The Long Walk to Freedom (33 page)

We sought to attract the widest possible sponsorship and invited some two hundred organizations — white, black, Indian, and Coloured — to send representatives to a planning conference at Tongaat, near Durban, in March of 1954. The National Action Council created there was composed of eight members from each of the four sponsoring organizations. The chairman was Chief Luthuli, and the secretariat consisted of Walter Sisulu (later replaced by Oliver after Walter’s banning forced him to resign), Yusuf Cachalia of the SAIC, Stanley Lollan of the South African Coloured People’s Organization (SACPO), and Lionel Bernstein of the Congress of Democrats (COD).

Formed in Cape Town in September of 1953 by Coloured leaders and trade unionists, SACPO was the belated offspring of the struggle to preserve the Coloured vote in the Cape and sought to represent Coloured interests. SACPO’s founding conference was addressed by Oliver Tambo and Yusuf Cachalia. Inspired by the Defiance Campaign, the COD was formed in late 1952 as a party for radical, left-wing, antigovernment whites. The COD, though small and limited mainly to Johannesburg and Cape Town, had an influence disproportionate to its numbers. Its members, such as Michael Harmel, Bram Fischer, and Rusty Bernstein, were eloquent advocates of our cause. The COD closely identified itself with the ANC and the SAIC and advocated a universal franchise and full equality between black and white. We saw the COD as a means whereby our views could be put directly to the white public. The COD served an important symbolic function for Africans; blacks who had come into the struggle because they were antiwhite discovered that there were indeed whites of goodwill who treated Africans as equals.

The National Action Council invited all participating organizations and their followers to send suggestions for a freedom charter. Circulars were sent out to townships and villages all across the country. “IF YOU COULD MAKE THE LAWS . . . WHAT WOULD YOU DO?” they said. “HOW WOULD YOU SET ABOUT MAKING SOUTH AFRICA A HAPPY PLACE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN IT?” Some of the flyers and leaflets were filled with the poetic idealism that characterized the planning:

WE CALL THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA BLACK AND WHITE — LET US SPEAK TOGETHER OF FREEDOM! . . . LET THE VOICES 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 call caught the imagination of the people. Suggestions came in from sports and cultural clubs, church groups, ratepayers’ associations, women’s organizations, schools, trade union branches. They came on serviettes, on paper torn from exercise books, on scraps of foolscap, on the backs of our own leaflets. It was humbling to see how the suggestions of ordinary people were often far ahead of the leaders’. The most commonly cited demand was for one-man-one-vote. There was a recognition that the country belongs to all those who have made it their home.

The ANC branches contributed a great deal to the process of writing the charter and in fact the two best drafts came from Durban and Pietermaritzburg. A combination of these drafts was then circulated to different regions and committees for comments and questions. The charter itself was drafted by a small committee of the National Action Council and reviewed by the ANC’s National Executive Committee.

The charter would be presented at the Congress of the People and each of its elements submitted to the delegates for approval. In June, a few days before the congress was scheduled, a small group of us reviewed the draft. We made few changes, as there was little time and the document was already in good shape.

The Congress of the People took place at Kliptown, a multiracial village on a scrap of veld a few miles southwest of Johannesburg, on two clear, sunny days, June 25 and 26, 1955. More than three thousand delegates braved police intimidation to assemble and approve the final document. They came by car, bus, truck, and foot. Although the overwhelming number of delegates were black, there were more than three hundred Indians, two hundred Coloureds, and one hundred whites.

I drove to Kliptown with Walter. We were both under banning orders, so we found a place at the edge of the crowd where we could observe without mixing in or being seen. The crowd was impressive both in its size and in its discipline. “Freedom volunteers” wearing black, green, and yellow armbands met the delegates and arranged for their seating. There were old women and young wearing congress skirts, congress blouses, congress
doekies
(scarves); old men and young wearing congress armbands and congress hats. Signs everywhere said, “FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME, LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE.” The platform was a rainbow of colors: white delegates from the COD, Indians from the SAIC, Coloured representatives from SACPO all sat in front of a replica of a four-spoked wheel representing the four organizations in the Congress Alliance. White and African police and members of the Special Branch milled around, taking photographs, writing in notebooks, and trying unsuccessfully to intimidate the delegates.

There were dozens of songs and speeches. Meals were served. The atmosphere was both serious and festive. On the afternoon of the first day, the charter was read aloud, section by section, to the people in English, Sesotho, and Xhosa. After each section, the crowd shouted its approval with cries of
“Afrika!”
and
“Mayibuye!”
The first day of the congress was a success.

The second day was much like the first. Each section of the charter had been adopted by acclamation and at 3:30, the final approval was to be voted when a brigade of police and Special Branch detectives brandishing Sten guns swarmed onto the platform. In a gruff, Afrikaans-accented voice, one of the police took the microphone and announced that treason was suspected and that no one was to leave the gathering without police permission. The police began pushing people off the platform and confiscating documents and photographs, even signs such as “
SOUP WITH MEAT
” and “
SOUP WITHOUT MEAT.
” Another group of constables armed with rifles formed a cordon around the crowd. The people responded magnificently by loudly singing
“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.”
The delegates were then allowed to leave one by one, each person interviewed by the police and his or her name taken down. I had been on the outskirts of the crowd when the police raid began, and while my instinct was to stay and help, discretion seemed the wiser course, because I would have immediately been arrested and tossed in jail. An emergency meeting had been called in Johannesburg and I made my way back there. As I returned to Johannesburg, I knew that this raid signaled a harsh new turn on the part of the government.

Though the Congress of the People had been broken up, the charter itself became a great beacon for the liberation struggle. Like other enduring political documents, such as the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Communist Manifesto, the Freedom Charter is a mixture of practical goals and poetic language. It extols the abolition of racial discrimination and the achievement of equal rights for all. It welcomes all who embrace freedom to participate in the making of a democratic, nonracial South Africa. It captured the hopes and dreams of the people and acted as a blueprint for the liberation struggle and the future of the nation. The preamble reads:

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 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 the people, can secure 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 nothing of our strength and courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.

The charter then lays out the requirements for a free and democratic South Africa.

THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN!

Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws.

All the 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 sex.

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 national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride;

All people shall have equal rights to use their own language and to develop their own folk culture and customs;

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.

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 industries 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 manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.

THE LAND SHALL BE SHARED AMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT!

Restriction of land ownership on racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it, to banish famine and land hunger. . . .

Some in the ANC, particularly the Africanist contingent, who were anti-Communist and antiwhite, objected to the charter as being a design for a radically different South Africa from the one the ANC had called for throughout its history. They claimed the charter favored a socialist order and believed the COD and white Communists had had a disproportionate influence on its ideology. In June 1956, in the monthly journal
Liberation,
I pointed out that the charter endorsed private enterprise and would allow capitalism to flourish among Africans for the first time. The charter guaranteed that when freedom came, Africans would have the opportunity to own their own businesses in their own names, to own their own houses and property, in short, to prosper as capitalists and entrepreneurs. The charter does not speak about the eradication of classes and private property, or public ownership of the means of production, or promulgate any of the tenets of scientific socialism. The clause discussing the possible nationalization of the mines, the banks, and monopoly industries was an action that needed to be taken if the economy was not to be solely owned and operated by white businessmen.