Struggle for the Freedom Charter goes on

Signed 70 years ago, today's Constitution was built on it, but not everything has been realised

- Ronnie Kasrils

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.