The Charter is no patchwork collection of demands, no jumble of reforms. The ten clauses of the Charter cover all the aspects of the lives of the people. The Charter exposes the fraud of racialism and of minority government. It demands equal rights before the law, work and security for all, the opening of the doors of learning and culture for all. It demands that our brothers in the Protectorates shall be free to decide for themselves their own future; it proclaims the oneness of our aims for peace and friendship with our brothers in Africa and elsewhere in the world.
This is the pattern of the new South Africa which must make a complete break with the present unjust system.
The Freedom Charter has opened up a new chapter in the struggle of our people. Hitherto we have struggled sometimes together, sometimes separately against pass laws, and Group Areas, against low wages, against Bantu Education and forced removal schemes. With the adoption of the Charter all struggles become part of one: the struggle for the aims of the Charter.
… We would … be failing in our duty if we did not express our high appreciation of the efforts made in the carrying out of our major campaigns during this period.
In the anti-removal campaign in the Western Areas, the anti-Bantu Education campaign, the campaign for the Congress of the People, there are regions and branches which distinguished themselves as a result of which they have emerged strong.
In conclusion, friends, we thank all those who made it their duty to put personal business aside in order to serve the nation during the period under review. We further call upon them in the coming year and upon all true patriots, all democrats, all lovers of freedom to resolve once more that South Africa shall become a free land, free from Nationalist tyranny and become a happy place for all to live in, during our lifetime.
Mayibuye iAfrika!
Reports from the progressive press
NEW BODY FORMED TO FIGHT RACIALISM
200 EUROPEANS MEET WITH DEFIANCE LEADERS
Walter Sisulu, Yosuf Cachalia and Oliver Tambo, on behalf of the Defiance Campaign, the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congresses, emphasised that the campaign was not directed against any racial group. Its basic purpose is to achieve the recognition of non-Europeans as human beings by the peaceful method of passive resistance. Mr Tambo said that a clause in the constitutions of both Congresses pledges them to work for the ideal of full democratic rights for all South Africans. The silence of European democrats to the challenge of the issues involved in the Defiance Campaign is being construed by non-Europeans as acquiescence in and approval of the government’s policies. This is rapidly creating the belief among large numbers of non-Europeans that all whites are hostile to them and their aspirations and that the situation is being transformed into a white versus non-white struggle.
(Advance, 27 November 1952)
AMENDMENT TO THE SUPPRESSION OF COMMUNISM ACT TO EVADE THE APPELLATE DIVISION’S JUDGEMENT
“The highest court in the land has affirmed the simple and universally acknowledged principle that a man should not be condemned unheard. It is deeply disturbing that the Minister’s immediate response should be to repudiate that principle and seek to arm himself with new powers to override it. I protest, and I think all democrats should protest too.”
(Advance, 10 December 1952)
THE CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE
Referring to allegations in a press statement by Brigadier Rademeyer following last week’s ejection of the CID from the Transvaal preparatory conference for the Congress of the People, Mr Tambo, a member of the National Action Council organising the Congress, told a press conference that the Acting Police Commissioner’s statements were uncalled for, misleading and possibly irregular from a legal viewpoint.
“Brigadier Rademeyer’s statement implies that this organisation is planning a revolution and to overthrow the state by force. Such statements are utterly misleading as to the purpose and objects of the sponsoring organisations. The composition and objects of these organisation were made known to the country and to the world … The Congress of the People has been created for an altogether lawful purpose.”
Mr Tambo declined to comment further on Brigadier Rademeyer’s statements in so far as they related to a sub judice matter. “Our attorneys’ attention has been drawn to them and they will take the necessary steps.”
He did, however, draw attention sharply to the “increasing tendency of the police authorities to issue statements on political movements and on meetings of lawful organisation. This tendency was unprecedented in South Africa, caused considerable unrest and indicated the approach of a police state.”
(Advance, 5 August 1954)
THE BANTU EDUCATION ACT
“When Verwoerd says that children who boycott Bantu Education schools will lose their places, which will be filled by others, he forgets to ask himself: Who will these others be? Does he perhaps imagine African parents will be eager to send their offspring to schools for apartheid, where the doctrine of African inferiority will be imprinted on their impressionable minds? The ANC is preparing instructions of all its branches on the implementation of the resolution condemning Bantu Education.
“The African people are not going to be intimidated by Dr Verwoerd’s statement. He comments so early after the passing of the resolution because he is worried at the determined opposition to his schemes. To warn the parents about their children being replaced by other children when withdrawn is to miss the point that we are going to stop both those who are attending school, as well as those who are not yet attending school from doing so. We trust that most of the churches will continue to support us on this issue, as they have done on past issues, since it is clear that this education is incompatible with Christian precepts.”
(New Age, 6 January 1955)
PERSECUTION UNDER THE PASS LAWS
“The large-scale pass arrests, the periodic swoops on Africans for passes, are coming to be accepted by far too many white South Africans as the ‘normal’ thing. Not a day passes but raiding parties scour Johannesburg and other large cities to make arrests, and although the pass laws have always been one of the most hated and arduous forms of oppression imposed on Africans, the dragnet for victims has never been cast so wide, the laws so unsympathetically administered, and the victims of these inhuman laws so numerous.
“Issued just as the government has announced a Bill to amend the Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act (the amendment tightens up loopholes in the Act and stipulates that ‘foreign natives’, including those from the Protectorates, carry a separate type of reference book) this statement recalls that at the time of the introduction of the law in 1952 it challenged the bluff of the Nationalists that this law was really to ‘abolish’ passes. Its warning that the new Act was a more vicious application of the pass restrictions than ever before has been borne out by events in the last three years.
“In the period that the provisions of the new law have been applied, countless people in many parts of the country have been ruthlessly persecuted and harried; men and women removed from their homes in urban areas; workers refused permission to enter urban areas from rural areas; and countless more subjected to arrest, enquiry and detention. Young men leaving school and anxious to enter jobs in industry are refused permission to do so and are endorsed out of the urban areas. In the towns they are forced to live the life of the hunted, continually trying to avoid the roving