Africans' Claims in South Africa

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Africans' Claims in South Africa ( German  claims of Africans in South Africa ) is the title of a document that was drawn up by a committee of 28 members and sympathizers of the African National Congress (ANC) and on December 16, 1943 by the ANC annual meeting was adopted unanimously. It was created in response to the Atlantic Charter passed two years earlier , in which the then President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill set out the goals of the Allies during the Second World War and their ideas of the world order after it ended formulated. The central points of the Africans' claims were the demands for universal suffrage and an end to racial segregation in South Africa .

Content and meaning

The first section of the Africans' Claims dedicated under the title "The Atlantic Charter and the Africans" ( The Atlantic Charter and Africans ) the importance of the Atlantic Charter for the Africans . The ten points in this section contain a reference to the fact that the then South African Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts was one of the supporters of the Charter, and furthermore the statement that the freedoms promised in the Atlantic Charter, in the opinion of the authors of the Africans' Claims would also apply to the peoples of Africa . In the second section, entitled "The Atlantic Charter from the standpoint of African within the Union of South Africa" ( The Atlantic Charter from the perspective of Africans in South Africa stands), comments are included, showing the position of the authors to each of the eight points of the Atlantic Charter and their implementation in Africa. Under the heading “Bill of Rights. Full Citizen Rights and Demand "( law of rights. Full civil rights and receivables ) standing third section contains based on the American Bill of Rights calls for full civil rights for the African population of South Africa as well as explanations on the importance of these requirements in the various areas of life.

The document Africans' Claims in South Africa, along with the Freedom Charter passed twelve years later, is one of the most important programmatic writings in the history of the ANC. At the time, the adoption of the declaration was an expression of the increasing politicization of the ANC, whose activities had until then mainly comprised public speeches, petitions and appeals. However, these had proven to be practically ineffective and also weakened the organization. In addition to the importance of the Africans' claims for the work of the ANC, the document is also important for the development of human rights . The declaration extended the claim to validity of human rights beyond their European-Western origins and was thus, five years before the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , one of the first attempts to universalize the idea of ​​basic and universal human and civil rights.

literature

  • Kader Asmal, David Chidester, Cass Lubisi: Legacy of Freedom: the ANC's Human Rights Tradition: Africans' Claims in South Africa, the Freedom Charter, the Women's Charter, and other Human Rights Landmarks of the African National Congress. Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg 2005, ISBN 1-86-842218-6

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