives as very dependable. As part of th
e
arrangement it therefore decided that material incentives must play a pro
minent part. It consequently bought out the whole white population. It offered a price to the white workers and the Afrikaner farmers in exchange
for an undertaking that they would shed their blood in defence of capital.
Both worker and farmer, like Faustus, took the devil's offering and, like
Faustus, they will have to pay on the appointed day. The workers took th
e
offering in monthly cash grants and reserved jobs. The farmers took their
share by having black labour, including and especially farm labour,
directed to the farms. They also took it in the form of huge subsidies and
loans to help them maintain a 'civilised standard of living'.
The indebtedness of these farmers to the profit-making bourgeois in 1966
was equal to $ 11/4 billion, amounting to nearly 12% of the gross national
product.<l6) In 1947 a commission of the Dutch Reformed Church included in its report the prophetic words: 'In the country one feels dependent
on God; in the towns on men, such as one's employer'.07'
In the struggle that marks the growing onslaught of the black producers
on the society of parasites, the white worker will have to pay for that
dependence on the employer-industrialist, the white farmer for that
dependence on the employer-creditor. The God of Calvin is a jealous God
,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third generation
of those who hate him: the God of Capital will, after all, have his pound
of flesh!
Engels wrote in 1895 that:
'When Bismarck found himself compelled to introduce (universal) franchise as the only means of interesting the mass of the people in his plans
,
our workers immediately took it in earnest and sent August Bebel to the
first constituent Reichstag. And from that day on they have used the franchise in a way which has paid them a thousandfold and has served as
a model to the workers of all countries. The franchise has been ...
transformed by them from a means of deception, which it was before,
into an instrument of emancipation ... And so it happened that the
44
bourgeoisie and the government came to be much more afraid of the
legal than the illegal action of the workers' party, of the result of elections than those of rebellion ... Of course, our comrades do not thereby,
in the least, renounce their right to revolution. The right to revolution
is, after all, the only really "historical right", the only right on which all
modern states without exception rest ...,(18)
Yet it came to pass that in large measure the working class of western
Europe and North America did in fact, for some time anyway, renounce
its right to revolution. Some of the mass parties of the workers became
parties for Order and Reform. And to the extent that bourgeois Law and
Order was the basis on which the proletariat founded its trade unions and
secured for itself higher wages, better working conditions and the right
to strike, this was an inevitable outcome. That bourgeois Law and Order
also gave the proletariat the right to form its own political party and the
right to install that party in power, all within the legal framework of
bourgeois democracy.
In the work from which we have just quoted Engels said:
'The irony of world history turns everything upside down. The Parties (of the property-owning class)... are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly - legality is the
death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy
cheeks and look like life eternal ... (There) is nothing left for them to
do but themselves break through this fatal legality'.0'
The condition of the black workers of South Africa, the place in society
allocated to us by the capitalist class, demands that we must assert our ri
ght
to revolution. Capital in its South African mould turns things right side up
again. We are perishing under the legal conditions created by the
bourgeois whereas they, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy
cheeks and look like life eternal. We have no choice but to break down
this fatal legality.
For the burden of our argument has been exactly this, that in the totality
of social relations that describe the apartheid system, we have place only
and exclusively in so far as we are the 'ragged trousered philanthropists'
- the exploited producers. We are otherwise the outsiders, the excluded
- on our own continent, in our own country!
In this context, take the Bantustan programme. In its objectives stated
by the creators of this policy, the black producers will have the right to
be complete human beings only in these areas which have been set asid
e
as our so-called homelands. Otherwise, when we enter so-called white
South Africa, we have the following dramatis personae: 'He who (is the)
moneyowner strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour power
follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, inten
t
on business; the other timid and holding back, like one who is bringing
his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but - a hiding.,(20)
The Bantustan policy is therefore not a deus ex machina, a contrived and
45
inartistic solution of a difficulty in the drama of South African life. Rather,
it is but the legal codification, the pure representation in juridical form,
of the centuries-old socio-economic reality of the alienation of the black
producer from the society which he daily produces and reproduces.
At the level of abstraction, there are two alternatives out of this condition available to the black workers. One of these is to cut the umbilical co
rd
that ties us to bourgeois South Africa, for us to cease to be producers on
somebody else's account. What would then happen? We could then join
the demi-monde of thieves and murderers, the pimps and prostitutes and,
by becoming true and complete outcasts, recast ourselves in the parasitic
model of our bourgeois progenitor, outside the bounds of bourgeois legali
ty. Such an alternative is obviously absurd. The racist regime is on the ot
her
hand pushing us into the Bantustans. This constitutes a death sentence f
or
thousands of our people. For South Africa's land policy, of which the Bantustans are the historical outcome, is founded precisely on the land
dispossession of the African people which ensures that hunger compels
us to bring our own hides to market.
The second, and in fact, the only historically justifiable and inevitable
alternative is that we cling very firmly to our position as producers, that
we hoist the bourgeoisie with its own petard.
The irony of the South African situation is that exactly because capital
permits us to enter the city, to pass through the sacred portals of a white
church, and set foot in the even more sacred sanctuary of madame's
bedroom, but only as workers, capital thereby indicates to us daily that
it is in fact our labour that makes the city to live, that gives voice to the
predikant, the preacher and provides the necessary conditions for procre
ation. Since then we are, in a very real sense, the creators of society, what
remains for us is to insist and ensure that that society is made in our ima
ge
and that we have dominion over it. In as much as the producer and the
parasite who feeds on the producer represent antithetical forces, the one
working, the other idle; the one wanting to escape the obligation of the
nurse-maid and the other striving to ensure that he is forever the fed, in
as much therefore must a South Africa over which we have dominion be
the antithesis of present-day South Africa.
The Freedom Charter
That free South Africa must therefore redefine the black producer, or rath
er,
since we the people shall govern, since we shall have, through our own
struggle, placed ourselves in the position of makers of history and policy
and no longer objects, we shall redefine our position as follows:
• We are the producers of wealth;
• We produce this wealth for our own benefit to be appropriated by us,
the producers;
• The aim of this production shall be the satisfaction, at an increasing l
evel,
of the material and spiritual needs of the people;
46
• We shall so order the rest of society and social activity, in education
and culture, in the legal sphere, on military questions, in our international relations, etc, to conform to these goals.
In my view, this redefinition contains within it the theoretical basis of the
Freedom Charter, the political programme of the ANC adopted in 1955.
It should be of some interest to point out that this programme was written exclusively on the basis of demands submitted by thousands upon
thousands of ordinary workers, peasants, businessmen, intellectuals and
other professional people, the youth and women of all nationalities of Sou
th
Africa. It is a measure of their maturity that these masses should have so
clearly understood the fundamental direction of their aspirations. It is a
demonstration in practice of how much the bourgeoisie, by refusing to
temper its greed, did ultimately teach us to identify our true interests with
out
any equivocation.
Whenever we stand up and say 'South Africa belongs to all who live in
it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unl
ess
it is based on the will of all the people ...'(21) we always meet with three
different reactions. There are those, naturally, who agree with us. There
are those who howl in derision: these are the white supremacists who are
confident of the everlasting power of the repressive force of apartheid So
uth
Africa. But perhaps more important, there are those, themselves the offspring of the black producers of our country together with their sympathisers who, in anger, throw at us the epithet - traitor!
Yet this is what a free South Africa will be like. For as the masses
themselves long discovered, the antithesis to white supremacy, exclusiveness and arrogance is not a black version of the same practice. In
the physical world, black might indeed be the opposite of white. But in
the world of social systems, social theory and practice have as much to
do with skin pigmentation as has the birth of children with the stork. To c
onnect the two is to invent a fable with the conscious or unconscious purpose of hiding reality.
The act of negating the theory and practice of white apartheid racism,
the revolutionary position is exactly to take the issue of colour, race, national and sex differentiation out of the sphere of rational human thinking
and behaviour, and thereby expose all race, colour, nation and sex prejudice as irrational. Our own rational practical social activity, rational in th
e
sense of being anti-racist and non-racist, constitutes such a negation; it c
onstitutes the social impetus and guarantee of the withering away of this
irrationality.
Consider the circumstances in which we might position 'black capitalism'
as the antithesis to 'white capitalism'. Fortunately, Fanon has already wa
rned
us that one of the results of imperialist domination is that in the colonial
middle class 'the dynamic pioneer aspect, the characteristics of the inven
tor
and the discoverer of new worlds which are found in all national
bourgeoisies, are lamentably absent. In its beginning, the national
47
bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence
of the bourgeoisie of the west. We need not think that it is jumping ahead;
it is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come
to know the petulance, the fearlessness, or the will to succeed of youth.
Thus black capitalism instead of being the antithesis is rather confirmation of the parasitism with no redeeming features whatsoever, without an
y
extenuating circumstances to excuse its existence. If you want to see a li
ving example, go to the Transkei. Even more, by thus expelling racism to
the realm of the irrational by our own practice, we would help to deny
those who want to exploit and oppress others, including our very selves,
the possibility of finding justification for their actions in such prejudices.
We particularly, who are the products of exemplary capitalist exploitation,
must remember that when German capital found opportunity, especially
during the Second World War, to revert to primitive forms of accumulation, under the stimulation of passions the most infamous, the most sordid
,
the pettiest, the most meanly odious, it used exactly these prejudices liter
ally to enslave and slaughter millions of people.
We must remember that the exploitation of the so-called gastarbeiter in
Western Europe today is founded, in part, on contempt for their nationality; that in the United States and Northern Ireland the black and Irish work
er
respectively are oppressed and exploited on the basis of colour and national prejudice.
The charge of traitor might stick if we were to advance a programme
of equality between black and white while there remained between these
two communities the relations of exploiter and exploited. But we have
already said that our victory presupposes the abolition of parasitism and
the reintegration of the idle rich as productive members of society as well
as our writing off the debt of the white worker and farmer so that they can
start again afresh, as equals with other producers, in law and in every oth
er
respect, without the heavy weight of blood money in their pockets and
on their consciences.
The Freedom Charter itself says that 'the national wealth of our country,
the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people'. It also
goes on to say 'all the land shall be redivided among those who work it
to banish famine and hunger'.(23)
We believe sincerely that it is only in conditions of such an equality as
is underpinned by these provisions that we shall each be able to discover
and unfurl our true individuality, re-acquire the right to be human, and
thereby create the conditions for the creative realisation of the considerab
le
talent of our people, both black and white, which today is so firmly stifled
by the suffocating purposes of a small, exploiting and oppressive minority
.
To transcend the status of mere producer to that of human being, capital
has taught us by negative example that we must guarantee ourselves the
right to work and to social security, good housing and health services,
education, culture, pride and joy in the multiplicity of languages and
48
progressive national traditions among ourselves and among the people o
f
Africa and the world. We must therefore preface our own system of accounting with the provision that our rational calculations must serve to
enlarge human life and not to negate it. We have therefore to strive to ba
nish
war and the use or threat of force in the settlement of international disput
es.
We must work to abolish the use of fear against individuals and communi
ties
as an instrument of policy, and therefore uphold and fight for the right of
all peoples to true self-determination, for friendship and mutually advantageous co-operation among the peoples of the world.
In this way we would restore our country to its rightful position in the worl
d
as a steadfast friend and ally of all who struggle for peace, democracy an
d
social progress, and not the repugnant predator that she is today.
In 1953 one of our outstanding leaders, Nelson Mandela, wrote:
'To talk of democratic and constitutional means (to achieve liberation)
can only have a basis in reality for those who enjoy democratic and constitutional rights ... We cannot win one single victory without overcoming a desperate resistance on the part of the government... (Therefore)
no organisation whose interests are identical with those of the toiling
masses will advocate conciliation to win its demands.,(24)
This is a call to revolution. This revolution is necessary, as Marx and Eng
els
once said, 'not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any
other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolu
tion succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted
to found society anew'.(23)
We have tried to convey to you our own view, as scientifically as possible, of our past, our present and our national democratic future and the
organic connection between these. Let us leave you with a few more wor
ds
from Nelson Mandela:
'In South Africa, where the entire population is almost split into two
hostile camps ... and where recent political events have made the struggle between oppressor and oppressed even more acute, there can be
no middle course. The fault of the Liberals ... is to attempt to strike just
such a course. They believe in criticising and condemning the government for its reactionary policies but they are afraid to identify themselves
with the people and to assume the task of mobilising that social force
capable of lifting the struggle to higher levels ... The real question is:
in the general struggle for political rights can the oppressed people
count on the Liberal Party as an ally?'<26>
That question, posed twenty five years ago, has reached a broader audi
ence
today, including this audience: can the oppressed people count on you
as allies?
49
FOOTNOTES:
1. Karl Marx: Capital, Vol.l, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1965, p.751
2. ibid. p.762
3. H J and R E Simons: Class and Colour in South Africa; 18S0 - 1950,
Penguin Books, England
1969. pll
4. Karl Marx: op.cit. pp.752-3
5. R H Tawney: Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.
Mentor Books, New York, 1958 p.91
6. ibid. p.91ff
7. ibid p.84
8. Edward Roux: Time Longer Than Rope.
University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1966 p.27
9. Simons: op. cit. p.63
10. ibid p.82
11. ibid p.84
12. Herbert Marcuse: Negations, Beacon Press, Boston 1969 p.211
13. Alex la Guma (Ed): Apartheid, International Publishers, New York 197
1, p.47
14. See Francis Wilson: Labour in the South African Gold Mines, Cambrid
ge University Press,
Cambridge 1972;
and Hans Kramer: In Asia, Africa and Latin America Special Issue 1, 1976
, Berlin
15. Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson (Eds): The Oxford History of S
outh Africa, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1971, p.330
16. ibid. p.167
17. ibid. p.203
18. Frederick Engels: Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France in
On Historical
Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1972, pp.264 and 269
19. ibid. p.270
20. Karl Marx: op cit. p. 176
21. African National Congress: Forward to Freedom, Morogoro, 1969
22. Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press Inc., New Yor
k 1968, p.153
23. African National Congress: op.cit.
24. Nelson Mandela: No Easy Walk to Freedom, Basic Books Inc, New Y
ork 1965 p.34
25. Marx and Engels: The German Ideology, International Publishers, N
ew York 1970 p.95
26. Nelson Mandela: op.cit. pp.33-34
50
MANDELA
AND OUR REVOLUTION
Extracts from an article in Sechaba, Third Quarter, 1978
A discussion on the Freedom Charter is of great topical importance for ou
r
movement for many reasons. As a result of and since the historic inciden
ts
of the Soweto uprisings of 1976, our movement has seen an unpreceden
ted
influx into its ranks of young people. It is our revolutionary duty to rise to
the occasion and a discussion on the Freedom Charter in the columns of
Sechaba on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Nelson Mandela is a fitti
ng
tribute.
The adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People was
a turning point in the development of political thought within the ANC. It
was a culmination point, a crystallisation and a highest form of political ex
pression of the ferment which started in the Forties with the formation of
the ANC Youth League in 1944; the adoption of the African Claims and Bi
ll
of Rights in 1945; the Mine Workers' Strike of 1946; the Xuma-Dadoo-Na
icker
Pact of 1947; the Programme of Action of 1949; the May Day Rallies of 1
950;
the famous 1952 Defiance Campaign and many other actions of the popu
lar
masses. Nelson Mandela was directly and indirectly involved in all these
activities.
By the mid-Fifties the time had come that the activities of the people had
to be given a clear political and ideological content. The people decided
that a document in the form of the Freedom Charter would be their politic
al
programme - a blueprint for a future South Africa. The Freedom Charter
is therefore a people's expression of their collective experience and
wisdom.
Colonialism of a Special Type
By stating that South Africa belongs to all who live in it - black and white
- the Preamble of the Freedom Charter states both the non-racial and anti
racist policy of the ANC and goes further to state that our objectives will
be realised through a struggle which obviously takes various forms. Thes
e
ideas have been concretised and developed in the course of the years,
notably in the 1969 Morogoro Conference documents, especially in the
Strategy and Tactics of the ANC.
51
In the South African liberation movement, it is a generally accepted view
that the national mission of the South African people - black and white
- is the destruction of the imperialist system of colonialism and racism in
our country and the establishment of a predominantly black, but not exclusively black, democratic and essentially workers' and peasants' govern
ment. In this context it is necessary to state that South Africa is not a colony of the 'classical type', but a 'colony of a special type' whose specific
feature lies in the fact that black South Africa is a colony of white South
Africa because in 1910, when South Africa was granted 'independence'
by Britain, all the evils of colonialism were perpetrated and reinforced, tha
t
is, as far as the black majority were concerned. In other words, this mean
s
that since 1652 when the colonialists first invaded our country, South Afri
ca
has never been decolonised and that Vorster and his ilk are the direct
descendents of their colonial predecessors. This does not mean that all
whites are colonisers or 'white settlers', but it does mean that the present
injustice of national oppression of blacks by whites is a product of colonial conquest. This is what the Freedom Charter wants to change.
The African Revolution
Mandela's trip to Africa was an eye-opener to him in many ways: 'The tou
r
of the continent made a forceful impression on me', he stated later. He m
et
Julius Nyerere, Haile Selassie, Modibo Keita, Ben Bella, Boumedienne, O
bote,
Kaunda, Nkomo, Oginga Odinga and many others. Mandela exchanged
ideas and experiences with these African leaders. These ideas can be s
ummarised as follows: In South Africa, as elsewhere in the former colonial
world, the national question at this phase of our struggle is the question
of decolonisation whose main content is the national liberation of the
Africans and other nationally oppressed black communities. To state that
the South African revolution is not socialist but democratic with a national
content, is to emphasies the fact that our revolution is an aspect and integral part of the African revolution.
But the African revolution is not a homogeneous process. There are
national specifics which cannot be ignored, e.g. the relatively developed
industry and technology in South Africa; the existence of a strong working class whose leadership in our national liberation struggle has been ac
cepted by all genuine revolutionaries and patriots, and the existence of
a Communist Party whose experience is unequalled on the continent. Th
ese
factors emphasise the fact that genuine liberation can be obtained on the
basis of destruction of monopoly capitalism in South Africa. This is what
the Freedom Charter stands for.
The Freedom Charter
What then is our immediate goal?
The Freedom Charter lays a basis and is a precondition for further
development and radicalisation of our revolution; its implementation will
52
presuppose and demand the destruction of the white racist regime and
the abolition of national, cultural, religious and language privileges of whi
tes
over blacks. This will encompass the equality of all ethnic groups - large
or small, black or white - and satisfaction of their national rights and feelings, traditions and customs, aspirations and emotions, characteristics a
nd
features and the development of their languages and culture, interaction
between different cultures and languages, and inter-ethnic contacts. This
is what we mean by national self-determination.
This entails the injection of hatred for the enemy and all that he stands
for, imbuing the masses with a revolutionary consciousness and this shou
ld
be accompanied by stimulation of national pride and identity, assertivene
ss
and patriotism which are associated with the revolutionary traditions of ant
icolonialism and anti-imperialism of all our people and ethnic groups and
their positive contribution to the struggle for social progress. The solution
of the national question in South Africa entails a 'violent change' (armed
struggle) in the status quo, the raising of the living standard of the black
majority to that of the whites and then the general improvement and
development in material life and cultural welfare of all the people irrespec
tive of race, colour or creed to an extent hitherto unkown in South Africa.
This is the essence of equality as understood by us: concentration on the
development of the most oppressed and raising their level to that of the
'privileged' national group. Mandela expressed his feelings in the following words: 'During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of
the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fou
ght
against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and
free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities'.
Our Internationalist Duty
The above-mentioned factors coupled with the reality of today's world,
which is characterised by growing merits and influence of world socialism
and the disintegration of imperialism and capitalism, and our own bitter
experience and suffering under imperialism and capitalism, force us to co
nclude that the struggle for national liberation of the black people in South
Africa is not an end in itself, but a stage, or one of the stages, to a nonexploitative society, a future without exploitation.
The revolutions in Angola and Mozambique teach us the simple lesson
that in Africa there is a need to differentiate between formal independenc
e
and genuine independence. Talking about Mozambique and Angola, the
Freedom Charter states that: 'South Africa shall be a fully independent st
ate
which respects the rights and sovereignty of nations'.
This statement is important for two reasons:
1. The barbarous aggression by the fascist hordes of the white racist reg
ime
of South Africa against the peace and freedom-loving people of Angola,
together with the double crime of misuse of Namibian territory (which doe
s
53
not belong to South Africa) has once more vindicated the assertion that t
he
international responsiblity of our movement is closely inter-connected wit
h
our national mission, whose main essence is the liquidation of the racistfascist regime of Vorster.
2. This is an expression of the realisation by our movement that South Afr
ica
is not a 'fully independent state' - a fact which needs to be repeated time
and again in the light of the rapprochement between some African states
and South Africa.
Ideological Struggle
The ideological struggle in South Africa in general and in our movement
in particular takes a form of clarification of the essence of the democratic
and revolutionary content of African nationalism; its relations with other
ethno-cultural groups to which South Africans of all nationalities belong,
and, above all, with internationalism and a confrontation with reactionary
trends within African nationalism, representatives of the emergent African
bourgeoisie who would like to portray their interests as 'national interests'
,
thus camouflaging their real intentions. We have in mind the so-called Pa
n
Africanist Congress and the 'Gang of 8' expelled from the ANC.
Progressive African nationalism is an objective phenomenon which has
its roots in the unsolved national question. The realities of the former colonial countries show that even after the liquidation of national oppression
nationalism does not die out so quickly. This cannot be otherwise becaus
e
- as the experience of the socialist countries teaches us - long after the
class question has been resolved the national question still plays an important role in the life of a new society, obviously with a new content and
different tasks. We have a lot to learn from the socialist countries. Indeed
Nelson Mandela - in a slightly different context - did indicate this: 'On
my return I made a strong recommendation to the ANC that we should no
t
confine ourselves to Africa and Western countries, but that we should als
o
send a mission to the socialist countries to raise the funds which were so
urgently needed. I have been told that after I was convicted such a mission was sent'.
Now more than ever before politically and ideologically our movement
will have to continue basing its policy - as the Morogoro Conference con-
firmed - on the firm foundation of mutual co-operation and respect between communists and non-communists, heathens and Christians, Mosle
ms
and Hindus, a tradition which has been set up in the Twenties and contin
ued
throughout, finding expression in many forms. There is no spontaneity in
this and other processes: cautious and conscious encouragement and
development of these processes is necessary. Above all our movement
must encourage active participation in the struggle of all nationalities that
make up South African society provided that the people concerned accept the policy of our movement as embodied in the Freedom Charter an
d
developed at and after the Morogoro Conference of 1969, which brought
54
the discussion on the national question to a higher level: a fact which
testifies to the maturity of our movement.
The question of unity in action of all the oppressed and democratic forces
as a whole is vital. The ANC was formed in 1912 to unite and lead the
freedom-loving African people. Over the years this task has expanded an
d
changed. Today the ANC is faced with the task of organising and leading
all the oppressed people - African, Coloured and Indian - and to win
over to its banner all democratically-minded whites. Today the ANC is a
genuine people's organisation. It enjoys the support and confidence of th
e
people whom it leads; it is viewed by the masses of our people as the pro
duct of their sacrifices; the inheritor and continuation of the revolutionary
experience of the oppressed people as a whole; the people's organiser
and leader, thanks to the activities and thinking of far-sighted men such
as Nelson Mandela.
10th of February, 1985, Jabulani Stadium Soweto, when Mandela's
refusal of conditional release was read out.
'Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.'
PBOPl*
SHALL SO
55
1980
THE YEAR OF THE CHARTER
Extract from the address to the South African people delivered by
President Tambo on behalf of the NEC of the ANC on January 8th, 1980
This year, 1980, marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Free
dom
Charter at the Congress of the People on June 26th, 1955. It is the task o
f
all the patriotic and democratic forces of our country to observe this anniversary in a fitting manner.
What is the Freedom Charter? The Freedom Charter contains the fundamental perspective of the vast majority of the people of South Africa of
the kind of liberation that we, all of us, are fighting for. Hence it is not mer
ely
the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress and its allies. Rath
er
it is the Charter of the people of South Africa for liberation. It was drawn
up on the basis of the demands of the vast masses of our country and
adopted at an elected Congress of the People. Because it came from the
people, it remains still a People's Charter, the one basic political stateme
nt
of our goals to which all genuinely democratic and patriotic forces of Sout
h
Africa adhere.
In observing the 25th anniversary of its adoption, therefore, we need to
make available millions of copies of the Freedom Charter to all our people
,
both young and old, in the towns and countryside, so that these great
masses of our people can once more renew their pledge of dedication to
the future that it visualises.
By that act we shall be reaffirming our commitment to struggle and our
determination to bring into being the kind of social order in South Africa
that we, the oppressed majority, consider just and equitable.
When we together drew up and adopted the Freedom Charter we set
ourselves firmly against all so-called reformist solutions to the South Afri
can
problem. We said we do not fight to reform apartheid, but to abolish it in
its entirety. We said we do not fight to gain some illusory liberties in areas
set aside for us by the enemy or as this or the other national group. We
said we want freedom for all our people as equals, brothers and sisters
in one united and democratic South Africa. We did not call for 'power shar
ing' with the regime of the oppressors but firmly and unequivocally
challenged the legitimacy of that regime and its right to govern us. Neithe
r
did we speak of special and unequal relations between South Africa and
her neighbours, Africa and the rest of the world. Rather we stated the mat
ter
56
plainly that each people has a right to independence and self-governmen
t
and to equal status one with the other, and that it was on this basis that
peace, friendship and co-operation among the peoples can be secured.
This means that when we observe the 25th anniversary of the Freedom
Charter we must simultaneously direct our attention against the enemy's
strategy in its totality because it is in fact diametrically opposed to what
we are fighting for.
In this Year of the Charter we must address ourselves afresh to the question of the illegitimacy of the apartheid regime. We must state the point
boldly that this regime has no right to rule our country. The apartheid
regime has brought untold suffering to the vast majority of the people of
South Africa. There is no need for us to spell this out in detail because we
,
all of us, are suffering daily as a result of the criminal policies of this regi
me.
Forward to a People's Government
There are over two million blacks unemployed in our country while billion
s
of Rand are spent on the war machinery to suppress us. More than five
million Africans have been rendered stateless. More than three million
Africans have been affected by the brutal system of mass removals.
Cemeteries throughout the country continue to fill up with the graves of
black infants and children in this Year of the Child, at a time when the
pockets of the already rich white minority bulge out dramatically with the
money earned from the prices of gold and other minerals which have gon
e
sky-high. The jails are full to overflowing with people imprisoned under
the pass laws, as well as so-called criminals, many of whom turned to cr
ime
as a result of the apartheid system.
Millions go to bed hungry with little prospect of food the following
morning. Millions are ill in health but with no possibility of medical attention. Even beyond our borders yet other millions cannot go about their
legitimate business with a feeling of peace and security because
murderous agents of PW Botha and Magnus Malan are bent on committing aggression against independent Africa.
These crimes against our people, against Africa and against humanity
are perpetrated by a regime devoid of any legitimacy to rule our country
because, as the Freedom Charter states, it is not 'based on the will of all
the people'. All our struggles at all levels this year must be accompanied
by the call - Forward to a People's Government! To give meaning to this
call, and in observing the 25th anniversary of the Freedom Charter and
renewing our commitment to the democratic demands contained within
it, we must launch mass struggles everywhere around all the issues that
both agitate us and are reflected in the Freedom Charter.
57
ORGANISATION OF
AFRICAN UNITY AND
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
In pursuance of the decision taken by the Thirty Fourth Ordinary Session
of the OAU Council of Ministers, a solemn meeting was held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the South African Freedom Charter. T
he
ceremony, to which representatives of the Press were invited, was marke
d
by the showing of a documentary film entitled Isitwalandwe which proved to be an impressive testimony of the political mood and campaign whi
ch
preceded the adoption of this historic document.
At the meeting which ensued, His Excellency Mr E Kodjo, the Secretary
General Dr A Conteh, the Chairman of the Council, Mr BA Clarke, the Cha
irman of the Special Committee Against Apartheid and Mr Mesriri of Tunisi
a
took the floor.
They stressed and welcomed the fact that the lofty ideals and purposes
embodied in the Freedom Charter conform to those enshrined in the
Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and rightly serve as the basis for a broad-based national front co
mprising blacks and democratic whites, united in the struggle against apartheid. They paid glowing tribute to the political maturity and wisdom of
the South African people, the ANC and its allied organisations for remaining so unswervingly committed to the ultimate goal of a democratic state
based on the will of the South African people as a whole regardless of ra
ce,
colour or creed. They also congratulated the ANC and its sister organisations on the intensified mass mobilisation and armed struggle.
58
YOUTH AND
THE FREEDOM CHAU ill
Extract of an article that was inspired in large measure by the discussion
held
at the ANC Youth Summer School in Hungary, 1980.
The understanding of the present and future perspectives of our struggle
is an essential prerequisite in moulding the type of revolutionary that our
struggle demands. All South African youth must be mobilised and made
to understand the policy, strategy and tactics of our movement. We have
to explain to them what the Freedom Charter is and the crucial role it pla
ys
in the present and future South Africa. Only in this way can we ensure tha
t
our youth does not allow itself to be deceived that it has any important rol
e
to play outside the national liberation movement.
Youth in Struggle
The various forms of battles waged by our entire people including the you
th
are backed and motivated by the same demands that our people made
at the historic Congress of the People. Today, the unity in action in pursui
t
of these demands, expressed through various organisational formations
representing all the social structures of our society, points to the unifying
role of the Freedom Charter. That this document embodies the aspiration
s
of our youth also is no accident, but indicates the democratic procedure
followed in its compilation and final adoption.
The main part of the vast battlefield on which our youth are making
sacrifices and advances is in the sphere of education. Since the imposition of the Bantu Education system, the struggle against it was launched
and
has since intensified. A record of the demands for a just, universal and n
onracial education system is to be found in the Freedom Charter ... The
Freedom Charter states that the doors of learning and culture shall be op
ened to all. In our country, the oppressors' culture dominates and the cultura
l
development of society is determined by them. In all the years of colonial
and imperial domination and apartheid rule the oppressors have tried to
eliminate the most important value of our culture and to preserve and pre
sent that which furthers his interests. Apartheid colonial education has th
e
prime aim of instilling the oppressors' values so as to promote his materia
l
interests. The youth, because of its very nature, is that part of the society
that absorbs and transforms cultural values from one generation to anothe
r.
It is therefore most vulnerable to the influences of imperialist ideology
59
which aims to use the youth to penetrate a society with the goal of undermining its cultural development and exploiting this for its own ends.
The implementation of the Freedom Charter and the construction of a
free and democratic South Africa, according to equal opportunity to all,
has as its basic prerequisite the raising of the social standards of all the
oppressed groups to that of the privileged minority. While actively participating in the liberation struggle, the youth must exploit whatever opportunities available, even within the legal framework, to fight now for the
social upliftment of our people.
n.oriz's
a
Youths bury a comrade murdered by police
on the East Rand, July 1985.
60
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
A BEACON TO
THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA
By Alfred Nzo Secretary General of the African National Congress,
first published in the African Communist, Second Quarter, 1980
June 26, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Congress of the People and t
he
Freedom Charter, is an important highlight of this first year of the new
decade. It is an occasion which challenges all patriotic South Africans to
reassess the current phase of the liberation struggle in the light of the ide
as
of the Freedom Charter - the revolutionary programme of our movement.
It is an occasion to cast our minds back over the past quarter century to
see how and why the Freedom Charter has been and is 'a beacon to the
Congress movement and an inspiration to the people of South Africa' to
quote the memorable words of our comrade Nelson Mandela. And it is an
occasion to draw from this historic document fresh guidance and renewed dedication to the task which history lays on us, of uniting and mobilising all oppressed people, all progressive and democratic forces in our
motherland for the overthrow of the hated apartheid system and the
establishment of people's power.
It is fitting on such on occasion to look back over the long and stony trail
which our people have trod in the past twenty-five years, because the pro
gress that has been made, the advances won in the face of the bitter and
ruthless repression of the fascist regime and the hostility of its imperialist
backers, are a measure not only of the tremendous significance of the
Freedom Charter, but also of the changing balance of forces in South Afr
ica
and the world and therefore of the rate of advance of our people towards
inevitable victory.
The Congress of the People, convened jointly by the African National Co
ngress, the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats an
d
the South African Coloured People's Organisation, expressed more profoundly and authentically than any single event before or since the common aspiration of the overwhelming majority of South Africans, black and
white, to live in peace in the country of their birth, to shape its future and
share its fruits, to put an end to the centuries of colonial domination, racis
t
tyranny, exploitation, misery and humiliation. After eighteen months of intensive preparation in every part of the country, the Congress of the People came as the culmination of the most widespread and thorough can-
vassing of opinion, of the most truly democratic process South Africa had
ever witnessed. It built on the militant spirit of the Youth League and the
Programme of Action of 1949, it consolidated the unity in action achieved
in the mass campaigns of the nineteen-forties and topped by the Defianc
e
Campaign of 1952, it gave cohesion and clarity of direction to the liberation movement at a decisive moment in its growth as a truly mass movement. In short, it laid the basis for the further development of our national
liberation movement, and is one of those outstanding events which made
our movement what it is today.
The Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter which it adopted
were the outcome not merely of the preceding years of struggle but of the
centuries of popular resistance to colonialism and race rule. In truth the
Freedom Charter synthesised the many and varied strands of our peoples
'
tireless assertion of their will to self-determination. It reflected and always
will reflect our undying opposition to the fascist monster that has disfigur
ed
our land and mutilated generations of our people. It is because the Free
dom
Charter embodies the heroic traditions and the sacred aspirations of the
people that it lives today and gains fresh vitality with every step forward
on the road to freedom.
It is salutary to recall that the Congress of the People was held at a time
when the political strength srd organisational capacity of the African National Congress was already beginning to shake the foundations of the
fascist order in our country; when a peaceful road to freedom still seemed
to lie open, some six years before the birth of the people's army, Umkhon
to we Sizwe; when the fighting unity of the different sectors of the oppres
sed
was still in its infancy and the independent movement of black workers
firmly committed to the political and economic emancipation of all worker
s
had moved into a new stage with the formation of SACTU only a few mon
ths
previously. The Congress of the People took place when the number of
independent African states could be counted on the fingers of one hand
and the formation of the OAU was still eight years distant. It was a time
when the non-aligned movement had only just been born at the historic
Bandung Conference, when French colonialism had been freshly defeate
d
by heroic Vietnam but the long war against US aggression lay still in the
future, and people's Cuba was no more than a dream in the hearts of Fid
el
Castro and the militants who rallied to the call of the revolution.
In this perspective, the clarity and correctness of the ideas of the Freedo
m
Charter testify to the revolutionary maturity of those responsible for drawing up the Charter - the people of South Africa. That the Charter has stoo
d
the test of time, outlived its critics and defeated every attempt of the ene
my
to brand it as 'treason', demonstrates the rich heritage of struggle of our
people, the justness of our cause and the necessity of the Charter as the
definitive expression of the goals of our national liberation struggle.
Global Concepts
If many of the demands and concepts of the Freedom Charter have bec
ome
62
essential elements of the policy of African and Asian states today, if they
are already becoming living realities in the lives of the peoples of Angola,
Mozambique, Ethiopia and other African countries dedicated to a new soc
ial
order free from discrimination and exploitation, it is because our freedom
struggle is an integral part of the world-wide struggle against racism, colonialism and imperialism, for peace, independence and social progress.
The vision which inspires us, the goals which bind us in unbreakable ties
of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe and with other
peoples breaking the chains of slavery, the ideals which we share with
the vast majority of mankind and which are set out in the Freedom Charte
r
- these are at one and the same time the product of our own particular
sufferings and struggles and the common heritage and universal experience of all oppressed and exploited peoples in this epoch of
revolutionary transformations.
When in 1962, the South African Communist Party adopted its programm
e
The Road to South African Freedom, it advanced its proposals for 'the
building of a national democratic state' specifically 'within the framework
of the Freedom Charter which the Party considers to be suitable as a gen
eral
statement of the aims of a state of national democracy'. The endorsemen
t
of the Freedom Charter by the SACP reflected the maturing of the allianc
e
between it and the ANC and in turn helped to consolidate the alliance an
d
strengthen the basis for future co-operation between the two organisation
s
which has continued ever since.
To the racists the Freedom Charter spelled doom. Having tried and failed to suppress it as treasonable, they tried and failed to suppress the
vanguard organisation of the liberation struggle which had mobilised the
people for the creation of the Charter. The Congress movement fought
back, declaring war on the enemy with the formation of the people's army
,
Umkhonto we Sizwe, on December 16, 1961. Frustrated by the 'no surren
der' policy of the ANC and its allies, the racists sought to terrorise the
masses into submission. Their answer came on the battlefields of Zimba
bwe
in 1967/68, in the birth and spread of the Black Consciousness movement
,
in the waves of clandestine propaganda, in the factories of Natal and the
mine compounds from 1972/3 onwards and in the streets of Soweto, Alex
andra, Guguletu, Bonteheuwel and a thousand other places in 1976. With
the enemy devising new schemes to divide and further dispossess the pe
ople
through the Bantustans and other puppet institutions, the African Nationa
l Congress was already forging unity at yet a higher level in the Morogoro conference and in the struggles of the seventies. Through all this complex
tapestry of different forms and methods of struggle, armed and unarmed,
legal and illegal, underground and open, on the political, economic and
ideological battlefronts, the ideas and inspiration of the Freedom Charter
ran like a golden thread, unifying the diverse forces that together make
up our liberation movement. Just as all the struggles which went before
it contributed to the Freedom Charter, so all the struggles which have co
me
63
after it owe something to it, and have brought closer the day of its realisat
ion.
To mention some of the highlights of our movement since the Congress
of the People indicates how far we have come in these twenty-five years.
But no document, however profound or correct in its content and especial
ly
no document born of struggle and dedicated to change, stands still, motionless in the onward rush of history. The significance of this anniversary
lies not only in the past but principally in the present and the future. Histo
ry
has placed on the shoulders of the African National Congress a triple bur
den.
Starting 68 years ago with the fundamental task of uniting the African peo
ple, the most oppressed and downtrodden, the ANC has moved steadily
into the wider role of uniting and mobilising all the oppressed people and
all democratic and patriotic forces. The Freedom Charter itself, with its vision of a free South Africa belonging to all who live in it, guaranteeing eq
ual
rights to all and creating conditions for the economic, educational and cul
tural liberation and progress of all South Africans, points to a further stage
whose
tasks will only begin to be fulfilled when the racist system will have been
overthrown and people's power established. The enormous challenge pos
ed by this historic mission makes it impossible for us to rest on the laurels
of past achievements. We cannot pause for a moment, but must examine
afresh the obstacles in our path and see how to overcome them.
Botha's Total Strategy
Our country today is witnessing the disastrous infamies and effects of the
total strategy of the fascist regime of P W Botha. The true meaning of this
strategy is now open for all to see. It means total war against the people.
To strip a people of their citizenship and make them foreigners in the land
of their birth, is nothing less than to make war on them. To impose puppe
t
regimes on them in the Bantustan islands of backwardness, saying 'Thes
e
are your governments', is to make war on them. And to uproot hundreds
of thousands of men, women and children from their long-established
homes and lands, driving them at gunpoint to bleak remote dumping
grounds, where misery, disease, hunger, thirst, utter poverty and death
await them - what is this if not an act of war? The barbarous forced remo
vals
practised in the name of the 'consolidation' of the Bantustans, the elimina
tion of so-called 'black spots' in 'white South Africa', and the implementation of residential segregation under the Group Areas Act, all amount to
a policy of genocide against the people and daily prove that apartheid,
far from being dead, is spreading like a cancer bringing pain and death
to all it touches.
Against this racist barbarism the Freedom Charter poses the aspirations
of the oppressed for full and equal citizenship in one united and unitary
South Africa, the restoration of the land to the people, the right to occupy
land wherever they choose, freedom of movement and the replacement
of all bodies of minority rule by democratic organs of self-government.
Every act of resistance to mass removals, to Bantustan tyranny, to Pretori
a's
64
insidious scheme to eliminate all black South Africans, leaving the white
minority in sole command of 87% of the country, is an affirmation of the
Freedom Charter. And this resistance is being waged up and down the
country, from Crossroads to Pietersburg, from Walmer to Alexandra, and
in countless homes and places where individuals and families, parents a
nd
youth, stand up and denounce the enemy's actions and try by all means
to thwart them and make them fail.
The Bantustan policy, properly understood as a criminal attempt to complete the dispossession of the people, perpetuate their subordination, intensify their exploitation and destroy their national unity by the creation
of tribal satellite states, is totally rejected by the vast majority of the Afric
an
people. Only a handful of politically bankrupt careerists and renegades
have betrayed the national unity and sacred interests of the mass of the
people for the sake of temporary gain. They will be swept away on to the
rubbish heap of history together with their puppet-masters in Pretoria by
the mass mobilisation of the anger and hatred of the people, inspired by
the goals of the Freedom Charter and led by the vanguard and armed
organisation of the people, the African National Congress.
All tactics and methods of struggle pursued by patriotic forces today
against the Bantustan policy must therefore satisfy two fundamental requirements if they are not to lead into the path of betrayal and the furthering of the enemy's aims. In the first instance they must be consistent with
the ideas of the Freedom Charter, which stands as a complete and consis
tent answer to the Bantustan policy. Secondly, they must advance and no
t
retard, aid not frustrate that mass mobilisation and that armed action of t
he
angry masses without which all talk of liberation will remain a dangerous
illusion.
As Sechaba, official organ of the ANC, pointed out recently, the implementation of the Freedom Charter will:
'presuppose and demand the destruction of the white racist regime and
the abolition of national, cultural, religious and language privileges of
whites over blacks. This will encompass equality of all ethnic groups
- large or small, black or white - and satisfaction of their national rights
and feelings, traditions and customs, aspirations and emotions,
characteristics and features and the development of their languages and
culture, interaction between different cultures and languages and interethnic contacts. This is what we mean by national self-determination.
This entails the injection of hatred for the enemy and all that he stands
for, imbuing the masses with a revolutionary consciousness, and this
should be accompanied by stimulation of national pride and identity,
assertiveness and patriotism which are associated with the revolutionary
traditions of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism of all our people and
ethnic groups and their positive contribution to the struggle for social
progress. The solution of the national question in South Africa entails
a 'violent change'(armed struggle) in the status quo, the raising of the
65
living standard of the black majority to that of the whites and then the
general improvement and development in material life and cultural
welfare of all the people irrespective of race, colour or creed to an extent hitherto unknown in South Africa.'
(3rd quarter, 1978)
The decade of the seventies, brought to a resounding close by the successes of 1979 as the Year of the Spear, were characterised at the subje
ctive level by the rapid growth of precisely that revolutionary consciousnes
s
and the assertion of that national pride and dignity to which Sechaba refe
rs.
This was demonstrated most dramatically by the militant youth and stude
nts,
who fought with such energy and many of whom showed their consciousness by volunteering for the people's army. But nowhere was this
new assertiveness more in evidence than in the ranks of the oppressed
workers, manifested in their numerous militant actions for improvements
in their wages and conditions of work, against discrimination and victimis
ation, in the building of their own trade union organisations, in defence of
their rights to organise and to strike and above all in support of general
political demands. This mighty pressure struck fear into the enemy's hear
t
and out of this fear and total failure of the state to quell the forward advance of the black workers by purely repressive means was bom the fiendish scheme of the Wiehahn and Riekert Commissions to incorporate the
organised elements of the working class into a state-dominated system of
labour relations, while stepping up the destabilisation of the black working class by increasing migratory labour. At the same time, the state's
economic policies are deliberately designed to maximise black unemploy
ment with the aim of creating optimal conditions for the local and international monopolies to boost the lagging rate of their profits.
Year of the Workers
It is in this context that the declaration by SACTU of 1980 as the Year of
the Mobilisation of the Workers takes on its significance as being complementary to, and indeed essential to the realisation of 1980 as the Year
of the Freedom Charter as proclaimed by the African National Congress.
The ANC has long recognised the fundamental reality of the South Africa
n
situation that as long as the key levers of economic power remain in the
hands of a tiny circle of rapacious monopolists there can be no true
freedom. The Freedom Charter points the way out of the present system
of greed and super-exploitation with its bold assertion that the national
wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored
to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopo
ly
industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole:
and all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being
of the people. As the document The Strategy and Tactics of the African
National Congress adopted at the 1969 Morogoro conference correctly in
dicated, national emancipation is:
66
'in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have
suffered more than just national humiliation, our people are deprived
of their due in the country's wealth; their skills have been suppressed
and poverty and starvation has been their life experience. The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of
our national aspirations.'
The best guarantee of the implementation of this aspect of the Freedom
Charter is the leadership of the working people in the national movement.
It is precisely this leadership, this central role of the workers which the
Botha regime is trying to avert by the plan to shackle the independent bla
ck
trade unions, drive wedges between the minority of skilled workers who
are permanently based in the cities and the majority who are unskilled an
d
increasingly being turned into migrants, and place the urban masses und
er
the political influence of vacillating, if not fatally compromised middle clas
s
elements of the Thebehali breed. Again, the Freedom Charter comes out
against all the key features of exploitation and offers a revolutionary alternative to the reactionary strategy of the bosses and their regime:
'There shall be work and security!
All who work shall be free to form trade unions, to select their officers
and make wage agreements with their employers; the state shall
recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits;
Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work;
there shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage,
paid annual leave and sick leave for all workers and maternity leave for
all working mothers;
Miners, domestic workers, farm workers and civil servants shall have
the same right as all others who work;
Child labour, compound labour, the tot system and contract labour shall
be abolished.'
The total war strategy of P W Botha has emerged in the recent period
as the greatest single threat to the peace, security and independence of
the states of Southern Africa and as the greatest obstacle to the winning
of independence and people's power in Zimbabwe and Namibia. By its
persistent attacks on the peoples of Angola, Zambia, Botswana and Moz
ambique, either directly or through the bankrupt Muzorewa-Smith regime, by
its violations of international law, threats and economic pressures against
these countries and against Lesotho and Swaziland, the fascist regime, b
y
revealed that its master plan for a constellation of states in Southern Afri
ca
is nothing more than an attempt to secure the eternal domination of the
racist minority in South Africa itself by imposing new colonial dependency on all the peoples of the region, as a bulwark for international imperial
ism
in Africa.
This attempt to reverse the gains of the people, won by heroic endeavour
,
to halt the advancing tide of national liberation and social progress is
67
doomed to fail. The times have long passed when imperialism and reaction could dictate the course of events. Today it is the toiling masses, the
patriotic forces, revolutionary democrats of diverse social origins, who are
shaping their own destinies, backed by the true internationalism and grow
ing strength of the socialist world, and no power on earth can stop them
as the experience of heroic Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Ir
an,
Polisario and the Palestinian people has decisively proven.
Our people's vision embodied in the Freedom Charter of a fully independent South African state (independent, that is of imperialism and colonialism) which respects the rights and sovereignty of nations, which aim
s
to maintain world peace and settle all international disputes by negotiation not war, which will secure peace and friendship amongst peoples by
upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all, which takes as
the basis of close co-operation the independence and self-government of
all the peoples of Africa - this vision of our region's and our continent's
future is both fully consistent with the most progressive and increasingly
decisive trends on a world scale and totally irreconcilable with the Botha
nightmare of a constellation of states.
In this context the Botha regime would be well advised to reconsider
its policy of intervening in Zimbabwe with a view to preventing the advent or consolidation of genuine people's government. Not only will our
brother Zimbabweans refuse to be intimidated from seizing what is rightfu
lly
theirs, but our own people will not stand idly by watching any manoeuvre
aimed ultimately at perpetuating the slave system in South Africa itself.
And
in the Front Line states the peoples and governments are increasingly det
ermined and able to defend their gains and see the process of liberation in
our sub-continent through to its logical and inevitable completion.
Cosmetic Surgery
Faced by the mounting challenges on its doorstep and within its very hou
se,
the racist clique in Pretoria has been compelled to undertake cosmetic
surgery, to seek to put a human face on the monster which all progressiv
e
mankind knows and abominates as apartheid. This too forms part of the
total strategy designed for our enslavement. In the guise of reform it offer
s
insignificant changes such as the abolition of statutory job reservation whi
le
maintaining the informal colour bar in industry, talk of 'improving' the Immorality Act and Mixed Marriages Act while maintaining the obnoxious
principles which underlie them, allowing the registration of black trade
unions but on conditions which will reduce them to impotence, abandoning the name of Bantu Education while preserving its substance - and ma
ny
more such gestures of the same ilk. While the mass of our people are not
allowed for one moment to forget their oppression is worsening, not getting lighter, there are nevertheless in certain quarters elements who may
be tempted into accepting the fascist regime on its own terms, thereby
falling into the trap of reformist illusions.
68
The Freedom Charter, properly understood, is a defence against this
manoeuvre, for the demands it contains cannot begin to be satisfied by
piecemeal changes. They objectively require the seizure of power and
the implementation of fundamental measures to transform our country an
d
set it on the path which will lead it away from racism and exploitation,
towards true independence, equality, social justice and peace.
By the same token, the outside world can also judge the reforms of Botha
and his fascist gang by the yardstick of the Freedom Charter. Only those
who will grasp at any straw to justify their continuing collaboration with
the racists and their greed to profit from the labour and suffering of our
people will evade the conclusion that the 'new look' of the South African
regime is the same old abomination thinly disguised. Others, less ignobly
motivated, may be tempted to find in these cosmetic changes evidence
of an inevitable drift towards the deracialisation of the state and a peacefu
l
evolution towards a more just social order. We owe it to them, as well as
to ourselves, to take advantage of th Year of the Freedom Charter to driv
e
home the reality of our country, that a state founded on colonial conquest
and dispossession cannot legitimise itself, cannot and does not desire to
right historical wrongs, and that our struggle requires the overthrow - not
the modification - of the existing state and its replacement by a democrati
c
state, based on the will of all the people. In short, we seek no more and
no less than other colonised peoples have sought and any attempt to red
uce
the scope of our struggle, as defined by the Freedom Charter, to one for
'civil rights' is ultimately an attempt to treat the fascist regime as legitimat
e
and a rejection of our movement and its struggles as illegitimate.
We South Africans have little chance for illusions about the enormity of
the task we are engaged in. In this 69th year of the African National Congress we rejoice in the inexhaustible resolve of our people to be free whi
ch
has guaranteed that our vanguard organisation has overcome all efforts t
o
rout it, and has gone from strength to strength, so that today its prestige
at home and abroad has never been higher. Yet more difficulties and
obstacles lie ahead, and in measuring the distance that still lies between
where we are today and the South Africa of the Freedom Charter, we tur
n
again to the Charter itself as the programme of the people which alone
can unite them into the irresistible movement which will crush the apartheid system. Bus boycotts, workers' strikes, resistance to mass removals
,
the battles against higher rents, evictions and pass law harassment, the f
ight
against apartheid sport, against dummy pseudo-representative institution
s
such as Community Councils and the SA Indian Council, the struggles for
fair wages, for jobs and houses, against colour bars in all walks of life, th
e
fight against inferior education, against censorship and the suppression
of the people's culture, the building of an ever stronger underground mov
ement capable of withstanding all blows, the resistance of our comrades
in jail and in court, of which the militant defiance of James Mange and his
fellow accused is an outstanding example, the inspiring assaults on polic
e
69
stations and other armed actions of Umkhonto we Sizwe - these and
countless other acts of resistance, reflecting an incredible variety of forms
and methods of struggle in widely differing conditions, are given coheren
ce
and united into one powerful force by the simple fact that every aspiration
they represent is found within the Freedom Charter, It is thus that the
Freedom Charter gains in significance with every passing year. Its
demands, clearly and simply stated, embrace all the local and particular,
sectional and regional struggles and unite them into a national movement
for liberation.
That the ideas of the Freedom Charter are gaining ground rapidly in Sout
h
Africa today is clear from even a superficial glance at the policies and pro
grammes of different groups. Consciously or unconsciously echoing the
Charter (and increasingly it is consciously), the demands of different sectors of the oppressed chime together in a swelling and harmonious choru
s.
Fortified by the support of the socialist countries and other anti-imperialist
and progressive forces, the African National Congress is soberly confiden
t
of its capacity to widen and deepen the political mobilisation of the oppressed masses and democratic forces to the point where it becomes pos
sible to transform the ideas of the Freedom Charter into an irresistible
physical force. This is the challenge of the eighties.
At at time when the enemy is trying to drive tribal wedges into our national unity and to woo other sectors of the oppressed with separate solutions, seeking out every individual or clique that is prone to place persona
l
advancement above the interests of the people as a whole, the Freedom
Charter shows how group and sectional interests can be reconciled withi
n
a common movement and indeed can only be defended as an integral par
t
of a common programme. There is on an unprecedented scale in South
Africa today, and not only amongst the oppressed but also amongst thos
e
who in the short term benefit materially from the privilege of being white,
an anxious search for ways out of the dangerous crisis into which the
Afrikaner Nationalist Party has led our country. It is our task in 1980 to ca
rry
the Charter to all such people so that they can see for themselves that th
ere
is a way out, entailing self-sacrifice, but not suicide and guaranteeing a
peaceful and just future. For the Charter is the destiny of all South African
s,
all patriots and neither the Charter itself, nor the courageous militants wh
o
take up arms to fight for it, can be denounced as treason or traitors to our
country. Rather it is the criminals who have turned our fatherland into an
armed camp who are the traitors. They are prepared even to unleash a
nuclear holocaust in their futile bid to retain power. These are the ones
who have betrayed South Africa. The growing number of young whites w
ho
refuse to fight under the banner of this betrayal is itself a symptom of the
bankruptcy of the regime and its growing inability to deceive even those
reared within its fold.
In its tireless efforts to constantly widen and strengthen the unity of patrio
tic forces the African National Congress is guided by the spirit of Freedo
m
70
Charter because, as the people's charter, it is a touchstone of patriotism
in our situation. While aiming at the utmost flexibility so as to combine all
forms and methods of struggle, the ANC also recognises that history has
moved on since the Congress of the People, closing to us the peaceful
path which then seemed open and obliging us to take up arms against th
e
oppressor. Today, with the lessons of people's war and the victories it
brought in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe bringing us renewed inspiration, patriotism also requires a truly positive response to the challen
ges
of mounting a people's war in our own country. All the signs are that this
response will be forthcoming and that the Year of the Freedom Charter
will carry us much closer to the sacred goals of the people.
Long Live the Freedom Charter!
The Struggle Continues!
Victory is Certain!
Amandla Ngawethu! Matla ke a Rona!
All Power to the People!
Protest against Republic Day, 31st of May, 1981.
71
QUESTIONS ON THE
NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
REVOLUTION
This article was first published in Sechaba, October 1982
The strategic objective of a social revolution is the capture of state politica
l
power. The South African revolution is not unique in this. No less, and
perhaps more important, is the question: in whose interests will state pow
er
be exercised? The people as a whole, or some narrow interest group? Y
ou
see then that we cannot separate strategy from policy; armed struggle fr
om
the political line of the revolution.
Aims define strategy. And more. What we fight for determines who we
fight with and against; who are the people's allies, who the enemy. It goe
s
deeper. It focuses on 'the people' - the main and allied forces comprising the national components making up 'the people'. The theory of our
revolution, of which policy is a programatic extract, gives character and
direction to the struggle. At the same time we cannot really talk about the
theory of a social revolution without at the same time defining the charact
er
of the social, economic and political set-up of the country. This is how the
Strategy and Tactics document of the ANC states the latter point:
'South Africa's social and economic structures and the relationships
which it generates are perhaps unique. It is not a colony, yet it has, in
regard to the overwhelming majority of its people, most of the features
of the classical colonial structures'.
It follows from this characterisation of the socio-economic structure of
present-day South Africa that our struggle has as one of its main features
a deep anti-colonial content. This is important, because there are forces,
even in Africa, who would argue that the South African question does not
fall within the ambit of the United Nations Decolonisation demands.
This apart, how do we characterise the revolution in South Africa? We
will attempt to restate the fundamentals of this question by reference to
the two basic documents of our movement - the Freedom Charter and
the Strategy, Tactics and Programme of the African National Congress of
South Africa. We will try and do more to analyse their implications for our
struggle. Political and ideological clarity are the prerequisites of correct
strategy. At a time when the revolutionary struggle within our country is
maturing rapidly the enemy has chosen precisely these areas as part of
the battleground. This is what the Minister of Defence, General Magnus
72
Malan, had in mind when he said:
'We must take into account the aspirations of our different population
groups. We must gain and keep their trust. Bullets kill bodies, not beliefs
... The insurgent forces have no hope of success without the aid of the
local population'.
The battle for the 'hearts and minds' of the people requires from us a clea
r
understanding of our goals and perspectives. We cannot assume that the
fact of national oppression automatically drives the people to revolutionar
y
positions. Our ideas have to be taken to the people and explained. Only
when our ideas 'capture the imagination of the masses' can we speak of
them as a material force for the revolution.
The 1949 Programme of Action
Our starting point must be that of our movement - with the Programme
of Action adopted by the ANC in 1949. Without going into detail we can
summarise the significance of this programme in the liberation movement
's
search for a revolutionary theory with which to confront white domination.
The Action Programme, inspired by the Youth League in which Nelson
Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Anton Lembede and Ashby P Mda
,
amongst others, played a leading role, broke with past traditions and
methods of struggle in a number of important ways.
First, it placed on the agenda of black liberation mass political mobilisation and mass action as the basis of resistance and confrontation against
white supremacy rule. Secondly, it postulated a programme of 'immediate
and active boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-co-operation' (with
the regime) instead of petitions of grievances and demands by the leader
s
on behalf of the people. Thirdly, it defined the goal of the struggle as
'national freedom' meaning 'freedom from white domination and the attainment of political independence'.
To this must be added a fourth and key element of future struggles, not
referred to specifically in the Programme: solidarity and co-operation between the various oppressed national groups. Whatever the imperfection
s
and limitation of the 1949 Programme, it sketched the core perspectives
for revolutionary nationalism in South Africa. The Programme reflected th
e
understanding by the ANC that the South African state, far from being impartial and above class interests, was indeed a source and instrument of
national and class oppression. Nelson Mandela explained during the
Treason Trial:
'Up to 1949 the leaders of the ANC had always acted in the hope that
by merely pleading their cause, placing it before the authorities, they
- the authorities - would change their hearts and extend to them all
the rights that they were demanding ... The Programme of Action meant
that the ANC was not going to rely on a change of heart. It was going
to exert pressure (by the forms and methods of political action set out
in the Programme - Ed) to compel the authorities to grant its demands.
73
The ideas on co-operation and solidarity, made real by the Pact of Cooperation between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress - the
Xuma-Dadoo-Naicker Pact - in 1947 foreshadowed the formation of the
Congress Alliance and set in motion the stirring mass campaigns of the
1950s. In short, the Programme impelled the struggle in the direction of
a national democratic revolution.
The Freedom Charter and Strategy and Tactics
Precisely the mass struggles of the Fifties began posing the questions ab
out
the nature and goals of struggle which were to crystallise in the above pol
icy
documents. Clarification of means and ends became imperative as millio
ns
of people from all ethnic and national groups, social strata and classes, w
ith
diverse political and ideological positions, joined in struggle against the
apartheid system as a whole. The Freedom Charter grew out of the magni
ficent resistance and confrontation of the times. It encapsulated the deepe
st
aspirations of the people and reflected these in a way never seen before.
It was an organised attempt by people, organisations and leaders to ans
wer
the burning questions of the South African struggle.
We will confine ourselves to those aspects of the Charter which essential
ly underwrite the character and direction of our struggle.
Who are 'the people', who the enemy?
The preamble of the Charter contains the key to our understanding of the
politics of the South African struggle: South Africa belongs to all who live
in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority
unless it is based on the will of all the people ...
White supremacy rule has no legitimacy because it is not based on 'the
will of all the people'. Whatever status it enjoys amongst its international
allies, it is a criminal authority imposed on the black majority and enforce
d
by the rule of violence. The justness of our cause, including the means to
attain it, relies precisely on the universally-held doctrine that no government can claim legitimacy unless it is a government 'of the people, by the
people, and for the people'.
The statement also identifies a fundamental fact of South Africa's specialtype colonialism - that the colonising 'nation', the white national groups,
are only aliens in an historical sense. This point is further elaborated in
Strategy and Tactics.
'What makes the structure unique and adds to its complexity is that the
exploiting nation is not, as in the classical imperialist relationships,
situated in a geographically distinct mother country, but is settled within
the borders. What is more, the roots of the dominant nation have been
embedded in our country by more than three centuries of presence.
It is thus an alien body only in the historical sense.'
By refusing to define 'the people' in skin terms, the Charter strikes a blow
at all reactionary approaches to the solution of the South African question
.
74
This has relevance not only to a free South Africa, but to revolutionary
strategy. All anti-racist and democratic forces have a place and role in the
national democratic revolution. It also enables us to correcty define the
enemy 'under hidden colours'. As President Machel of Mozambique said:
'In Mozambique the correct political line won over to the cause of national independence all races and social strata. We believe that no nation, no people can be defined on the basis of false and reactionary
criteria such as the colour of the skin, tribal or regional origin ...'
It is precisely this approach that enables us to welcome within our ranks
white revolutionaries and brand as reactionaries the Bantustan and President's Council placemen.
'Our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and
peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality
Consistent with the identifying of 'the people' the preamble defines the
enemy not as the white people but 'a form of government' - that is, the
apartheid system and white supremacy rule.
'Only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure
to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief.
The only solution possible, the only alternative to race-capitalist rule, is
complete democracy. And this means black majority rule based on nonracialism and democracy. This goes to the heart of our revolution, becau
se
this perspective, this demand, cannot be accommodated within the existi
ng
social order. Apartheid has to be defeated and destroyed for its complete
realisation. It is this which distinguishes the non-racialism of the ANC fro
m
that of white liberals, who are prepared to concede black majority rule,
but not the revolutionary means for its fulfilment.
The People - Class and National Aspects
Earlier, we spoke of the main and allied forces in the camp of the revolutionaries. No revolutionary can afford to obscure this distinction. The noti
on
of 'the people' must not allow vagueness. We have to identify the main
revolutionary force. Because of the operations and consequences of race
class oppression in South Africa our struggle has both a national and a c
lass
basis. These two aspects are inseparably bound, because black workers
are oppressed both as members of a national group and as a class. It is
this dual oppression which imparts to our struggle both class and national
aspects simultaneously.
How then does the national democratic revolution view the relationship
between the people and classes? The key to elaboration is to be found
in the Strategy and Tactics document. The main thrust of the present sta
ge
of the revolution lies in the 'national liberation of the largest and most oppressed group - the African people'. This therefore requires 'the maximum mobilisation of the African people as a dispossessed and racially o
ppressed nation. This is the mainspring and it must not be weakened.' We
see from this that it is the national struggle which dominates our approac
h
75
to the struggle. However, this struggle is taking place in a country in whic
h
there is 'a large and well developed working class whose class consciousness complements national consciousness and in which the indep
endent expression of the working people - their political organs and trade
unions - are very much part of the liberation front'.
This is what Nelson Mandela had in mind when, as far back as 1953, in
the aftermath of the Defiance Campaign, he wrote:
'The ties between the working people and Congress have been greatly strengthened. This is a development of the highest importance
because in a country such as ours a political organisation that does not
receive the support of the workers is in fact paralysed on the very ground
on which it has chosen to wage battle'.
We see, then, that our notion of 'the people' identifies the African people
as the main revolutionary force and the African working people as a
decisive component within it.
Economic Emancipation
Politics cannot be separated from economics. It is 'the concentrated expression of economics'. Apart from our desire to do away with the inequal
ity
and injustice of race-rule, what is the material basis of our struggle? Put
another way: will our drive for national liberation stop short of economic
emancipation? Clearly the Freedom Charter says no to this. Our drive for
national emancipation and economic liberation forms a single process. In
an article written in Liberation after the adoption of the Freedom Charter,
Nelson Mandela explained:
'The Charter is more than just a mere list of demands for democratic
reforms. It is a revolutionary document precisely because the changes
it envisages cannot be won without breaking up the economic and
political set-up of present day South Africa ... It is true that in demanding the nationalisation of the banks, the gold mines, and the land, the
Charter strikes a fatal blow at the financial and gold-mining monopolies
and farming interests that have for centuries plundered our country and
condemned its people to servitude. But such a step is imperative
because the realisation of the Charter is inconceivable, in fact impossible, unless and until these monopolies are smashed and the national
wealth of the country turned over to the people. To destroy these
monopolies means the termination of the exploitation of vast sections
of the populace by mining kings and land barons and there will be a
general rise in the living standards of the people'.
For our revolution, therefore, no neo-colonial solution can be contemplate
d.
The national democratic revolution in South Africa rests on the twin pillars
of political and economic emancipation. And because South African
capitalism is inextricably bound up with international capitalism, because
the South African economy is deeply penetrated by international multinational corporations, our revolution has a deep-going anti-imperialist
76
content. In the final analysis the national democratic revolution in South
Africa is a People's Revolution for, by and on behalf of the people. It is
against racism, colonialism and imperialism.
ttp
MlfSS rONnnccc r/\%»/-••*»
The demands of the Freedom Charter remain the
focus of many political meetings.
77
3 m FREEDOM CHARTER
AND ITS RELEVANCE TODAY
Article Written by Mzala on the
Occasion of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Freedom Charter
Criticism of the Freedom Charter has lately been coming from a Committee calling itself the 'National Forum' and launched by certain individuals
in South Africa as an organisational opposition to the United Democratic
Front (UDF). At its founding conference, the National Forum adopted a
number of resolutions as well as a 'Manifesto of the Azanian People,' whi
ch
is meant to be an alternative document to the Freedom Charter. As repor
ted
by the Rand Daily Mail of the 13th June, 1983:
... A separate bid for unity has been started by the National Forum Committee, made up largely of Black Consciousness groups ... The National
Forum, according to Mr Mkhabela of Azapo, is not an organisation but
only a committee intended to facilitate joint discussions among black
groups.
At the end of this National Forum Conference (there have been others ev
er
since to ratify the 'Manifesto') the conference adopted the "Manifesto of
the Azanian People" (which we shall hereafter refer to as the Azanian
Manifesto), identifying 'racial capitalism' as the real enemy of the oppres
sed
people of South Africa, and pledging to work for the establishment of an
'anti-racist, socialist Republic.' Readers of the South African press will
remember how even the Pace magazine issue of September, 1983 (a
magazine that does very well in promoting showbiz but which dismally fai
ls
to give one a good political portrait of South Africa) commented about the
'historic' significance of the adoption of this Azanian Manifesto:
'The oppressed people now have two documents setting out what the
struggle is all about; the Charter on the one hand, and the Manifesto,
which follows the Black Consciousness line, on the other.'
One cannot help marvelling at the inability of this magazine to comprehe
nd
the significance of the Freedom Charter in the history of South Africa. Aft
er
30 years of the adoption of our Freedom Charter, it is timely to examine
its relevance in South Africa, and equally to examine some aspects of its
latest critics and to evaluate the worth of their 'alternative' Azanian
Manifesto.
78
Congress of the People
If the Pace magazine (which announced the adoption of this 'Manifesto'
with an air of historical importance) imagines that the Congress of the Pe
ople that adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955 was something similar to
the National Forum Conference that was held in Hammanskraal from Sat
urday the 11th to Sunday the 12th June 1983, then it needs to research the
historical facts thoroughly, and correct its distorted vision of history.
What were the circumstances, conditions, preparations and level of mass
participation in the adoption of the Freedom Charter as different from the
adoption of the Azanian Manifesto?
During the 1953 Queenstown Conference of the African National Congress the National Executive Committee was instructed to make immedia
te
preparations for the organisation of a mass assembly of delegates electe
d
by people of all races in every town, village, farm, factory, mine and kraal
- to be known as the Congress of the People, whose tasks should be to
work out a Freedom Charter for all the people and groups of the country.
According to a document entitled, Congress of the People that was annexed to the report of the National Executive Committee at the Tongati
Conference of March 21st 1954 (where Chief Luthuli was banned and
banished):
'The South African people's movement can be proud of its record of
unbroken struggle for rights and liberty, but never before have the mass
of South African citizens been summoned together to proclaim their
desire and aspirations in a single declaration - a Charter of Freedom.
The drawing up and adopting of such a charter of freedom is the purpose for which the Congress of the People has been called. Never in
South African history have the ordinary people of this country been
enabled to take part in deciding their own fate and future. Elections have
been restricted to a small minority of the population; franchise rights,
particularly in recent times, have been threatened and curtailed. There
is a need to hear the voice of the ordinary citizen of this land, proclaiming to the world his demands for freedom.'
Indeed, the Congress of the People finally became the biggest single
gathering of representatives of the people's grievances ever known in So
uth
Africa. How was this Congress of the People organised?
The Country Mode Aware
Firstly, the whole country was made aware of the coming Congress of the
People, and various organisers were given the task to imbue the masses
of the oppressed people with the feeling of the tremendous importance
of such a gathering. A zealous campaign of printed propaganda was laun
ched, side by side with hundreds of meetings and house-to-house canvasses, as well as group discussions. The main purpose of this activity w
as
to get the people to speak for themselves, and to state what changes mu
st
be made in South Africa if they are to enjoy freedom. 'Let us speak toget
her
79
of Freedom', said one popular leaflet 'and of the happiness that can come
to men and women if they live in a land that is free. Let us speak together
of Freedom. And of how to get it for ourselves, and for our children. Let
the voice of all the people be heard. And let the demands of all the people for the things that will make us free be recorded. Let the demands
be gathered together in a great Charter of Freedom.'
The leaflet called on all who loved liberty to pledge their lives to win the
freedom that would be set out in the Freedom Charter.
Every demand made by the people at these gatherings, however small
the matter, was recorded and collected for consideration by the Congress
of the People for inclusion in the Freedom Charter. In this way, the Free
dom
Charter became, not only in principle but also in actuality, the charter of
the people, the content of which has its source in their homes, in the factories, mines and rural reserves. The task of the organisers of the Congr
ess
of the People (who were called Freedom Volunteers) was not to write the
demands on behalf of the people, as the Azanian Manifesto was manufac
tured in Hammanskraal, but to collect them and to enlighten the people
on the radical changes that such a campaign could make in the South
African situation. By sneering at the Freedom Charter and calling it an A
NC,
or even a Kliptown, document, some people forget that the Charter was,
in fact, produced not by the ANC but by the people of South Africa. The
ANC only adopted this Charter as its policy document as advised in a
Presidential address by Professor Z K Matthews, then acting on behalf of
Chief Luthuli, who was banned and confined to the Lower Tugela district:
'I shall therefore not say anything about it (the Freedom Charter) at this
stage except to remind you that the Freedom Charter was drawn up,
not by the African National Congress but by the Congress of the People, and it is therefore necessary for you to ratify the Freedom Charter
and to make it part, if you so desire, of the policy of the African National
Congress.'
Delegates to the Congress of the People subsequently came from all the
four corners of our country. They came on foot, in buses, in trains - yes,
the whole trip to Kliptown near Johannesburg took place in an atmospher
e
a great political demonstration. Freedom processions greeted delegates
in every town they passed through. As the call of the National Action Cou
ncil had said:
'Where possible, Freedom Trains should be arranged to carry delegates,
but where funds are not available for this, delegates should band
together on a Freedom March, even though it may take some days for
them to reach the Congress.
Our people gathered together in Kliptown to speak of freedom. Of the tota
l
of 2 884 delegates, 721 were women. There were 2 186 African delegate
s,
320 Indian delegates, 230 Coloured delegates, as well as 112 Whites. Hu
ndreds of delegates were prevented from coming by the action of the polic
e.
'There were several wonderful things about the Congress of the People,'
80
said Professor Z K Matthews, 'the first is the fact that it was held at all. H
ere
for the first time was a Congress which brought together people drawn
from all sections of the population to consider and give expression to thei
r
vision of the South Africa of the future. The sponsoring organisations iss
ue
a challenge to any other group of organisations including the Nationalist
Party to convene a similar conference and whether they could evoke an
equal or better response from the people of South Africa.'
It was not the National Forum Conference, but instead the founding of
the United Democratic Front, that evoked in the decade of the Eighties
a response from the people of South Africa that was equal to the Congre
ss
of the People in 1955. As Ukusa reported (Vol. 2, No. 40, 1983):
'The meeting on August 20th to launch the United Democratic Front
(UDF) is being described as a day of unity. Over 15 000 people from all
over the country and all races came together under the banner of the
UDF in Rockford, Cape Town, to reject the Government's new apartheid
policies. A national executive of the UDF was elected from amongst 2 00
0
delegates representing community, worker, student, religious, sporting
and political organisations. The delegates represented hundreds of
organisations from Natal, Transvaal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape,
Orange Free State and the Border region.'
Was it not Karl Marx who wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte that all facts and personages of great importance in world
history occur, as it were, twice? Indeed, even in South Africa, the dead
of the Congress of the People rose up again - as Marx correctly had
remarked in the same work:
'the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the
brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously
conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them
names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of
world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed
language.'
Thus Dr Allan Boesak donned the mask of Professor Z K Matthews, for
although the former could freely express himself on the recent conditions
that prevail in our country and the necessity for change, his language wa
s
always translated back into the gathering in Kliptown, for in great historica
l
events the new perform the tasks of the time in the costumes and traditions of all dead generations.
On the other hand, no sooner had the National Forum Conference been
announced to the press, than it was rejected by four organisations that h
ad
been tricked into participation in it. This rejection of the National Forum
came about immediately the participants started criticising the Freedom
Charter and calling it all manner of derogatory names, even suggesting
to the delegates that it was an antique piece ready to be deposited in a
81
museum.The article in Pace magazine spelt this out clearly (pp.24-25):
Since 1958 (sic) the Freedom Charter has generally been regarded
in black politics as the 'Constitution of the People' although there has
always been a measure of dissent... but this changed dramatically when
in the fashion of the Congress of the People, the National Forum Committee called all the oppressed people to a meeting in Hammanskraal
... There have been documents before, but none ever caused as much
of a storm and threatened to widen the gap between two political schools
of thought among blacks as the Manifesto is doing ... Even the rift between the student organisation Azasm on the one hand and Azaso and
Cosas on the other, seemed to widen further as they were forced to take
sides. Cosas and Azaso declared their commitment to the Charter while
Azasm stood for the Manifesto. In fact, organisations which support the
Manifesto do not even regard the Charter as an alternative. As far as
they are concerned, it is already in the archives and not worth a debate.'
This criticism of the Freedom Charter at this Conference (as already poin
ted
out) led to the South African Allied Workers' Union (Saawu), the General
and Allied Workers' Union (Gawu), the Congress of South African Studen
ts
(Cosas) and the Azanian Students' Organisation (Azaso) dissociating
themselves from the National Forum and issuing to the press the followin
g
statement, which was printed in The Sowetan of the 24th June, 1983:
'We reiterate our uncompromising commitment to the historic Freedom
Charter as the only democratic document drafted in the history of the
liberation struggle. The Charter stands out from all other alternatives
for change in South Africa, not only because of the manner in which it
came into being, but also because of the demands reflected in it. It can,
therefore, never be substituted without the will of the majority. Any attempt by an individual or group to discredit or undermine it can only
be seen as an act of betrayal of the aspirations of all the people of South
Africa.
It is noteworthy that the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress saw the need to address the people of South Africa and
to warn against this anti-Freedom Charter trend, which poses as a superrevolutionary and 'socialist' phenomenon. In the June 26th statement of t
he
same year, the NEC said:
'We further call on the struggling people of our country to be vigilant
in the face of the determined efforts of those who, while posing as
socialists, champions of the working class and defenders of Black pride,
seek to divide the people and divert them from the pursuit of the goals
enshrined in the Freedom Charter. Through their activities, these
elements show hatred for the Charter and for mass united action, no less
virulent than that displayed by the Pretoria regime.'
The organisers of the National Forum Conference will most probably tell
us that they were organising a forum for discussion and to create unity of
82
the oppressed people against the Botha Constitution and the Koornhof
Genocide Bills. There is not the slightest doubt that any attempt at unifying the oppressed people for a determined struggle against the fraudulen
t
constitution and death bills is a good thing. No one is argumg against the
fact that the building of unity is and remains the paramount task for all
politically conscious South Africans irrespective of their ideological persuasion. But the banner of 'Unity' must not be a false signboard; the cry
for unity must not be made to conceal disuniting activities and intentions,
which, it is hoped, the masses of our people will not be able to see.
At the height of the efforts to form a united front of lovers of freedom
and democracy to oppose the Botha constitutional fraud, when the mass
es
of our people were rallying around the Freedom Charter, when everyone
was moved by the desire to preserve people's unity against oppression
and to demonstrate the political strength and the moral prestige of our
freedom struggle in the formation of the United Democratic Front - at this
very time, the National Forum Committee suddenly, without the slightest
apparent need, called for a conference to adopt some 'Manifesto of the
Azanian People.' Can such an effort be called unity?
As for the critics of the Freedom Charter, for them to flout the decisions
of a truly representative historic Congress of the People, which drew up
the Freedom Charter, and equally to disregard the overwhelming
democratic opinion of the mass movement at present taking shape in Sou
th
Africa, for them to dissociate themselves from those solemn demands for
people's democracy, is to advocate, at best, opportunism and, at worst,
functionalism.
The Freedom Charter, a Uniting Force
The Freedom Charter is a statement of aims, it is a definition of the goals
of our liberation movement, it is the sum total of our national democratic
aspirations and the new democratic life that we need. On the basis of the
Freedom Charter are founded the corner-stones of our principles of
freedom and democracy. The Freedom Charter attempts, as Chief Albert
Luthuli said in his biography, Let My People Go:
'To give flesh and blood meaning in the South African setting, to such
words as democracy, freedom, liberty. If the Charter is examined it will
be seen that freedom means the opening up of the opportunity to all
South Africans to live full and abundant lives in terms of country, community and individual.'
The defeat of the racist regime of South Africa depends on every fighter
for freedom grasping fully the meaning, significance and purpose of the
Freedom Charter. The Charter is no patchwork collection of utopian
demands, it is no jumble of reforms clothed in socialist rhetoric, but a unit
ing
force of all the people struggling for democracy and for their national right
s;
it is therefore a mirror of a South Africa yet to be won. Its ten clauses expose our national oppression by a racist autocracy and our national exploi
ta83
tion by foreign imperialist interests. Since its adoption in 1955, the Free
dom
Charter has crystallised the ideological trend of the progressive movemen
ts
in South Africa.
It is a revolutionary document indeed because its implementation is impossible without the complete dismantling of the whole State of white
supremacy and the political and economic foundation on which it is found
ed. Approached in a proper spirit, the Freedom Charter is indeed a unitin
g
creed for those who want liberation in South Africa. It is with this reason
in mind that Nelson Mandela wrote in an article, Freedom in Our Lifetime
in Liberation of June 1956:
'Few people will deny, therefore, that the adoption of the Charter is an
event of major political significance in the life of this country ... Never
before has any document or conference been so widely acclaimed and
discussed by the democratic movement in South Africa. Never before
has any document or conference constituted such a serious and formidable challenge to the racial and anti-popular policies of the country. For the first time in the history of our country the democratic forces,
irrespective of race, ideological conviction, party affiliation or religious
belief have renounced and discarded racialism in all its ramifications,
clearly defined their aims and objects and united in a common programme of action.'
Yet for the advocates of the Azanian Manifesto this political stand of the
Freedom Charter is not revolutionary enough, for they, as the masters of
the theory of socialism, want to bring about a socialist workers' republic
in 'Azania'! Says the general secretary of Azapo in the October issue oi
Drum
magazine:
'The problem with the Charter seems to be that it is co-optable by the
capitalist structure. The Manifesto of the Azananian people is socialist.
The Charterists have a block ... they get into a dead end street.'
Yes, it is true, as we shall demonstrate in greater detail later, unlike the
Azanian Manifesto (which pretends to be socialist), the Freedom Charter
is not a socialist document but a national democratic document. The
Freedom Charter is based on the historic realities of our country, and one
of those realities is that all black people, workers and non-workers, are
nationally oppressed and are consequently involved in a national
democratic revolution. The Freedom Charter thus asserts the necessity fo
r
the creation of a people's government as a principled alternative to racist
apartheid rule.
Political struggle is not a game of rag dolls. What appear to be rag dolls
to our anti-Freedom Charterists are actually people, men and women stru
ggling against Pass Laws, Group Areas, Bantu Education, land dispossession, fascist brutality, low wages, super-exploitation, and so on; in short,
fighting for national freedom and democracy. To ignore this, to favour only the production of slogans that correspond more with one's fancy than
concrete reality, would be childish playing at politics, and irresponsibility.
84
Perhaps the protagonists of the Azanian Manifesto are sincere socialists
and not 'ideologically lost political bandits' as Zinzi Mandela called them
- however, their probable sincerity is not the point. We know of a lot of
socialists in South Africa who have great respect for our Freedom Charter
,
and equally (if not more than anybody else) who fight for its realisation.
The point is, why do the 'socialist' gentlemen of Azania scorn a democrati
c
programme for a people's republic? Why do they (for the sake of socialis
m)
want to skip the national democratic revolution, skipping the political interests of the people as a whole?
The real essence of the present phase of our revolution is not the winning
of socialism but, as the Freedom Charter reflects, the winning of people's
democracy, a true republic with power to the people, all the people! The
drafters of the Azanian Manifesto fail to see the revolutionary significance
of this step, that is, the significance of the struggle for true national independence and self-determination.
The Ideological Struggle
Imperialism maintains itself in power today not only through force but also
by ideological manipulation. The real aim of imperialism in the ideological
field is to mislead our people, to cause a split in our ranks, to attempt to
diffuse our people's revolutionary zeal into an impotent quest for reforms.
Not unusually, quasi-leaders are groomed, miseducated and let loose to
carry out these plans.
In view of this it would be ridiculous to ignore the fact that those who
oppose the Freedom Charter become toys in the hands of imperialism.
Everything must be done to enlighten our people, to equip them with
tools to understand the line of march and thereby consolidate our
democratic ranks. The imperialists, quite obviously, hate our Freedom
Charter, and would love to see the South African people opt for a less
revolutionry document, some kind of reforms or even, for that matter, one
document that looks super-revolutionary in form but which is reactionary
in essence.
In view of this ideological offensive against our national democratic move
ment and its attempts to discredit the Freedom Charter, it becomes imperative to ask the question: are there ideological trends in the national
liberation movement? The answer is: Yes. Those of us who have
experienced factionalism during the long years of our struggle against op-
pression have also found that the oppressors always try to foment splits
in the national liberation movement on ideological and other grounds using as their main instrument racial prejudice, chauvinism, tribalism or
anti-communism. The question of ideological struggle is therefore not an
abstract one, nor of purely academic interest. It is inseparably linked with
the national liberation struggle, and is in keeping with the day-to-day
historical demands of our revolution.
85
AMC Position Must Be Defined
Even in South Africa, where national oppression seems to dictate to all o
ppressed people the inevitable need to unite and agree on what to fight for
,
there are always remarkably different ideological trends. And our movement owes its present shape and position to the bitter struggle it has foug
ht
over the years (even within itself) for ideological clarity against narrow national opportunism, liberalism, ultra-left Trotskyist childishness, and so on
.
Our real life and actual history has meant exactly this ideological struggle
.
Chief Luthuli said, in a special Presidential message at the end of 1955:
'Faced as we are with the battle for freedom it seems a wise stand to say
that the African National Congress should not dissipate its energies by indulging in internal ideological feuds - a fight on 'isms.' It is not practical
and logical, however, to expect Congress to be colourless ideologically.
She must in some way define or re-define her stand ...'
A struggle against a trend, therefore, which our entire movement
recognises as an ideological trend contrary to the interests of genuine
liberation, may imply superseding considerations of unity at all costs. And
the history of our revolution has shown that the struggle for unity cannot
be conducted at all costs, even at the cost of losing sight of the sacred g
oals
we are striving for, at the cost of diverting from genuine emancipation. W
e
take our orientation in this political sea, not by the ships sailing with us
on the sea, but by a proven guide, a 'Northern Star,' an ideological
lighthouse built on an historic foundation and developed within the strate
gy
of the world revolutionary process. Unity, yes, but for the struggle against
the colonial system of white supremacy, not for the establishment of
ideological peace with opportunism.
Theory ©f Revolution
The strength of our ideological creed must therefore not only be in its unifying force, but also in its ability to withstand the test of factionalism and
ideological opposition. Today when we look back at the political history
of the ANC and its allies, it becomes quite obvious that our movement co
uld
not have preserved (let alone developed) itself as the vanguard organisation in the South African revolution had it not upheld the principle of
ideological clarity and formed a single front in the political, economic and
ideological struggle against settler colonialism and imperialism. The lead
ing
place of our movement derives also from our vigilant attention to the
ideological aspect of the revolutionary movement of the oppressed masse
s.
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. To
defend such a theory, which to the best of our knowledge we consider
to be true, against unfounded attacks and attempts to corrupt it is not to
imply that we are an enemy of all criticism. We are defending unity agains
t
the disrupters of unity, we are defending the theory of revolution that has
been historically proven.
86
The Struggle Against Opportunism
It is this political and ideological cohesion of our democratic movement
which makes us stand as the leaders of all others, a position which is inconceivable without an irreconcilable struggle against political opportunism. The democratic movement that is developing in South Africa, inspired by the Freedom Charter, will retain and further develop its militant
unity by also opposing opportunist ideological trends and correcting
political mistakes at the level of the theory of our revolution, whether thes
e
are committed with good or ill intentions.
'Socialism' is undoubtedly the most fashionable slogan at the present
period, for even our liberal 'friends,' and narrow nationalists, understand
that it is the position one adopts to socialism, generally speaking, that differentiates a progressive from a reactionary in all countries. But it is very
important (for our theoretically-grounded organisers) to give to our people a concrete understanding of the course our revolution will follow, that
is, the stages it will necessarily pass through. It is such an understanding,
based on the theory of the South African revolution, that will make it clear
that the political situation in South Africa does not by any means make th
e
question of the socialist revolution the immediate task of the struggle. It
will make clear, instead, that our immediate aim is to win the objectives
of the national revolution expressed in the Freedom Charter, more particularly to achieve the national emancipation of the Black people and to
destroy the political and economic power of the racist ruling class.
Anti-Communist Hysteria
There must be some strange mechanism in the thinking of the imperialist
s
which makes them believe that once they have described something as
'Communist' then all members of the human race will want to run away
from it. The racists of South Africa have always thought like this. When,
in 1956, the Pretoria government arrested 156 of our leaders and charge
d
them with high treason, arguing that the Freedom Charter was a documen
t
inspired by Moscow, they hoped they would scare the masses of our peo
ple from the Freedom Charter. The masses, being oppressed by imperialism and racism, never moved in the hoped-for direction; on the contrary, they are irresistibly attracted by the Freedom Charter and almost
everything that our enemies hate. In the end, the Treason Trial failed to
diagnose Communism in the Freedom Charter.
Opportunism in South Africa has equally tried to call the Freedom Charter
a 'Communist' document inspired by Moscow. It was the Liberal Party in
the Fifties, typical of opportunism, which joined the racist government in
opposing the Freedom Charter, and saw behind it a Communist plot. This
party's anti-Communism found its extreme exponent in Jordan Ngubane,
a journalist who finally broke with the ANC in late 1955 and became a
leading member of the Liberal Party. The Freedom Charter's ultimate aim
,
87
claimed Ngubane, was 'to condition the African people for the purpose
of accepting communism via the back door,' (An African Explains Apartheid, New York, 1963, p.99). He further charged that the Communists su
pported a deliberately vague document in order to accustom Africans to
the idea of nationalisation. In a strange revelation of how liberalism and
narrow nationalism finds itself embracing Pretoria's hatred of Communis
m,
Ngubane further wrote in his book (p. 179) that 'the African's and Afrikane
r's
hatred of Communism on this plane is so intense that an alignment between the two is no longer as remote an eventuality as events might sugge
st.'
Similarly, the PAC factionalists proclaimed that the Freedom Charter was
a Communist document, in this way virtually joining the Pretoria government in proclaiming the moral justification for the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950. And, as we all know, in terms of this South African
legislation and judicial interpretation, a Communist is anybody who opposes apartheid, whether this is done in the form of a sermon from the
church pulpit, a funeral oration at the graveside or anti-apartheid campai
gning in the cultural field.
It is Apartheid that Robs our People
By diverting the attention of the oppressed masses from apartheid to their
manufactured version of Communism, giving it a distorted meaning to sui
t
their intentions, the racists and their ideological allies equally play the g
ame
of the imperialists; except that they never score goals in the hearts and
minds of our people. Our people know that it is not Communism but apartheid that deprives them of their most elementary human rights; that it is
not Communism but apartheid that robs them of their right to take part in
the administration of their own country; that it is not Communism but apar
theid that deprives them of a fair share of the wealth they produce; that
it is not Communism but apartheid that deprives them of the right to live
together with their families wherever they might choose, and live as hum
an
beings.
The Communist bogey has never deterred our people from upholding
the principles of the Freedom Charter and the democratic movement led
by the ANC and its allies. Contemporary events show irrefutably that, slo
wly
but surely, our politically conscious people are marching with the banner
of the Freedom Charter held high - holding high the banner of people's
democracy. Such a people's movement is invincible! Such a people cannot be deceived! Such a people cannot be stopped in their tracks by som
e
'inspired by Moscow' scare gimmicks.
Why on earth do our enemies and opponents imagine that they are the
only ones who know what Communism really is? Why do they think they
are the only ones who store Marxist-Leninist literature on the bookshelve
s?
Why do they imagine that the people of South Africa do not know what
the SACP is and what it stands for? Do our enemies and the opportunists
alike imagine that the members of the ANC do not understand the basis
of the alliance with the South African Communist Party?
The Two Pillars of our Revolution
The Pretoria regime might have banned the SACP, but its history is well
known by our people. Communist leaders such as Moses Kotane, J B Ma
rks
and Moses Mabhida have always been admired by our people. And the
members of the ANC fully understand why both the ANC and the SACP
are two hands of the same body, why they are two pillars of our revolution
.
The South African Communist Party is the party of the working class, the
disciplined and advanced party that has no interests separate from those
of the working people. The Communist Party, basing itself on the science
of Marxism-Leninism, inevitably works for a united front of national liberation. It strives to unite all sections and classes of oppressed and democra
tic
people for a national democratic revolution (without making all such clas
ses
and peoples necessarily its members), to destroy white domination. It figh
ts,
like the ANC, to restore the land and wealth of the country to the people,
and guarantee democracy, freedom and equality of rights and opportuniti
es
to all. From its founding conference in 1921, the Communist Party has
demanded and fought for complete freedom and equality for the blacks,
and has led the workers and oppressed people in numerous struggles
against the Pass Laws and unemployment, against fascism at home and
abroad. Such is the South African Communist Party as known by us
members of the African National Congress and all honest patriots in Sout
h
Africa. Members of the Party are not Russians or mysterious Kremlin age
nts
as they have been slandered by imperialism and hated by the narrow nationalists; they are politically committed men and women in the thick of
the South African revolution, who have worked hard to help build the ANC
,
the trade union movement and other people's organisations. As said the
Statement of the National Executive of the ANC on the expulsion of the
Group of Eight:
'Let it be made abundantly clear that the policies of racialism and anticommunism have been and still are diametrically opposed to the
policies, traditions and practices of the African National Congress of
South Africa. Pieces of legislation of the racist regime of South Africa,
like the 'Suppression of Communism Act' were not only vigorously opposed by the ANC in 1950, but... never in any way deterred or changed the policy of the ANC regarding communism or its communist
members and leaders. There certainly will never be an endorsement
of the "suppression" of Communists within the ANC.'
The Manifesto of the Azanian People identifies 'racial capitalism' as the
enemy of the South African people. It states:
'Our struggle for national liberation is directed against the system of
racial capitalism which holds the people of Azania in bondage for the
benefit of the small minority of white capitalists and their allies, the white
working class and the reactionary sections of the Black middle class.
89
The struggle against apartheid is no more than a point of departure for
our liberation efforts. Apartheid will be eradicated with the system of
racial capitalism. The working class, inspired by revolutionary consciousness, is the driving force of our struggle. They alone can end the
system as it stands today, because they alone have nothing at all to lose.
They have a world to gain in a democratic, anti-racist and socialist Azania
What does this mean? The following second resolution of the National
Forum Conference will probably give more light:
'That this National Forum notes that:
1. The struggle waged by the toiling masses is nationalist in character
and socialist in content;
A nationalist struggle and the socialist struggle are not one and the same
thing, and they do not belong to the same historical period. The two repre
sent two distinct categories of the revolution.
Nations in the Making
In history, it was the bourgeoisie that first fought and led the struggles for
national consolidation against feudal seclusive principalities. Impelled by
the developing productive forces, which also engendered corresponding
bourgeois relations of production, the bourgeoisie brought together different nationalities into single nations around a common economic life. N
ationalism, strictly speaking, has always been an ideological echo of this
nation-formation process. Nations include both the national bourgeoisie
and the working class of that nation. The latter, however, is exploited by
the bourgeoisie of its own nation, and therefore struggles against this exploitation. It is in the course of this class struggle (led by a working class
Party) that the working class of all nations leam of their common fate as
a class. Proletarian internationalism, and not nationalism, therefore, is fir
mly
connected with socialism and the irreconcilable struggle of the working
class against all the bourgeoisie.
Scientific socialists actually teach the working class that their enemies
are the bourgeoisie, including their own national bourgeoisie. National op
pression, in fact, greatly hampers the solidarity action of the workers of
the oppressed and oppressor nations, who otherwise should be struggling against their common exploiters, namely the capitalists. During the er
a
of imperialism as well, the nation-formation process continues, but under
conditions of the external economic and colonising forces, hence the national liberation phenomenon is the political struggle for self-determinatio
n
of these young (often called developing) nations.
So, to talk of a nationalist struggle implies, most logically, a struggle that
may be against imperialism, fascism or racism, as the case may be. But t
o
proceed and say that the same nationalist struggle is also socialist in con
tent is to make real confusion.
The reality is that the chief content of the present phase of our revolution is the national liberation of the black people. It is actually impossible
90
for South Africa to advance to socialism before the national liberation of
the black oppressed nation.
The drafters of the resolution of the National Forum and the Azanian
Manifesto were unable to distinguish a national democratic revolution fro
m
a socialist revolution. And to talk blindly of an 'anti-capitalist' struggle at
this phase demonstrates an incapacity to understand the urgent political
question in South Africa, that of national liberation. To deny this in favour
of abstract socialism is only a vain attempt to appear profound.
Socialist Consciousness
Have the National Forum gentlemen taught the toiling masses in South Af
rica
about socialism? How then has the National Forum ascertained that our
people are no longer fighting for national liberation, but for socialism now?
Socialism is a science and it must be conceived as such (said Engels
repeatedly). To bring socialist consciousness to the working class is not
a task performed once in some meeting of zealous university students; it
is, most obviously, a painstaking task for serious working class organisers
.
It is therefore not enough to devote one's efforts to learning by heart all
socialist slogans and then call oneself a socialist, or, equally, not enough
to imagine that the 'toiling masses' should in all probability be struggling
for a 'socialist content' by now, and not for national freedom.
The South African Communist Party, whose members are striving not onl
y
for national liberation but finally for the destruction of the capitalist system
itself, also agree with the demands of the Freedom Charter, for they are
quite aware that the black working class needs freedom from national oppression. Led by the ANC in alliance with the SACP, our people demand
nothing less than complete transfer of political power to the people, which
implies the immediate overthrow of racist autocracy, of the colonial state
of national domination and its replacement by a state of the whole people
.
A People's Assembly
To establish such a people's democratic republic in South Africa, it is absolutely necessary that the political sovereignty be vested in a revolution
ary
people's assembly, a constituent body of people's representatives electe
d
directly on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, an assembly that sha
ll
have supreme authority and power to form a new constitution for South
Africa. It is in pursuance of this political goal, one which cannot come abo
ut
unless our democratic revolution has achieved complete victory over the
apartheid regime, that our revolution is aiming at political seizure of powe
r
by the people.
A people's assembly that can have the power to create a new constitutio
n
for South Africa, and not merely to fit itself into a constitutional arrangement manufactured by the oppressor and the exploiter, can only be an ou
tcome of a victorious mass insurrection, a conquering political and military
force of the armed masses led by the African National Congress and the
91
People's Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe. It is this kind of assembly alone, bo
m
of a revolutionary victory by the whole people, that is capable of achieving the aims of the Freedom Charter and subsequently of defending the
new state of people's democracy against racist and imperialist
counter-revolution.
We need to emphasise that those who do not rely on the armed masses
in their political struggle will always seek to come to terms with the racist
regime, with its proposed constitutions, and such people will not accompl
ish
the aims of the Freedom Charter, even if they most sincerely desire to.
Arguing in favour of establishing this new national order in tsarist Russia,
as a necessary step before socialist revolution, a new order that would rea
lly
express the will of the whole people, Lenin pointed out in The Two Tactic
s:
'The absence of unity on questions of socialism and in the struggle for
socialism does not preclude singleness of will for a republic. To forget
this would be tantamount to forgetting the logical and historic difference
between a democratic revolution and a socialist revolution. To forget
this would be tantamount to forgetting the character of the democratic
revolution as one of the whole people: if it is 'of the whole people' that
means that there is 'singleness of will' precisely in so far as this revolution meets the needs and requirements of the whole people ... The time
will come when the struggle against Russian autocracy will end, and
the period of democratic revolution will have passed in Russia; it will
then be ridiculous even to speak of 'singleness of will' of the proletariat
and the peasantry, about a democratic dictatorship, etc. When that time
comes we shall deal directly with the question of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat and speak of it in greater detail. At present the
party of the advanced class cannot but strive most energetically for the
democratic revolution's decisive victory over tsarism.'
The anti-Freedom Charterists, however, tell us in their 'Manifesto' that the
toiling masses are already struggling for socialism. The 'masses' of the N
ational Forum, let us not forget, want socialism here and now, they are tire
d
of waiting, that those struggling for a national democratic revolution and
the demands enshrined in the Freedom Charter are only wasting their tim
e.
A Common Will to be Free
The moment will come when the struggle against racist supremacy will
end, and the period of the national democratic revolution will have passed in South Africa. Within the bounds of this national democratic revolution, however, there is a basis for all oppressed classes and strata having
a common will; the Freedom Charter is such a common political will to
be free.
Where does this common will for national liberation come from? Is the
question of national liberation merely our fancy, or some kind of tactical
choice among a number of strategic options? No, it is no fancy, it is no ta
ctical choice - it derives from the historical fact that South Africa has not
92
yet broken the chains of colonialism which held the African continent in
subjection. The struggle of the rest of Africa, and that of South Africa included, is one and indivisible. South Africa is not some extension of Euro
pe
or America, but is part of the African continent, with its history of struggle
against colonialism. In their fight against apartheid settler colonialism, our
people are fighting to complete the African revolution.
From the time of the first white settlement, established by the Dutch East
India Company more than 300 years ago, a pattern of colonial rule was in
itiated for the national oppression of the black people, which has never
ended till today. During the wars of dispossession, the colonial forces dr
ove
the indigenous population from the best lands, and seized their cattle. Th
ey
subdued them by armed conquest, and forced them into their service. Th
e
1910 establishment of the Union of South Africa by British imperialism an
d
the Afrikaner settler community was based on this dispossession and oppression of the African people, and was designed to deprive them of independence and freedom. Rather than making South Africa an independent state for the black majority, this constitutional arrangement reinforce
d
and perpetuated their colonial status.
The Position of the Whites
What is the position of the whites? As the oppressor nation they enjoy
privileges in South Africa. They monopolise nearly all political, economic,
educational and social opportunities. What makes this structure unique a
nd
adds to its complexity is that the oppressor nation is not, as in a typical
colonial relationship, situated in a geographically distinct mother country,
but is settled within its border. The roots of the oppressor nation have be
en
embedded in our country for more than three centuries, which makes the
oppressor people alien only in the historic sense of origin.
The formation of the African National Congress in 1912 was the organisa
tional manifestation of the urge of the oppressed nation to form an indep
endent national state in the whole of South Africa, a matter that had been th
e
privilege of the whites alone. It is the form and not the essence of colonialism in South Africa that is of a special type, so that we therefore hav
e
our own version of the situation in which the Portuguese or the British na-
tion is oppressing the black nation. Colonial peoples are nations, too, in
the sense that the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor nations
and the former are not allowed the chance to develop all the characteristi
cs
or properties nations showed in their classical evolution in Europe under
the bourgeoisie (hence the non-applicability of the 'nation' definition as
given by Stalin). In so far as the colonial peoples possess this right to self
determination, that is, to political separation from colonial national rule
(which may not necessarily imply geographical secession), there is the co
lonised nation's right to independence.
This characterisation provides the theoretical foundation for the conclusion that the main content of the immediate struggle for change in South
93
Africa is the national liberation of the black people. This means there exists an objective 'singleness of will' for the black people, irrespective of
their class affiliation, to be free from this colonialism of a special type. National freedom in South Africa is not only in the interests of the black
workers, but also of the black middle strata.
Apartheid colour bar determines the limits of the economic position of
people in this stratum, in spite of whatever improvements they can have.
In their daily life they come up against all the humiliations meted out to
the black man. Unlike its counterparts in apartheid-free capitalist
economies, the black middle stratum in South Africa, in the words of Slov
o,
'faces a total racist bar against their entry into higher political and econom
ic
preserves of the privileged white minority.' This black middle stratum is
quite capable of marching side by side with the workers and rural toilers
in the national democratic revolution.
The Charter and the National Question
Does the Freedom Charter, by asserting the unity of the blacks and white
s
in the struggle for democracy in South Africa, and further claiming that S
outh
Africa belongs to all its people, black and white, deny the existence of
the oppressor-oppressed relationship in our country? Does it equate the
oppressor's interests with those of the oppressed? Are we equating 'the
horse and the rider, as the Pan-Africanist Congress says?
There is nothing to suggest that the Freedom Charter denies the national
contradiction in South Africa, the contradiction between the racist regime
of national oppression and the oppressed black people. The Freedom
Charter nowhere pretends that blacks are not oppressed and are therefor
e
enjoying equal rights with their white countrymen.
The Preamble of the Freedom Charter first rejects the racist premise of
the South African constitutional life, and recognises that the real South Af
rica
is inhabited by all who live in it and consequently belongs, not to one section of the inhabitants, but to all of them. It then proceeds immediately to
challenge the authority of a government founded on national oppression,
by asserting that in South Africa there is a 'horse and rider' situation, and
that 'our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and
peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality.' In
this way, the Freedom Charter, in approaching the national question in
South Africa, focuses unambiguously and accurately on the national relationship between oppressor and oppressed.
In other words, the Charter does not underestimate the urge of the op-
pressed black people towards the formation of a truly independent nation
al
state in South Africa, and their need to exercise the right to selfdetermination. The Freedom Charter, from every angle, asserts the right
of the black people to political self-determination just as it is exercised by
the white people, so that every man and woman shall have the right to
vote for and stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws.
94
But then the Freedom Charter is not like Jeremiah's Book of Lamentations, it is a political document that seeks solutions to the national oppres
sion and inequality in South Africa; if it only mourned or interpreted our
plight, and failed to suggest change and the manner of change that shoul
d
be, it would cease to be a revolutionary document. The Freedom Charter
proposes the solution of the national question in South Africa by the creation of a single South African nation, at present in the process of birth.
A Free Country, A Free People
We stand for a free South Africa, we maintain, for a free people who will
enjoy equal rights whatever their colour, race or creed. It is for that reaso
n
that we are opposed to the narrow nationalism which would seek to creat
e
a caste society. The words, 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, blac
k
and white,' embody the principle that all people can live in South Africa
whatever their colour, and that this is their right that will be defended constitutionally, not a mere privilege or favour extended to one section by
another. The future constitutional law in South Africa shall guarantee and
defend the right of all peoples that inhabit South Africa, irrespective of the
colour of their skin, to South African citizenship, and such citizens shall
live in equality and democracy. Our future constitution shall ensure that,
unlike what it is today, South Africa shall not be a country divided unto
itself and dominated by a particular national group. And those in our coun
try
who desire the ideals of genuine freedom, not chauvinist cocoons, will inevitably rally round the banner of the Freedom Charter. We must develop
a revolutionary perspective of democracy that is uncompromisingly hostil
e
to narrow nationalism.
While not a socialist document, the Freedom Charter nonetheless has
these two dimensions: the present and the future. It neither loses touch
with present realities - the robbery of our birthright - nor does it ignore
future conditions, when present circumstances shall have been changed,
when the two nations shall have fused and merged through the revolution
into a single South African nation. While championing the cause of the op
pressed black people, the Freedom Charter equally strives to create a
single nation on South African soil, the most logical development in an
economy that has reached the capitalist level of development.
These two distinct but closely interconnected dimensions of the Freedom
Charter correspond to the historical fluidity of the South African situation.
For this reason it would be incorrect to argue that the Freedom Charter
cannot transcend the year 1955, and to deny its relevance in the future,
during the consummation of the national democratic phase of our revolution. This is clearly so, because the democratic demands it makes have
not yet been attained.
United Democratic Movement
The Freedom Charter lays a revolutionary basis for a united democratic
95
movement of all forces opposed to oppression, irrespctive of racial affiliation. In this way the enemy is correctly defined, not as white people, but
as a system of white supremacy and national domination; similarly, revolu
tionaries do not have to include the likes of Matanzima, Mangope or
Mphephu, even if their pigment is blacker than coal. We sincerely question the honesty of a nationalist who claims that he strives to create a non
racial South Africa whilst showing an intolerant attitude to non-black revol
utionaries. We question, even more, the sincerity of a socialist who creates
a Chinese Wall between members of the proletarian class, thereby prettifying apartheid. With the same perception, one of the greatest black
American leaders, Henry Winston, warned:
'Obviously, the go-it-alone neo-Pan Africanist skin strategy is but the
reverse side of the white ruling class strategy in this country. The neoPan Africanist strategy objectively reinforces that of the monopolists,
helps them retain power through manipulation of their twin weapons
of racism and anti-Communism. While the ruling class promotes racist
separatism for whites, the black skin strategists are busy working the
other side of the street by advocating separatism for black people.'
(Strategy for a Black Agenda, New York, 1973)
'Our new 'socialist' teachers of 'Azania' should have known in drafting thei
r
Manifesto that by simply leaving the question of the position of the white
workers at the level of 'allies of the capitalists,' and further to maintain in
their arguments that there is no place even for the serious democratic wh
ites
within the liberation organisations, they are travelling on the skin strategic
path mentioned by Henry Winston. This is an even worse crime for people claiming to be socialists. The socialists that we are acquainted with ar
e
the kind that heed the words of Lenin, who once advised the Jewish proletariat that:
'We must act as a single and centralised militant organisation, have
behind us the whole of the proletariat, without distinction of language
and personality, a proletariat whose unity is cemented by the continual
joint solution of problems of theory and practice, of tactics and organisation; and we must not set up organisations that would march separately, each going on its own track; we must not weaken the force of our
offensive by breaking into numerous independent political parties; we
must not introduce estrangement and isolation and then have to heal
an artificially implanted disease with the aid of these notorious 'federation' plasters.' (Collected Works, Vol.6, p.335)
The other aspect of the national question that has led the National Forum
to reject the Freedom Charter is the clause of the Charter that says, 'All
national groups shall have equal rights.' In a 'theoretical' paper oscillating
between narrow Black Consciousness and left-wing Marxist rhetoric, Dr
Neville Alexander (who was obviously the chief theoretician of the Nation
al
Forum Conference, since his paper was adopted into the Manifesto with
precisely his formulations) told the Conference that they should reject this
96
formulation of the Freedom Charter, since it is based on the concept of
race, and a more revolutionary position would be one that 'opposes the
perpetuation of the ideology and theory of race.' Proceeding from this
theoretical premise, the National Forum has found worthy targets in the
Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses for 'their perpetuation of this four
nation or race theory.'
Nosizwe's Fertile Imagination
The title of Nosizwe's book, One Azania, One Nation, has become the rall
ying slogan of the ideological trend that opposes the Freedom Charter. It
is stated on page 97 of this book:
'It is immediately obvious that this idea of four 'national groups' has persisted from the pre-war caste interpretations of the national question
which were shared, from different theoretical points of view, by liberals,
many marxists and petty-bourgeois reformists.'
He calls this clause of the Freedom Charter 'the unambiguously liberal
bourgeois formulations of the national question in South Africa.' (p. 100)
and,
further down the page, says 'the uncomfortably close parallel between Ba
ntustan theory and the essentially pluralist theory of the Congress moveme
nt
and the SACP, together with mounting criticism both inside and outside
these organisations, has led in recent times to soul-searching and reasse
ssment which may still prove to be of great significance to the whole liberation movement in South Africa.'
On page 103, he brings forth the following judgment:
'All in all, however, it does not appear that the Congress contributions
to the continuing discussion on the national question have taken the matter much further on the theoretical level, and the patent confusions concerning concepts such as national groups, national minorities, racial
groups, nationalities, bear this out clearly.'
What particularly annoys Nosizwe about this 'national groups' theory of t
he
Freedom Charter is that:
'They (the ANC and SACP) really do perceive of the colour-caste groups,
the four so-called 'racial' groups of South Africa, as nations or national
groups who are nationally oppressed like overseas colonials. That national oppression can conceivably have a different meaning is not properly understood. It is understood in part, because the consistency
breaks down at the fundamental point concerning the right of nations
to self-determination.' (p. 110)
There is probably no other theoretical question in the history of our liberation movement that has received as much attention as the national question. True, the initial positions might not have been those that are held today, but long before the existence of the Nationalist Party of the Boers a
nd
their Bantustan theory, long before their Population Registration Act, and
even long before the Unity Movement came up with the theory that South
Africa has one nation, the South African liberation movement worked out
97
and adopted a systematic theoretical position on the national question in
South Africa based on a concrete historical perspective, a history that is
not only ignored by Nosizwe's One Azania, One Nation, but also which,
when he is forced to admit it, he dismisses from the point of view of revol
utionism and places next to the liberals and the petty-bourgeois reformists.
All National Groups Shall Have Equal Rights
Today both the ANC and the SACP recognise the existence of two nation
s
in South Africa, the oppressed and oppressor nations, and to us it is from
this division (one which forms the essence of imperialism) that our definition of the right of nations to self-determination follows.
This means liberation of the oppressed from national and colonial domina
tion, and assertion of their national right to independence. The demand
for the self-determination of the oppressed black people implies, not racia
l
domination by blacks over whites, but, on the contrary, the creation of a
non-racial democratic national state that develops on African soil, which
then, for historical reasons, can only be overwhelmingly black (hence the
correctness of the slogan of the 'Black Republic.')
This means that a victorious people's democratic revolution in South
Africa will necessarily establish majority rule and, consequently, the correction of the colonial injustice whereby the black majority was made subject to the white minority. Again, this demand for self-determination does
not mean the division of South Africa into black and white states, but is
only an expression of the need for national freedom, an inevitable deman
d
under national oppression.
And when our Freedom Charter says All National Croups Shall Have
Equal Rights, the Charter is giving a reply to the present racist policies
of the apartheid regime, which has created social differentiation between
whites, coloureds, Indians and Africans.
These groups at present differ in economic and even political privileges.
In spite of the new Botha constitutional gymnastics, there are enshrined
in the laws of South Africa a host of insulting provisions directed at the di
gnity of the black people and the humanity of the oppressed masses. In a fr
ee
South Africa, as far as this clause of the Freedom Charter is concerned,
a racist who shouts, 'Coolie', 'Hotnot' or 'Kaffir' shall be brought before
revolutionary justice charged with violating human dignity.
When the Congress movement talked about national groups, it was not
referring to nations, hence the principle of self-determination is not applie
d
to these groups in the Charter. Nations, we know, came about only at a
certain stage of productive development, whether such development was
inherently dynamic or was imposed from without by colonialism; and nations, we know, are, as Lenin said, 'an inevitable product, an inevitable
form, in the bourgeois epoch of social development.'
But what Nosizwe's learning in Marxism has forgotten to tell him is that
98
apart from nations proper, there exist what are called 'nationalities' or wha
t
the Freedom Charter calls 'national groups', and these are by no means
the same as nations.
The Land Question
What were the policies of the National Forum Conference on the land que
stion? Here is how the conference addressed itself to the question:
'And further noting that:
1. The usage of the land shall not be to the benefit of Azanians only but
for the benefit of all Africa, the Third World and the international community as a whole.'
Such was the formulation of Resolution Two on the land question. This a
pproach obviously sounds more evangelical than political. Does this suggest that South African land shall be free for use by everybody? Who are
these people in Africa, the 'Third World' and the international community
as a whole, who shall benefit from the usage of our land?
In the past and present history of South Africa, we have witnessed imperialist interests from foreign countries benefiting from our land. Obvious
ly
the socialist countries, because they do not have transnational companie
s
exploiting the lands of other peoples, have not desired, and do not desire,
to exploit our wealth. Imperialists, however, do! The South African rural
toilers have been deprived of land ownership by a racist government, and
yet the National Forum is telling them now that the usage of the land that
should actually come back to them shall benefit the international commun
ity
as a whole! And our rural masses are supposed to agree to that, to a reso
lution on their own land, made by some intellectual gentry without consultation with them, made behind their backs? Our rural people shall have
nothing to do with this turning of South African land into a garden of Eden
for the international community as a whole.
How to Distribute the Land?
The land question is a very sensitive issue, one that needs to be approac
hed with sober attitudes. The indigenous people of South Africa have foug
ht
bitter wars of resistance lasting hundreds of years because they were
deprived of the land. Today in our country all the land is controlled and
used as a monopoly by the white minority. The African people have alwa
ys
maintained their right to the land as a traditional birthright of which they have been robbed. In fact, the ANC slogan, Mayibuye
i'Afrika! is precisely this demand for the return of the African land to its
indigenous inhabitants.
The white minority has no right to be land barons while we work for them
as serfs. This is why the Freedom Charter says that The land shall be sh
ared
among those who work it.' If the present land barons and absentee
landlords want to remain on the land, our Freedom Charter rules that it
shall be a condition that they should, like others, till it. In practical terms,
99
this means that the task facing our struggle on this question is to take this
land away from exclusive white control, and to divide it among farmers
who do not exploit the labour of others, but who shall work co-operatively
to produce wealth from the soil. It is the landless peasants who till this lan
d,
and therefore it needs to be distributed among them.
Since the Freedom Charter is a statement of aims, it does not go into real
depth as to what form this distribution of the land will assume. If our national democratic revolution is not aborted, if it does not miscarry, but final
ly
ends as the revolutionary political power of the working class and the
peasantry (the people), and if the leading working class is definitely to put
its imprint on it, then we have no reason to believe that the land shall be
distributed to individual capitalist farmers. We have reason to believe, instead, that land shall be distributed in such a way that collective farms ar
e
created to exist side by side with state farms to banish famine and land
hunger.
And certainly this is very far from the assertion that the use of our land
shall be for the benefit of the international community as a whole. A revol
utionary democrat, one who understands the exact position in history and
society that a victorious national democratic revolution occupies, will reject the contention that the re-division of our land will take us back to the
era of individual landowners who will then step into the shoes of the
departed land barons. A revolutionary democrat understands that, in reso
lving the land question, the peasantry is acting in close unity with its leadin
g
ally, the working class.
In The Two Tactics, Lenin argued:
'Without thereby becoming socialist or ceasing to be petty-bourgeois,
the peasantry is capable of becoming a wholehearted and radical
adherent of the democratic revolution. The peasantry will inevitably
become such if only the course of the revolutionary events, which brings
it enlightenment, is not prematurely cut short by the treachery of the
bourgeoisie and the defeat of the proletariat. Subject to this condition,
the peasantry will inevitably become a bulwark of the revolution and
the republic, for only a completely victorious revolution can give the
peasantry everything in the sphere of agrarian reforms - everything that
the peasants desire, dream of, and truly need in order to emerge from
the mire of semi-serfdom, from the gloom of oppression and servitude,
in order to improve their living conditions, as much as they can be improved within the system of commodity production.'
And the more enlightened the rural toilers become, the more consistently
and resolutely will they stand for a complete democratic revolution; for,
unlike the bourgeoisie in South Africa, they have nothing to fear from the
people's revolution, but, on the contrary, stand to gain from it.
Let Our People Discuss the Charter
We, the upholders of the Freedom Charter, understand very well that no
100
programme, no constitution, is immutable for all time. Conditions change,
and so do attitudes. Even the most seemingly sacred or absolute principl
es
or policies should be held constantly under review, endorsed if found still
to be correct, altered or scrapped if found to be out of date.
Let our people discuss the Freedom Charter to check its relevance to
the conditions of today, let those patriots who disagree with this clause,
or that, voice their views in discussion. This is fine. Our liberation movement is not a church, it must never be measured by the criterion of some
fantastic and infallible ideal, but should always be regarded as a practical
movement of ordinary people. The Freedom Charter was drawn up by su
ch
ordinary people. But even those who might differ with this clause or that,
must realise what the Freedom Charter actually is, from an historical poin
t
of view. Whoever differs with it should at least acknowledge that it is indeed a product of the people's democratic demands in the South African
context, and that equally, developments from it have a corresponding
historical magnitude.
We defend, fight and die for, the ideals enshrined in the Freedom
Charter, not because it is an all-time document, but because it is a revolu
tionary guide to a life free of misery and oppression. It is the demands of
the people, that have yet to be won. These are the kind of ideals which
most nations achieve, ideals for which men and women stubbornly and
heroically resist torture in detention and gruelling lives in exile, ideals for
which our martyred dead stood firm and unflinching to the last minute of
their lives. Such ideals cannot be taken lightly. Such ideals need to be
defended from malicious slanders and ill-conceived political theories.
People campaigning for the demands of the Freedom Charter.
101
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
EQUAL RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
Article by Jack Simons, March 1985
Equality is the Charter's keynote. It is sounded in the Preamble's call for
the building of a democratic state 'without distinction of colour, race, sex
or belief. An identical note is struck in the clauses on government proclaiming equality of rights for all persons 'regardless of race, colour or sex
'.
The principle is extended to national groups.
In the liberated South Africa:
• All people shall have equal rights to use their own language and to
develop their own folk culture;
• All laws which discriminate on grounds of race, colour or belief shall
be repealed; while
• The preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination
and contempt shall be a punishable crime.
In its affirmation of equality the Charter is consistent with the mainstream
of world opinion reflected in the Charter of Human Rights, the convention
s
and resolutions of the United Nations that reject discrimination, the principles of the Organisation of African Unity and policy statements by the
Front Line States condemning apartheid. In global perspective the ideolo
gy
and practice of racism - white supremacy and black oppression - are
no less repugnant than slavery.
World opinion has taken a great leap forward since the end of World
War Two towards an accepted doctrine of equality of rights and freedoms
.
Contributory factors include the defeat of the Nazi-Fascist Axis, decolonis
ation, the strengthening of the socialist sector and the emergence of newly
independent African and Asian states, former victims of colonial rule. The
re
has been a shift in the balance of power, one that favours the struggle
against social evils of which racist South Africa is the supreme embodime
nt.
It is correct for the liberation movement to single out racism, colonialism
and apartheid as the main enemy, since they are the main source of oppression. There is more to the struggle than a bare rejection, however; its
complement is a positive determination to unite South Africans of all national groups in a common cause for a single culture. This was the vision
of the ANC's founders and it has gained rather than lost credibility in the
years that followed. We can now speak with realism of moving towards
one South Africa, one people and one nation.
102
The Roots of Inequality
The closer South Africa advances towards a unified society the greater wi
ll
be the resistance from divisive forces represented by 'tribalism' and
'racism'. Both have historical roots which can be taken for granted in this
essay. Of more significance for the present discussion is the contradictio
n
between the forces making for unity and the obstacles they encounter. Bo
th
result from South Africa's special brand of capitalism. Like capitalism
everywhere, it breaks down national barriers in the search for a common
market; but recreates them in a new form within the national economy
by means of race discrimination and tribal segregation.
Racism and tribalism occur in a class society in which differences of
language and culture become an adjunct to the primary cleavage betwee
n
the owners of property and the propertyless workers. The exploiting class
,
trading in South Africa as a national or racial category, perpetuate their
supremacy by dividing the dispossessed into competing groups, fighting
one another for land, jobs and power instead of combining their forces for
untied action against the oppressor.
The Freedom Charter recognises the linkage between capital and
discriminatory inequality, at least to the extent of calling for the return of
the country's national wealth to the people, the nationalisation of the
'mineral wealth beneath the soil', and public ownership of the banks and
monopoly industry. These objectives are compatible also with state
monopoly capitalism, however, and can hardly be considered a socialist
programme based on public ownership, a planned economy, workers'
management and the payment of wages according to the value of the
workers' contribution to the total product.
The founders were radical liberals rather than socialist egalitarians. In
spite of the transition to revolutionary armed struggle, Congress has
adhered to the original programme of uniting 'all tribes and clans of vario
us
tribes or races and by means of combined effort and united political
organisation to defend their freedom, rights and privileges'. Added to a
desire for continuity and respect for tradition, there is a Congress realisation that most peasant-workers, who form the bulk of the working class
under apartheid, are not yet class conscious enough or ready for the ado
ption of a socialist solution.
Whatever the reason, Congress is not a workers' party with a socialist
programme. The liberation struggle is directed against white domination
and national oppression; its objective, in the words of President Oliver T
ambo, is 'a united, non-racial and democratic South Africa'. The equality it
seeks is formal, guaranteed by law, and providing equal rights to all people. A formal, legal equality of rights is an essential element of a democra
cy.
Two Revolutions
Another kind of equality is factual. It guarantees actual equality of power
and opportunity by transferring the means of production to public owner103
ship and distributing rewards under the rule: from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs. This is socialist equality which the
Freedom Charter does not contemplate. At the present stage of the revol
ution, the liberation movement aims to uproot national oppression and
release the economy from control by transnational monopolies. It is not
directed against the owners of domestic capital.
The distinction is not acceptable to all groups opposed to the apartheid
regime. Some, like the exponents of 'workerist tendencies' and self-styled
'Marxists', reject all forms of capital, emphasise the class struggle and set
their targets at the achievement of socialism.
The ANC's position is that just as there are two kinds of equality, so there
are two kinds of revolution, separate yet intertwined. One is the national
democratic revolution for equal rights; the other is the socialist revolution
for public ownership, workers' control and a classless society. The nation
al
revolution for equal rights is the special province of the oppressed nationalities; the socialist revolution takes the form of a class struggle led by
the working class of all national groups. The two revolutions co-exist,
operating side by side. They interact, blending at many points and fructifying each other.
This is not the place to debate the separation of function or the nature of
the alliance. It is sufficient for present purposes to note that the partnership is an established reality, bom out of struggle against the common
enemy, nurtured by sacrifices on the battlefield and watered by the blood
of martyrs. They are as closely knit as Siamese twins. To separate them
would need a surgical operation which might kill or cripple both.
Open Membership
Another departure from the ANC's declared position is represented by
the Black Consciousness Movement and an assortment of 'Africanists' w
ho
recommend the exclusion of the non-Africans, notably whites, from the
ranks and/or leadership of the liberation movement. A related issue is the
alleged existence of 'tribalism' in Congress, giving rise to preferential treat
ment of members belonging to one or other language or regional group.
Complaints of tribalism are, however, marginal, serving perhaps to
strengthen the hand of persons making a bid for top positions in the leade
rship, and can therefore be safely ignored in the present discussion.
A convenient starting point is the constitution. The first published in 1919,
provided for three kinds of individual members, all required to belong to
the 'aboriginal races of Africa'. This proviso was interpreted to include Col
oured on the assumption that the ancestors of at least one parent were
aborigines. Ordinary membership was open to men over the age of 18
years; honorary membership could be conferred on persons who had
rendered outstanding service to the people; while auxiliary membership,
without voting rights, existed for members of the Bantu Women's National
League, who provided shelter and food for the delegates.
104
A new constitution adopted in 1943 removed the restrictions on women
and non-Africans. Clause 3 stipulated that 'Any person over 17 years of
age
who is willing to subscribe to the aims of Congress and to abide by its Co
nstitution and Rules may become an individual member upon application
to the nearest branch'.
The 1958 Constitution retained the open membership clause. Section 3(a
)
declares that 'Membership of Congress shall be open to any person abov
e
the age of 18 who accepts its principles, policy and programme and is
prepared to abide by its Constitution and Rules'. Under the heading 'Righ
ts
and Duties' the Constitution acknowledges the right of members to take
part in elections and to be elected to any committee, commission or dele
gation of Congress (Clause 6(aXiii).
Constitutions are an important but incomplete guide to policy. Practice
is another valuable indicator. The available evidence suggests that
Congress made no considered attempt during the period of legality to integrate non-Africans. In contrast, Congress in exile includes in its ranks
a substantial number of Indians, Coloureds and whites. Their position in
the organisation has been informally debated from time to time and is no
w
receiving more attention because of the ongoing preparations for the pen
ding consultative conference. A leading Congressman has circulated a
memorandum on tribalism in the ANC and the question of open membership. As regards the latter, he calls on the movement to 'mobilise all patri
ots
of different races to actively and physically participate in the support of
MK'. But there is 'at this stage of our revolution, no need for open membe
rship'. His argument in brief includes the following assertions:
• Our struggle is first and foremost against White Domination;
• Africans can and should liberate themselves under their own leaders
hip;
• People who want to include non-Africans in the National Executive
Committee of Congress may give an impression that Africans are incapable
of doing the job on their own.
Sentimentality apart, there is an obvious contradiction between the appro
ved policy of enlisting militants from all national groups and the proposed
exclusion of non-Africans from the leadership. An even more serious con-
tradiction exists between this Africanist approach and the claims of Congress to represent all national groups in the struggle for a single South
African nation.
A survey of opinion held by ANC members in exile revealed the existence of two minority views, one amounting to an outright rejection of
non-African integration at any level of the ANC organisation, the other approving of integration providing subject to the proviso that the three top
positions in Congress be reserved by Africans. Both minorities considere
d
that the rural population in Bantustans was not yet politically mature eno
ugh
to accept non-Africans in the leadership.
The majority supported the participation of all South Africans in the work
of Congress at all levels. Members should be appointed to office strictly
105
on merit. The narrow nationalism of the PAC and BCM remained invalid
while the ANC was committed to building an inclusive South African
democracy without racial barriers.
One Nation
Tribalism and racialism are much the same. Dominant classes manipulat
e
the differences to suit their interests in ways well known to us. Our history
is saturated with the 'divide and rule' strategy used by colonists, settlers
and governments to conquer and subdue. Bantustans, the tri-racial parlia
ment, an emerging black bourgeoisie are products of this divisive strategy
.
The liberation movement has responded with calls for a united front of
South Africans committed to the vision of a liberated society of equals. Pr
esident Tambo repeated the call in an address delivered on the occasion of
January 8, 1985: 'Our cadres are men and women, young and old, black
and white, who are involved in daily struggles, making sacrifices in pursuit of the people's cause', he said. In his message delivered in Luanda,
People's Republic of Angola, on January 8 1979, he expressed the 'conviction and hope that 1982 will find the ANC with a membership represen
tative of a cross section of our entire population, a membership which will
include a substantial percentage of those South Africans now living under
the doubtful privilege of being "white".'
Nelson Mandela also called for an 'open door' in his interview with the
Conservative Party's (UK) Lord Bethal. He was reported as saying: 'Perso
nally, I am a socialist and I believe in a classless society. But I see no reaso
n
to belong to any political party at the moment. Businessmen and farmers,
white or black, can join our movement to fight against racial discrimination. It would be a blunder to narrow it'. (Sunday Mail London January 27,
1985)
Any discussion of the ANC's composition must of necessity involve an
attempt to portray the nature of the liberated South Africa. The debate will
continue until Congress makes up its mind on both issues. The Freedom
Charter projects the ideal of an integrated society of equals. That vision
remains no less valid than when it emerged at Kliptown in June 1955.
106
SELECTED WRITINGS ON
THE FREEDOM CHARTER
'What is the Freedom Charter? The Freedom Charter contains the
fundamental perspective of the vast majority of the people of South
Africa of the kind of liberation that we, all of us, are fighting for. Hence
it is not merely the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress
and its allies. Rather it is the Charter of the people of South Africa for
liberation. It was drawn up on the basis of the demands of the vast
masses of our country and adopted at an elected Congress of the
People. Because it came from the people, it remains still a People's
Charter, the one basic political statement of our goals to which all
genuinely democratic and patriotic forces of South Africa adhere ...'
President Oliver Tambo, January 8th, 1980
This book contains speeches, statements and articles by generations of
members of the African National Congress and its leaders on the
Freedom Charter. The articles cover a timespan of thirty years, from
1955 when it was drawn up, to today.
L.C.P. Ltd. (T.U
£1.95 African National Congress, PO Box 38. 28 Penton Street, Londo
n, N1 9PR.