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Mail & Guardian
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
South Africa, look to the Freedom Charter
In the dusty heart of Kliptown on the outskirts of apartheid-era Johannesburg, a bold and unprecedented gathering took place on 26 June 1955 — an audacious act of defiance that would echo through the decades of struggle to come. Under threat of state surveillance and repression, thousands of delegates assembled to give birth to a revolutionary vision: the Freedom Charter — a political blueprint that challenged colonial domination and apartheid authoritarianism. Seventy years on, as South Africa reflects on the charter's legacy, the question is: has the dream been deferred? Is the charter a moral compass that can guide the country away from corruption, inequality and political disillusionment and back to our better selves? This year's commemorations unfold under a dark cloud — a public fallout between the KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner and the police minister over alleged ties to criminal networks and tenderpreneurs. Generations of activists, cadres and civic leaders placed their hopes in the Freedom Charter, seeing in it a roadmap to liberation. But even as it was being drafted, apartheid's machinery was already erasing the very communities that embodied those ideals. The Group Areas Act (7 July 1950): Apartheid was in full stride, enforcing the Act, one of its most brutal instruments. This law forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of black, Indian, coloured and Chinese South Africans from inner-city areas of Johannesburg such as Fordsburg, Pageview and Vrededorp. As activists in Kliptown imagined a non-racial democracy, trucks and trailers loaded with furniture and frightened families rolled down the streets. They were carted off to racially zoned outposts — Lenasia for Indians, Eldorado Park for coloureds, Soweto for Africans — grim apartheid gulags far from the economic and cultural lifeblood of the city. This was not isolated. The Act segregated cities and rural areas and dismembered communities throughout South Africa. From Durban's Cato Manor and Warwick Avenue Triangle to Cape Town's District Six and the mixed suburbs of East London and Port Elizabeth, the Group Areas Act tore through multiracial communities like a wrecking ball. It erased history, memory, identity. The irony was stark: while the Congress Alliance was fine-tuning the most progressive political document ever to emerge from colonised Africa, the apartheid state was redrawing the map with bulldozers and police. The Congress of the People (26 June 1955): A historic gathering in a divided nation. Representing the ANC, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, the Congress of Democrats and the South African Congress of Trade Unions, more than 3 000 delegates — workers, students, religious leaders, professionals — descended on Kliptown. They gathered in makeshift tents, surrounded by spies and state agents, and proclaimed the charter's enduring declaration: 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.' This was no mere manifesto. It was a moral declaration and revolutionary charter, forged in unity across racial and ideological lines, and it transformed Kliptown into sacred political ground. But Kliptown was not only the site of vision, it was a victim of apartheid's violence. Once a vibrant, multiracial township like District Six or Sophiatown, it was gutted by the Group Areas Act, its dynamic cultural life replaced by decay and marginalisation. Lenasia: A paradox born of pain. One of the Act's most visible legacies is Lenasia, established as a segregated Indian township but later transformed through grit and community spirit into a story of survival and reinvention. Lenasia's success rests on four pillars: entrepreneurship, education, cultural cohesion and political activism. Small businesses, from cafés to wholesalers, became the backbone of a self-sustaining local economy. Sacrifices by working-class families produced generations of professionals. Mosques, temples and community halls fostered unity and resistance. Lenasia produced leaders and journalists who fuelled the anti-apartheid movement. Today, Lenasia has malls, new schools and clinics. But inequalities persist. Its story mirrors that of South Africa: potential stifled by paradox, promise shadowed by injustice. The Charter's legacy and the Indian contribution: South Africans of Indian descent played a pivotal role in drafting and defending the Freedom Charter. Braving bans, detentions and threats, they stood with comrades of all colours. Among them were Dr Yusuf Dadoo; Ahmed Kathrada; IC Meer, Nana Sita, Kay Moonsamy, Debi Singh, Thambi Naidoo (Jr), Monty Naicker, Dr K Goonam and Swaminathan Gounden — each fearless in defiance. As Kay Moonsamy put it: 'Our struggle was not for favours, it was for freedom.' The apartheid state retaliated. In 1956, 156 leaders were charged with treason, including Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Helen Joseph and Yusuf Dadoo. The trial ended in acquittals in 1961. A long arc of struggle: 1955, the Freedom Charter is adopted in Kliptown; 1956-61, the Treason Trial; 1960s-80s, the Charter is the underground symbol of resistance; 1990, the ANC is unbanned and Mandela released; 1994, the first democratic elections; 1996, the Constitution is adopted, echoing the Freedom Charter. As Justice Albie Sachs said: 'The Constitution of 1996 is the legal child of the Freedom Charter.' Today, Kliptown is both a heritage site and a cautionary tale. The hall still stands, but around it are informal settlements, failing infrastructure and unemployment. It's a metaphor for a democracy unfinished. To read the Freedom Charter today is to hear both a dream and a rebuke. Its bold declarations: 'The People Shall Govern! There Shall Be Work and Security! The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened! The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!' These were demands for justice, dignity and equality. The gulf between Zimbali Estate's affluence and Cato Crest's deprivation, between District Six's memory and the Cape Flats' misery, reminds us how far we have to go. The Freedom Charter remains a living document. Its power lies not in nostalgia, but in renewed action and radical hope. Marlan Padayachee is a veteran correspondent from South Africa's transition to democracy, and is now a freelance journalist, photographer and researcher.
Mail & Guardian
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Struggle for the Freedom Charter goes on
Hope: The Freedom Charter was adopted on 26 June 1955 at Kliptown in Soweto. Its contents were drawn from submission from people all over South Africa. The Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown 70 years ago, on 26 June 1955. Thousands of delegates travelled across South Africa — by train, by bus, on foot — to take part in the Congress of the People. They met under an open sky, gathered on a dusty field where a wooden stage had been erected. Armed police watched from the perimeter but the atmosphere was determined and jubilant. One by one, the clauses of the Charter — on land, work, education, housing, democracy, peace — were read aloud, and each was met with unanimous approval. The charter distilled months of discussion and collective vision. Discussions of the charter seldom place it in its full historical context. Yet to understand its true significance, we must see it as part of a wider global moment — an era in which oppressed peoples across the world were rising against colonialism. After the defeat of fascism in 1945, there was a deep sense of possibility. The victory fuelled a new international moral order, embodied in the founding of the United Nations and its charter, with its emphasis on human rights, self-determination and peace. In the colonised world, this sparked a wave of anti-colonial struggle and growing demands for independence. India gained independence in 1947, China, through force of arms, in 1949 and Ghana in 1957. In April 1955, two months before the Freedom Charter was adopted, 29 newly independent and colonised nations met in Bandung, Indonesia. The Bandung Conference gave voice to the aspirations of the Global South — to end colonialism and racial domination, assert autonomy in world affairs and build cooperation among formerly colonised peoples. Bandung thrilled anti-colonial forces globally. The Freedom Charter emerged amid this excitement. This hopeful period was shadowed by a fierce imperial backlash. In Iran, prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh's nationalisation of oil in 1951 was met with a CIA- and MI6-backed coup in 1953. In Guatemala, president Jacobo Árbenz's land reforms provoked a similar response, and in 1954 the CIA orchestrated his removal. Around the world, popular sovereignty was crushed to preserve imperial power. The Korean War (1950–53) marked the aggressive militarisation of the Cold War. In January 1961, Congo's first elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated with the support of the CIA. In April that year the CIA organised the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. In 1965, the US began a full-scale invasion of Vietnam. In 1966, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a Western-backed coup. In South Africa, the vision set out in the Freedom Charter was swiftly met with state repression. Months after its adoption, 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance were arrested and charged with treason. Then came the Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960. The apartheid regime banned the liberation movements underground and, in response, the ANC took the decision to turn to armed struggle. The Freedom Charter cannot be separated from the process that gave it life — a process that was profoundly democratic and rooted in the daily lives of people. In 1953, the ANC and its partners in the Congress Alliance issued a call for a national dialogue: to ask, plainly and urgently, 'What kind of South Africa do we want to live in?' The response was remarkable. Across the country, in townships, villages, workplaces, churches and at all kinds of gatherings, people came together to develop their demands. Submissions arrived handwritten, typed or dictated to organisers. The charter expressed a vision of South Africa grounded in equality, justice and shared prosperity. 'The people shall govern' affirmed not only the right to vote, but the principle that power must reside with the people. 'The land shall be shared among those who work it' challenged the dispossession at the heart of colonial and apartheid rule. Crucially, the charter called for an economy based on public benefit rather than private profit: 'The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people.' Education, housing and healthcare were to be universal and equal. The charter envisioned a South Africa without racism or sexism, where all would be 'equal before the law', with 'peace and friendship' pursued abroad. After the banning of the liberation movements in the 1960s and the brutal repression that followed, the Freedom Charter did not disappear — but it receded from popular memory. In the 1980s, it surged back into public life with renewed force. The formation of the United Democratic Front in 1983 in Cape Town, and the emergence of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in 1985 in Durban, gave new organisational life to the charter. Grassroots formations drew on unions, civics and faith groups to take the charter out of the archives and the underground and into the streets. For the powerful mass movement organised in workplaces and communities the charter promised a future grounded in radical democracy and a fundamental redistribution of land and wealth. The charter became a vital reference point for the negotiations that began after the unbanning of the liberation movements. Its language and principles profoundly shaped elements of the new Constitution. The charter's insistence that 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it' and that 'the people shall govern' was carried through into the constitutional affirmation of non-racialism and universal suffrage. Guarantees of equal rights, human dignity and socio-economic rights such as housing, education and healthcare echo the charter's vision. But the transition involved compromise. In the 1980s, the charter had been a call for deep structural transformation. At the settlement, key clauses — particularly those calling for the redistribution of land and the sharing of national wealth — were softened or deferred. The final settlement preserved existing patterns of private property and accepted a macroeconomic framework shaped in part by global neoliberal pressures. While the vote was won, the deeper transformations envisioned in the charter were postponed. The result is that today, 31 years after the end of apartheid, structural inequalities and mass impoverishment remain. The charter's economic promises have not been fulfilled. The 2024 general election marked a historic turning point. Taken together, the two dominant parties garnered support from less than a quarter of the eligible population. Nearly 60% of eligible voters did not participate. The charter's promise that 'the people shall govern' demands more than a vote — it requires sustained participation. This requires rebuilding mass democratic participation from below. It means rekindling the culture of popular meetings, community mandates and worker-led initiatives that grounded the charter in lived experience. It means going beyond elections and restoring a sense of everyday democratic agency — in schools, workplaces and communities. It means making good on the promise to redistribute land and wealth. It also means rebuilding solidarity across the Global South. South Africa played a leading role in the formation of the Hague Group in January this year to build an alliance in support of Palestine. This was a major breakthrough that echoed the spirit of Bandung. The meeting that the group will hold in Bogota in July promises to significantly expand its reach and power. We must recognise the scale of resistance to transformation, both internationally and at home. The criminal attack on Iran by Israel and the United States exposes the brutality of imperial power — and the urgent need for a global counterweight. In South Africa economic elites and NGOs, think tanks and media projects funded by Western donors often work to frame redistributive politics as illegitimate or reckless. These networks have grown bolder as ANC support has declined. In June 2023, the Brenthurst Foundation — funded by the Oppenheimer family — convened a conference in Gdansk, Poland. Branded as a summit to 'promote democracy', the conference issued a 'Gdansk Declaration' widely read as an attempt to legitimise Western-backed opposition to redistributive politics in the Global South. The Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party were present, along with former Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic and representatives of Renamo (Mozambique) and Unita (Angola), both reactionary movements that were backed by the West to violently oppose national liberation movements. The event marked the open emergence of a transnational alliance aimed at neutralising any attempt to challenge elite power in the name of justice or equality. It is a reminder that the struggle to realise the Freedom Charter's vision will not be won on moral terms alone. It will require effective political organisation, ideological clarity and courage. The charter was born of struggle. It must now be defended and renewed through struggle. Ronnie Kasrils is a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, and South Africa's former minister for intelligence services, activist and author.
News24
27-06-2025
- Politics
- News24
A 70-year reckoning: The Freedom Charter's unfinished business
EDITORIAL: A 70-year reckoning: The Freedom Charter's unfinished business The people demand that you should know 'people love sex'. The people demand that you should know 'God sees you'. The people demand that you should know 'I love you'. The people demand that you should know 'Apen was here 2023 14 October'. The people demand that you should know 'Goth J.K.M'. The people demand that you should know 'Cliche 4 Hope 4 Shaky 4 Khusi'. The people demand that you should know 'Tseke Trouble'. The people demand that you should know 'GBV'. The people demand that you should know 'Delete Corruption'. These 10 demands were collected at Walter Sisulu Square. Written on the walls of concrete and doorless frames, within a dilapidated and vandalised three-story, multi-purpose hall. This is but a sample of what the people demand. These demands overlook the square that cost R160 million to build. And, in four years, most of that has been squandered as you trudge through the rubble, glass, dirt and water to enjoy this National Heritage Site. Below the demands of the people in 2025, are the demands of the people in South Africa 70 years ago in 1955. They are engraved into slabs of metal. In Kliptown, South Africans of all races adopted the Freedom Charter – the spine that broke the apartheid camel's back: 'We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: The People Shall Govern! All National Groups Shall Have Equal Rights! The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth! The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It! All Shall Be Equal Before the Law! All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights! There Shall Be Work and Security! The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened! There Shall Be Houses, Security, and Comfort! There Shall Be Peace and Friendship! The charter of free people, 70 years later, looks very different. In this week's Friday Briefing, we take a poignant journey back to that momentous day seven decades ago, sharing the reflections of three individuals who were present at the historic event. At the time, they hadn't realised how profoundly significant it would become. Additionally, we delve into the debated preamble of the Freedom Charter, which declares, 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it,' along with analysis from UJ's Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana on what a new social contract for the country would look like. Finally, we turn our attention to Kliptown Square, the historic site where the Charter was signed. Today, it stands as a faint echo of its once profound legacy. We hope these contributions which you can read below provide you with a deeper understanding of the significance of that day and why its message continues to hold value even now. Robben Island Museum Archives/Supplied by The Albie Collection The search for freedom through the eyes of the Charterists Only a handful of living witnesses remain from the historic Congress of the People, where the Freedom Charter was signed 70 years ago. We spoke to three Charterists about the dreams sown in 1955 and what has become of them today. Read the rest of the article here. A template for the demands that people wanted to include in the Freedom Charter. From the book: 30 years of the Freedom Charter by Raymond Suttner and Jeremy Cronin. Belonging or betrayal? The controversial line of the Freedom Charter still resonates 70 years later Seventy years after the Freedom Charter was adopted, the statement 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it' is both a rallying cry and a source of fierce debate. Read the rest of the article here. Werner Beukes/Sapa 70 Years of the Freedom Charter: Renewing its vision for SA Mcebisi Ndletyana reflects on what challenges were in place when the Freedom Charter was adopted and what would be needed for a renewed social contract to have any prospects 70 years after the signing of the Charter. Read the rest of the contribution here. From hope to helplessness: How government has failed Kliptown's Charter square and its people Once hailed as a monument to freedom and progress, Kliptown's Charter Square has become a stark showcase of neglect and failed political commitments, writes Muhammad Hussain. Read the rest of the article here.
Jordan Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Jordan Times
Monument to post-apartheid South Africa's founding charter in ruins
Kliptown memorial commemorates the Freedom Charter of principles that guided the fight against apartheid (AFP photo) SOWETO, South Africa — In the shade of a tree on a sunny day, Isac Matate set up a rickety bookstand in a ragged square that was once a beacon for the struggle that ended apartheid in South Africa. Some of the books that Matate packed into the shelves held together with rope touched on the themes of the landmark: Political history, black consciousness, the site in Kliptown outside Johannesburg commemorates the Freedom Charter of principles that guided the decades-long fight that ended white-minority rule in 1994. Around 3,000 people of all races gathered here in a historic act of defiance 70 years ago to draw up the charter, which inspired the liberation movement and lives in the text of the post-apartheid constitution. Its principles, such as "The People Shall Govern", "All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights" and "There Shall be Work and Security", are written out around what was meant to be an eternal flame. But the flame has long been dead and the memorial -- included last year in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites of "outstanding universal value" -- is today in a state of neglect, vandalism and filth. "Kliptown square is in a horrible, decaying state. It is getting worse by the day," said local resident Sphamandla Matyeni, who was perusing the titles on Matate's bookstand. "It speaks of the fact that we do not treasure and protect what is deeply special to us as South Africans," he said. Congress of the People When Matate opened his bookshop after the memorial was inaugurated in 2005 by President Thabo Mbeki, his store was in a business complex built around a brick tower that once housed the "flame of freedom". It was a busy time with busloads of foreign tourists arriving every day, eager to learn about the struggle that ended apartheid just years before and see where its guiding text was adopted in June 1955 at the "Congress of the People".Business boomed, Matate said. There was a hotel, an eatery and a conference centre."I sold books to people who attended events during the day and night," Matate said. "Now the square has disappeared to a point of no return." The business centre is stripped of its roof, electricity and plumbing. When the businesses moved out, the homeless moved in. Matate moved his bookstore outdoors, under a tree and reduced to just some shelves. Sales plummeted. "My wife left when she saw I couldn't provide for my family," he told AFP. Known officially as the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in honour of a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, the monument is listed by UNESCO as one of 14 "Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites" of "human rights, liberation and reconciliation". Downhill Post-apartheid South Africa has battled to realise some of the aspirations of the Freedom Charter, with the legacy of racial inequality keeping the country's levels of economic disparity among the highest in the world. As people weaved between taxis beeping for customers on a bustling street nearby, resident Smangele Mashiya said the Kliptown memorial's fortunes were hurt by the international shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic. Then in 2021 local political unrest "pushed it further downhill", he said. As locals bemoan the lost opportunities of having a key landmark in their neighbourhood, a spokesman for the Johannesburg Property Company, which manages the site, told AFP it was appointing a team to oversee its "adaptive reuse and regeneration". "This place played an important role in our lives as young people," said tour guide Jabulani Nzimande. "I started doing my walking tours here a long time ago and through that I was able to get the opportunity to do the training course," he said. "But visitors are not coming here like they did before," he said, citing fears of mugging as one of the problems. "We work voluntarily with the local police to keep the square safe," he said. "We want to see the place regaining its status." Page 2
