Freedom Charter
The Freedom Charter ( English Freedom Charter , Afrikaans Vryheidsmanifes ) is a document that during the apartheid designated time of racial segregation in South Africa on June 26, 1955 in Kliptown , a settlement in Soweto in Johannesburg , the so-called Congress of the People decided (NPC) has been. This included around 3,000 people, the African National Congress (ANC) of the black African majority, the South African Indian Congress as a representative of the South African residents of Indian and Asian descent, the South African Colored People's Organization of the population group of the colored (mixed race) and the progressive whites founded Congress of Democrats . With demands for democracy , equality and respect for human rights, the charter was an important instrument of the anti-apartheid movement and has been one of the basic political documents of the ANC to this day.
Content and meaning
The Freedom Charter was followed in the historical development of the ANC of the twelve years earlier Declaration adopted Africans' Claims in South Africa ( claims of Africans in South Africa ). As a counter-program to apartheid, it comprised ten-point calls for democracy , for equal rights for all residents of South Africa, regardless of ethnicity, skin color or gender, as well as for respect for basic human rights such as freedom of expression , freedom of assembly , freedom of religion , freedom of travel and the right to privacy . The central slogan of the document was The People Shall Govern! - “The people should rule!”.
Further points related to adequate working conditions, social security including the availability of decent housing and free health care for all people, as well as unrestricted access to education and culture . The university professor Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews and the then ANC President and later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert John Luthuli played a key role in drafting the Freedom Charter . The final formulation was done by Lionel Bernstein of the South African Communist Party . All the organizations involved in the People's Congress subsequently approved the Charter at appropriate meetings.
The Freedom Charter gave terms such as freedom and self-determination as well as the slogan of the Congress Freedom in our lifetime - "Freedom in our lifetime" - a concrete practical meaning, as the text of the Charter described what freedom actually means in the various areas of social life would. The charter, in which a vision of a South Africa without apartheid was presented, gave the members of the groups involved in the campaign against racial segregation a common point of reference and goals for their work. This also made it an important tool in motivating its base and attracting new members. In addition, the adoption of the Freedom Charter led on the one hand to strengthening the ideological cohesion of the organizations involved in the People's Congress, but on the other hand also to the resignation of radical ANC members who rejected what they considered to be the moderate course of the ANC and founded the Pan Africanist Congress in 1959 .
The charter also contained demands for a partial collectivization of monopoly companies , banks and mineral resources as well as a state control of the economy . The then South African government under Prime Minister Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom saw the implementation of the People's Congress and the adoption of the Freedom Charter as an act of betrayal . A year later she had 156 leaders of the organizations involved arrested on charges ( Suppression of Communism Act ) of belonging to a nationwide and supposedly communist conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the country. However, in the subsequent trial, the so-called Treason Trial , all of the accused were acquitted over the next five years. The possession and distribution of the Freedom Charter remained prohibited in South Africa during the apartheid period.
Even after the end of the policy of racial segregation in South Africa, it is still one of the programmatic foundations of the African National Congress. A memorial in Kliptown commemorates the adoption of the Freedom Charter.
literature
- Ismail Vadi: The Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter Campaign. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi 1995, ISBN 8-12-071813-5
- 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 Publishers , Johannesburg 2005, ISBN 1-86-842218-6
- Raymond Suttner, Jeremy Cronin, Patrick Lekota and others: 50 Years of the Freedom Charter. Unisa Press, Pretoria 2006, ISBN 1-86-888375-2
Web links
- African National Congress: The Freedom Charter Facsimile of the Freedom Charter on the ANC website
- The Freedom Charter Project on the History of the Freedom Charter
- Frank Räther: Light and Shadow in South Africa: 50 Years of the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress Contribution by Deutschlandfunk from June 25, 2005