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In Our Lifetime – June 1956

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Liberation – a “Journal of Democratic Discussion”
– was published in Johannesburg from 1953 to 1959.

The
adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People at KIiptown in
June of last year was widely recognised both at home and abroad as an event of
major political significance in the life of this country. In his message to the
C.O.P. Chief A. J. Luthuli, the banned National President of the African
National Congress, declared:

“Why
will this assembly be significant and unique? Its size, I hope, will make it
unique. But above all its multi-racial nature and its noble objectives will
make it unique, because it will be the first time in the history of our
multi-racial nation that its people from all walks of life will meet as equals,
irrespective of race, colour and creed, to formulate a Freedom Charter for all
people in the country.”

The
editorial of New Age of June 30, 1955, characterised the C.O.P. as the
most spectacular and moving demonstration this country had ever seen; and that
through it the people had given proof that they had the ability and the power
to triumph over every obstacle and win the future of their dreams. Fighting
Talk of July, 1955, saw several signs at the C.O.P. that the liberation
movement in South Africa had come of age and in the same issue Alfred
Hutchinson, reporting on the C.O.P., coined for his article the magnificent
title “A New World Unfolds…” which accurately summarised the
political significance of that historic gathering.

The same
theme was taken up by Liberation of September last year when, in its
editorial comment, it predicted that the text books of the future would treat
the Kliptown meeting as one of the most important landmarks in our history.
John Hatch, the Public Relations Officer of the British Labour Party, in an
article published in the New Statesman and Nation of January 28,
1956, under the title “The Real South African Opposition,” conceded
that some degree of success was achieved by the Congress Movement when it
approved the Charter. Finally, in his May Day Message published in New Age of
April 26 this year Moses Kotane reviewed the political achievements of 1955 and
came to the conclusion that the most outstanding one was the C.O.P. which
produced the world-renowned document—the Freedom Charter, which serves as a
beacon to the Congress Movement and an inspiration to the people of South
Africa.

World-Wide Attention

Few people
will deny, therefore, that the adoption of the Charter is an event of major
political significance in the life of this country. The intensive and
nation-wide political campaigning that preceded it, the 2,844 elected delegates
of the people that attended, the attention it attracted far and wide and the
favourable comment it continues to receive at home and abroad from people of divers
political opinions and beliefs long after its adoption, are evidence of this
fact.

Never
before has any document or conference been so widely acclaimed and discussed by
the democratic movement in South Africa. Never before has any document or
conference constituted such a serious and formidable challenge to the racial
and anti-popular policies of the country. For the first time in the history
of our country the democratic forces irrespective of race, ideological
conviction, party affiliation or religious belief have renounced and discarded
racialism in all its ramifications, clearly defined their aims and objects and
united in a common programme of action.

The
Charter is more than a mere list of demands for democratic reforms. It is a
revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisages cannot be won
without breaking up the economic and political set-up of present South Africa.
To win the demands calls for the organisation, launching and development of
mass struggles on the widest scale. They will be won and consolidated only in
the course and as the result of a nation-wide campaign of agitation; through
stubborn and determined mass struggles to defeat the economic and political
policies of the Nationalist Government; by repulsing their onslaughts on the
living standards and liberties of the people.

The most
vital task facing the democratic movement in this country is to unleash such
struggles and to develop them on the basis of the concrete and immediate
demands of the people from area to area. Only in this way can we build a
powerful mass movement which is the only guarantee of ultimate victory in the
struggle for democratic reforms. Only in this way will the democratic movement
become a vital instrument for the winning of the democratic changes set out in
the Charter.

Tuesday 14 June 2011 12:44

For All Classes

Whilst the
Charter proclaims democratic changes of a far-reaching nature it is by no means
a blueprint for a socialist state but a programme for the unification of
various classes and groupings amongst the people on a democratic basis. Under
socialism the workers hold state power. They and the peasants own the means of
production, the land, the factories and the mills. All production is for use
and not for profit. The Charter does not contemplate such profound economic and
political changes. Its declaration “The People Shall Govern!” visualises
the transfer of power not to any single social class but to all the people of
this country be they workers, peasants, professional men or petty-bourgeoisie.

It is true
that in demanding the nationalisation of the banks, the gold mines and the land
the Charter strikes a fatal blow at the financial and gold-mining monopolies
and farming interests that have for centuries plundered the country and
condemned its people to servitude. But such a step is absolutely imperative and
necessary because the realisation of the Charter is inconceivable, in fact
impossible, unless and until these monopolies are first smashed up and the
national wealth of the country turned over to the people. The breaking up and
democratisation of these monopolies will open up fresh fields for the
development of a prosperous Non-European bourgeois class. For the first time in
the history of this country the Non-European bourgeoisie will have the
opportunity to own in their own name and right mills and factories, and trade
and private enterprise will boom and flourish as never before.

To destroy these
monopolies means the termination of the exploitation of vast sections of the
populace by mining kings and land barons and there will be a general rise in
the living standards of the people. It is precisely because the Charter offers
immense opportunities for an over-all improvement in the material conditions of
all classes and groups that it attracts such wide support.

Can It Come About?

But a mere
appraisal of a document however dynamic its provisions or content might be is
academic and valueless unless we consciously and conscientiously create the
conditions necessary for its realisation. To be fruitful such appraisal must be
closely linked up with the vital question of whether we have in South African
society the requisite social forces that are capable of fighting for the
realisation of the Charter and whether in fact these forces are being mobilised
and conditioned for this principal task.

The
democratic struggle in South Africa is conducted by an alliance of various
classes and political groupings amongst the Non-European people supported by
white democrats. African, Coloured and Indian workers and peasants, traders and
merchants, students and teachers, doctors and lawyers, and various other
classes and groupings: all participate in the struggle against racial
inequality and for full democratic rights. It was this alliance which launched
the National Day of Protest on June 26, 1950. It was this alliance which
unleashed and waged the campaign for the defiance of unjust laws on June 26,
1952. It is this same alliance that produced the epoch-making document—the
Freedom Charter. In this alliance the democratic movement has the rudiments of
a dynamic and militant mass movement and, provided the movement exploits the
initial advantages on its side at the present moment, immense opportunities
exist for the winning of the demands in the Charter within our life-time.

The Forces We Need

The
striking feature about the population of our country and its occupational
distribution is the numerical preponderance of the Non-Europeans over Europeans
and the economic importance of the former group in the key industries.
According to the 1951 Population Census the population of the country consists
of 2,643,000 Europeans as against 10,005,000 Non-Europeans, a numerical
disparity which is bound to have a decisive bearing on the final outcome of the
present struggle to smash the colour bar.

According to the Official Year
Book of the Union of South Africa (No. 27—1952-53) there were 46,700
Europeans employed by the gold mines and collieries at the end of 1952. The
number of Africans and Coloureds employed on the mines for the same period was
452,702, a proportion of I European employee to nearly 8 Non-European
employees. The racial composition of industrial employees in establishments
with over 10 employees during the period 1948-49 was as follows: Europeans 33
per cent; African 51.5 per cent; Asiatics 3 per cent and Coloureds 12.5 per
cent. According to the same Year Book, during 1952 there were 297,476 Europeans
employed on farms occupied by Europeans and 2,188,712 Africans and 636,065
other Non-Europeans.

These
figures reveal the preponderant importance of the Non-European people in the
economic life of the country and the key task of the movement is to stimulate
and draw these forces into the struggle for democratic reforms. A significant
step was taken in Johannesburg on March 3, 1955, when a new trade union
centre—The South African Congress of Trade Unions—was formed with delegates
from 34 unions with a total membership of close on 42,000 and when for the
first time in the history of trade unionism in South Africa, African, Coloured,
European and Indian workers united for a fighting policy on the basis of
absolute equality. Peter Beyleveld, who was elected the first president of the
Congress, emphasised in his opening address that trade unions would be
neglecting their members if they failed to struggle on all matters affecting
them. The trade unions, he pointed out, should be active in the political field
as in the economic sphere for these two hung together and could not be isolated
from one another.

With 42,000 organised workers on our side and fighting under
the flag of a trade union centre that has completely renounced racialism and
committed itself to a militant and uncompromising policy, it only remains for
us to redouble our efforts and carry our message to every factory and mill
throughout the country. The message of the new centre is bound to attract the
support of the majority of the workers for they have no interest whatsoever in
the country’s policy of racial discrimination.

Our Allies

The
workers are the principal force upon which the democratic movement should rely,
but to repel the savage onslaughts of the Nationalist Government and to develop
the fight for democratic rights it is necessary that the other classes and
groupings be joined. Support and assistance must be sought and secured from the
452,702 African and Coloured mine workers, from the 2,834,777 Non-European
labourers employed on European farms and from the millions of peasants that
occupy the so-called Native Reserves of the Union. The cruel and inhuman manner
with which they are treated, their dreadful poverty and economic misery, make
them potential allies of the democratic movement.

The
Non-European traders and businessmen are also potential allies, for in hardly
any other country in the world has the ruling class made conditions so
extremely difficult for the rise of a Non-European middle class as in South
Africa. The law of the country prohibits Non-Europeans from owning or
possessing minerals. Their right to own and occupy land is very much restricted
and circumscribed and it is virtually impossible for them to own factories and
mills. Therefore, they are vitally interested in the liberation of the
Non-European people for it is only by destroying white supremacy and through
the emancipation of the Non-Europeans that they can prosper and develop as a
class. To each of these classes and groups the struggle for democratic rights
offers definite advantages. To every one of them the realisation of the demands
embodied in the Charter would open a new career and vast opportunities for
development and prosperity. These are the social forces whose alliance and
unity will enable the democratic movement to vanquish the forces of reaction
and win the democratic changes envisaged in the Charter.

Unity Brings Strength

In the
present political situation in South Africa when the Nationalist Government has
gone all out to smash the people’s political organisations and the trade union
movement through the Suppression of Communism Act and its anti-trade union
legislation, it becomes important to call upon and to stimulate every class to
wage its own battles. It becomes even more important that all democratic forces
be united and the opportunities for such united front are growing every day. On
March 3, 1955 a non-colour-bar trade union centre is formed. On June 26 the
same year “in the most spectacular and moving demonstration this country
has ever seen” 2,844 delegates of the people adopt the Charter and 4
months thereafter more than 1,000 women of all races stage a protest march to
Pretoria to put their demands to the Government—all this in the course of one
year.

In fact, the rise of the Congress Movement and the powerful impact it
exerts on the political scene in the country is due precisely to the fact that
it has consistently followed and acted on the vital policy of democratic unity.
It is precisely because of the same reason that the Congress Movement is
rapidly becoming the real voice of South Africa. If this united front is
strengthened and developed the Freedom Charter will be transformed into a
dynamic and living instrument and we shall vanquish all opposition and win the
South Africa of our dreams during our lifetime.

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