Freedom Charter of South Africa

About the Author

The Freedom Charter was to embody the ideas sent from all over the country, but the actual drafting was the work of a small committee. Precisely how that committee worked is still unclear. What is known is that the committee included leading white members of the underground Communist Party. Decades later Rusty Bernstein and Ben Turok, who in the 1950s worked closely with the ANC and were presumably appointed to the committee because they were known to be skilled writers, wrote memoirs in which they recounted how they had helped draft key clauses of the charter, but others who were involved have not been identified. Turok and Bernstein both went into exile in the 1960s. Turok, who drafted the controversial economic clause of the charter, returned to the country in the 1990s and became an ANC member of parliament. Those who opposed what the Freedom Charter said stressed the fact that it was largely the work of white Communists and used that as an argument against accepting it, but the fact that white Communists were important in its drafting did not make it a Communist document.