70TH ANNIVERSARY FREEDOM CHARTER , KLIPTOWN 1955 @KASIBC_AFRICA
@KASIBC_AFRICA ONLINE EDITOR
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) marks the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter with a recommitment to the struggle for true liberation.
On this day, we honour those who gathered in Kliptown in 1955 and proclaimed boldly that "The People Shall Govern!"
The Freedom Charter was the result of a mass democratic process, coordinated by the Congress of the People, which included the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the Coloured People's Congress (CPC), and the Congress of Democrats (COD). Over many months in 1955, ordinary South Africans from townships, villages, and workplaces submitted demands for the kind of South Africa they dreamed of.
These voices were collected and consolidated into the Charter, which was formally adopted on 26 June 1955 in Kliptown, Soweto, during a mass assembly of more than 3,000 delegates.
It was a living, breathing declaration of what the people of this country demanded: land, work, free education, free healthcare, equality, political freedom, and economic justice. However, that dream remains deferred. The ruling elite, led by the ANC, have abandoned this revolutionary vision of the Freedom Charter. Instead of realising the radical ideals of 1955, the ANC has become entangled in neoliberalism, elite pacts with white monopoly capital, and extreme corruption.
This betrayal reached its full and shameless climax when the ANC joined hands with the anti-transformation, racist Democratic Alliance (DA) in a desperate bid to retain power at the cost of black dignity, land justice, and economic freedom. Today, the ANC governs in coalition with the very forces that historically opposed the Freedom Charter.
The DA has never believed in the redistribution of land or wealth; nor have they ever committed themselves to the principle that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” In siding with the DA, the ANC has finally and irreversibly exposed itself as the enemy of the Freedom Charter and the aspirations of the black majority.
From the beginning, the EFF has made it clear that our struggle is the continuation of the one declared in Kliptown. Our 2013 Founding Manifesto, and the Seven Cardinal Pillars, are grounded in the principles of the Freedom Charter which is why we have consistently fought for land reform, public ownership of strategic sectors, free education, universal healthcare, and the dignity of the African working class. Our work in Parliament, in councils, in communities, and on the streets, is a daily act of defending the Charter.
It is precisely because of our loyalty to the Freedom Charter that the EFF is hated by the establishment. They know that our presence reminds the people of what was promised and what was stolen; that the land is still in the hands of a white minority; that the mines still benefit foreign capital and apartheid beneficiaries; that the youth remain unemployed at a devastating rate of over 45%; that informal settlements have become the permanent condition of life for millions; that children are still going to bed hungry; and that black people are still exploited for their labour.
This is why on this day, the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, the EFF recommits to the realisation of the Freedom Charter in our lifetime.
We recommit to land expropriation without compensation, nationalisation of mines and key resources, free, quality education, free universal healthcare, and a living wage for all workers.
We are the generation that will break the chains of economic apartheid and we will build the South Africa of shared wealth, dignity, and freedom.
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