The Freedom Charter inspires our transformation agenda!
In deciding the relevance of the Freedom Charter in our transformation discourse, some have dwelt much on the specificity of its "text" as opposed to the general thrust of its "spirit". For a document that was drafted 59 years ago, it goes without saying that the relevance of its text will gradually drift into oblivion, because new dynamics demand different ways to specific political, social and economic navigation of prevailing challenges. Over time new obstacles have emerged whilst some have disappeared, and this being so against the backdrop of new navigation technics.
All these changing conditions considered, we must answer the question as to why the ANC continues to consider the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955 at the Kliptown Congress of the People as its basic policy document. And as indicated, the answer lies in the duality often attributed to such important historic documents, that being their "letter" and "spirit".
When we speak of the letter and spirit of the Constitution in one breadth, it is because we are mindful of the fact that the "letter" may have missed some of the important details that we intended to be pronounced by such documents but nonetheless whose inclusion would have made the document too bulky. But where the letter in a Constitution overrides the spirit on a technical basis, there is no doubt that a historic document drafted 59 years ago would lean more on its spirit than the pragmatism of its text.
Thus the question that we should be asking ourselves on the occasion of the 59th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter is as to what were the broad policy objectives of those who gathered in Kliptown in 1955 to adopt this historic document.
The Freedom Charter must be read against the injustices that it sought to annul. By 1955, unlike in 1912 when the ANC was formed, the liberation struggle had made qualitative leaps and so did the oppressive environment. Apartheid which was more intensive and violent particularly during the Defiance Campaign Against Unjust Laws of 1952, had replaced the outright conventional wars of colonial conquest. Markedly, whilst Chief Bambatha and other kings fought to thwart off invasion of Africa by the Europeans, the Congress of the People had in its ranks descendants from both the colonial conquerors and the conquered with legitimate claim to South African citizenship.