The Freedom Charter and the struggle songs
I have read the ANCYL's arguments about the Freedom Charter's authorisation, as it were, for the nationalisation of the mines and the banks and the "monopoly industries". I have also read their arguments about the "struggle songs".
These are things which have their origin in the distant past, but since I am one of the few people still alive from that period readers may be interested in what I remember of that time.
In January 1952 I attended for the first time a public meeting of the ANC in the Bantu Social Centre in Durban. It was followed in the next eight years by hundreds of similar meetings in that hall, at the "Red Square" and at numerous other venues in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and other places in Natal.
Most of the meetings were held under the auspices of the Natal Indian Congress and from 1954 onwards under the auspices of the Congress of the People (COP).
At all these meetings singing was a major part of the proceedings. The main song was Nkosi Sikilela Afrika. This song is really a prayer and my Zulu colleague and I always stood up to sing it with the rest of the audience.