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STRUGGLE FOR THE FREEDOM CHARTER GOES ON  
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Ronnie Kasrils

Mail & Guardian
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_ 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. _

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.

[Freedom Charter Poster]

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 Gdańsk, Poland. Branded as a summit
to “promote democracy”, the conference issued a “Gdańsk
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, South
Africa’s former Minister of Intelligence Services, and an activist
and author. _

_The Mail & Guardian, South Africa’s premier weekly newspaper and
website. Since our founding in 1985, we have been committed to
delivering quality investigative journalism, insightful commentary and
comprehensive news coverage to our readers. With a strong focus on
political analysis, Southern African news, the environment, local
arts, music and popular culture, we have earned a reputation as a
trusted source of information and a newspaper of record for South
Africa._

* South Africa
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* Freedom Charter
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* African National Congress
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* neo-liberalism
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