Dr Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi
Athi Nyokana’s article – “A Case for the Abandonment of the Freedom Charter” – published in the Sunday Independent of March 21 – presents an ideological offensive against the liberation movement and it seeks to discredit the Freedom Charter. His attack of the Freedom Charter and the non-racial perspective is baseless.
The Africanists never saw anything wrong with the non-racial alliance when its foundation was laid in 1946. In that year, Dr AB Xuma (then president of the ANC) entered into an agreement with Dr Y M Dadoo (then president of the Transvaal Indian Congress) and Dr G M Naicker (president of the Natal Indian Congress) by which the African and Indian congresses would work together on all matters of common concern in their fight against white domination.
This agreement is commonly known as the Dadoo-Xuma-Naicker Pact or Three Doctors Pact. It was this alliance which launched the National Day of Protest on June 26, 1950. It was this alliance which unleashed and waged the campaign for the defiance of unjust laws on June 26, 1952. It is this same alliance that produced the epoch-making document – the Freedom Charter – on June 26, 1955.
The Freedom Charter nowhere pretends that blacks were not oppressed and were therefore enjoying equal rights with their white countrymen.
The preamble of the Freedom Charter first rejects the racist premise of South African constitutional life, and recognises that the real South Africa is inhabited by all who live in it.
It then proceeds immediately to challenge the authority of a government founded on national oppression, by asserting 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 the oppressor and the oppressed.
The Freedom Charter recognises the linkage between capital and discriminatory inequality to the extent of calling for the return of the country's wealth to the people, the nationalisation of the mineral wealth beneath the soil, and public ownership of the banks and monopoly industry.
Our people gathered together in Kliptown to speak of freedom. Of the 2 884 delegates, 721 were women. There were 2 186 African delegates, 320 Indian delegates, 230 coloured delegates, as well as 112 whites.
Hundreds of delegates were prevented from coming by the action of the police on June 26, 1955. A heroic and epoch making Congress of the People was convened in the face of fierce intimidation and victimisation by the racist regime and its police force.
From every corner of South Africa delegates and representatives of the people assembled at Kliptown and – despite harassment by hundreds of heavy armed police – they drew up a Freedom Charter, which became a blue-print of the political, economic and social structure that the people of South Africa demanded.
The imperialists, quite obviously, hate the Freedom Charter, and would love to see the South African people opt for a less revolutionary document, some kind of reforms or even, for that matter, one document that looks super-revolutionary in form but which is reactionary in essence.
* Dr Mahlatsi is SACP Free State PEC Member. He writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.