Freedom Charter of South Africa

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Much of the Freedom Charter sets out a vision of South Africa opposite to the apartheid order of the day, which divided people by race and treated them differently, in practice subordinating blacks to whites. The Freedom Charter begins by saying that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white” and that government must rest on the will of the people. This set the charter against the government of the day, which was based on the will of the white electorate only and which believed in separating black from white wherever possible. The charter goes on to refer to “our people” having been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty, and peace. Colonial rule had dispossessed the indigenous majority of much of the land of the country, and apartheid meant the country was in effect a police state for blacks in which they had virtually no rights. It therefore meant conflict and instability. The Freedom Charter states that the country will never be prosperous or free until all enjoy equal rights. That statement proved to be accurate. Although there was prosperity for some under apartheid, it was only when equal rights were enshrined in the new constitution that there was both wider prosperity and freedom.

The Freedom Charter calls for every man and woman to have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate for all bodies that make laws. This directly challenged the existing order, in which only white men and women had the vote and could enter parliament. The charter goes on to demand that rights should be the same for all, regardless of race, color, or sex. This had been a demand of the ANC since its formation; instead, discrimination had progressively increased. The charter calls for a democratic state, in which all should have equal status and equal freedoms protected by law. It explicitly states that all apartheid laws should be set aside. But it should be noted that it also calls for all “national groups” to have equal rights, which suggests that the drafters did not see South Africa as one nation but rather as a nation made up of distinct cultural and linguistic groups. This reflects the fact that the Congress Alliance was multiracial (that is, it was made up of racially defined groups working together), accepting the racial categories of the apartheid state. Although the Freedom Charter did not speak of racial groups, some critics claimed that it did not sufficiently get away from the idea of such groups.

One of the most controversial sections of the Freedom Charter deals with economic issues. This section begins by saying that “The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth” and states that the wealth of the country is to be restored to the people, implying that the process of colonial dispossession of the indigenous people would be reversed, though how this would take place is not outlined. One clause, which was much debated later, reads: “The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.” Some saw this as implying a Socialist state. But another clause in the same section reads: “All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions,” suggesting that only certain sections of the economy would be nationalized. ANC leaders were later to deny that the organization was Socialist or that the Freedom Charter aimed at a Socialist state.

The Freedom Charter asks that the land of the country be “re-divided amongst those who work it” in order “to banish famine and land hunger.” It goes on to set out basic liberal freedoms, for example, that no one should be imprisoned except for a serious crime and after a fair trial. All have the right “to speak, to organise, to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship” and to travel freely anywhere. There is specific mention of the abolition of the hated pass laws, which restricted the movement of black African people and decreed that passes had to be produced on demand. The Freedom Charter speaks of various worker demands, such as a forty-hour workweek, a national minimum wage, and paid leave. There should be no forced labor, child labor, or compound labor, all of which were common features of the apartheid state. “Compound labor” refers to the practice of requiring black Africans to live in certain areas while they engaged in contracted work. Thus, Africans laboring in diamond mines, for example, might be forbidden to leave their “compounds” for as long as three months—purportedly on the theory that it would prevent theft—and would be cut off from their families and the outside world.

In another idealistic clause, education was to “be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children.” The charter states that “higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.” This was written at a time when the apartheid state was shutting down access to higher education for blacks, who were soon to be barred from attending the leading universities and forced to study at separate tribal colleges. Adult illiteracy, which was widespread, should, the Freedom Charter continues, “be ended by a mass state education plan.” All should have the right to live where they chose, and there should be a health scheme run by the state to provide free medical care for all. Although a national health system had been proposed in the 1940s, nothing had come of the idea. In 1955 there were relatively good health facilities only for the white minority. Most black South Africans had no ready access to such facilities.

The Freedom Charter declares that slums should be demolished and new suburbs built “where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, créches and social centres.” This sets out a vision of a world totally different from that of South Africa in 1955, where, because of the apartheid policy, black people were being forcibly removed from urban areas and dumped in remote townships with virtually no facilities of any kind. The Freedom Charter recognizes this when it says that “fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished.” Most black people then lived and would remain in rural areas far from the cities, without easy access to transport or any social or medical facilities and certainly not day care centers. They could not readily move from place to place without official permission that was often difficult to obtain. Men who went to the cities to work could not take their families with them, and millions employed as migrant workers in the mines or towns had to return to the rural areas to see their wives and children. The Freedom Charter makes explicit reference to this when it says “laws which break up families shall be repealed.”

At a time when the apartheid government was calling for Britain to allow South Africa to incorporate the so-called High Commission Territories, the Freedom Charter says that “the people of the protectorates Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland shall be free to decide for themselves their own future” (which they did in the 1960s when they moved to independence). The Freedom Charter ends with a pledge to continue the struggle “side by side” until its aims are achieved.

The Freedom Charter consists of visionary goals for the future, statements about what could be achieved when apartheid was abolished. When South Africans drew up a new constitution in the early 1990s, the question was raised concerning which elements from the charter could be incorporated in the constitution. Many of them were set out in the final constitution of 1996, especially in the bill of rights.