Seventy years ago, on June 26 1955, a seismic and transformative moment in South African history unfolded in Kliptown. Under the watchful eyes of a brutal apartheid regime, thousands of people from all corners of the country — young and old, black and white, from every class, gender and region — gathered to give expression to their dream of a free, just and democratic South Africa.
What emerged was the Freedom Charter: a people's manifesto that rejected the apartheid state and articulated a bold vision for a non-racial, non-sexist, united, prosperous and democratic future. A vision that was the very antithesis of the apartheid regime.
The Freedom Charter transcended the moment of its birth and was far more than a protest document. It became the moral, ethical political and constitutional compass of the anti-apartheid struggle.
Its principles inspired and structured the ideological foundation of the ANC and its alliance partners, both at home and internationally. These principles shaped the Harare Declaration and formed the philosophical basis of South Africa’s negotiated transition to democracy. They also laid the groundwork for the transformative constitution of 1996 and continue to inform our post-apartheid laws, policies and international posture. The principles became the beacon and foundation for the struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s transition to democracy and our post democratic transformation.
The Freedom Charter found expression in the 1969 ANC conference resolutions and documents such as the Morogoro Strategy and Tactics. The Kabwe conference in 1985 and the Harare Declaration which was used as a basis to negotiate our democratic South Africa. And again, it was the Freedom Charter's principles that guided and became embedded in both letter and spirit in our constitution and all the post democratic South African transformative legislation and policies which followed including our foreign policy.
Its principles continue to shape South Africa’s democratic architecture, policy and international posture.
In this reflection on the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, I will attempt to examine its 10 guiding clauses — each a declaration of aspiration, resistance and enduring relevance. From governance to wealth, from land to law, from education to housing, and from equality to peace, the Charter remains the lodestar of a people still striving for full liberation and the completion of our national democratic revolution.
1. The people shall govern
When the Congress of the People declared that “The People Shall Govern”, it shattered the ideological foundation of white minority rule, apartheid governance, racial discrimination, imperialism and colonialism. It proclaimed a vision of radical democratic empowerment. In 1955, this was not a rhetorical flourish — it was an act of defiance. Under apartheid, the majority of South Africans were denied the vote, the right to organise politically and even to belong to certain labour unions or civic associations. The Charter's assertion placed the agency of the oppressed at the centre of our national destiny.
During the struggle, this clause became a mobilising force. It fuelled our mass-based democratic structures — from the United Democratic Front and its affiliates and the Mass Democratic Movement. It directly inspired the 1980s slogans such as “People’s Power” and gave ideological coherence to insurrectionary efforts to render apartheid “ungovernable”.
In the post-1994 dispensation, this principle found institutional expression in South Africa’s embrace of universal suffrage, regular elections and participatory democracy. Chapter 1 of the constitution affirms that South Africa is “a sovereign, democratic state founded on the values of... universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government”.
But governance has always meant more than voting. The Freedom Charter imagined a substantive peoples participatory democracy, not merely a procedurally compliant one. Thus, our constitution ensures that public participation is placed at the very centre of all our post-apartheid legislation and policy innovations. Today, legislation such as our local government laws and policing and safety laws makes public participation in the development of laws and policies, integrated development planning and accountability a reality. The establishment of ward committees, community police forums and community safety forums are platforms for community-based planning, accountability, oversight and participatory governance. However imperfect, it does lay the basis to give effect to this broader vision of peoples participatory governance.
Yet challenges remain. Voter apathy, corruption, weakened public participation structures and the crisis of service delivery threaten the principle’s vitality. In an era of technocratic governance, the Charter’s call remains urgent: democracy must be lived and experienced by the people — not only administered in their name.
2. All national groups shall have equal rights
This clause spoke directly against the racial hierarchies that defined colonial and apartheid South Africa. In 1955, it was a revolutionary idea to propose that black, white, coloured and Indian South Africans be treated as equals under the law and in society. The Charter’s language — “all national groups shall have equal rights”— was not assimilationist but affirming. It called for the recognition of all cultural, linguistic and national identities within a common democratic framework. It laid the philosophical, ideological and legal foundation for the ANC’s principle and commitment to non racialism. Our liberation movement’s commitment to non-racialism drew heavily from this principle. It helped shape the ANC’s rejection of narrow Africanism and racial, sexist, ethnic and tribalist chauvinism. It affirmed a politics of unity in diversity. It was also this clause that provided the ideological space for the Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress and white democrats to participate in an African-led movement. It was the Freedom Charter that began the process of codifying and ensuring that the ANC became a truly non-racial, non-sexist and progressive pan-Africanist organisation. By 1960 MK opened its army to all races, by 1969 the ANC after Morogoro opened its membership to all races and by 1985 the NEC was opened to all races.
This clause also deeply influenced the crafting of the 1996 constitution. The preamble’s affirmation of a society founded on “the recognition of the injustices of our past” and “unity in diversity” echoes the Freedom Charter. Section 9 of the constitution entrenches the right to equality and prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity, culture, language or religion.
Yet, the legacy of unequal development and ongoing racialised inequality challenge the realisation of this principle. Spatial apartheid persists. Wealth and land remain disproportionately owned by white South Africans. Racial tensions and scapegoating — especially in moments of economic stress — test the integrity of this principle. To honour the Freedom Charter at 70 means recommitting to substantive equality, non-racialism and non-sexism — not merely as formal rights — and resisting all efforts to revive or repackage racism and racial chauvinism under new banners.
3. The people shall share in the country’s wealth
This clause struck at the heart of apartheid capitalism. In declaring that “the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people,” the Freedom Charter challenged the concentration of economic power in the hands of a white minority, particularly in mining and industry. It envisioned an economy that worked for the many, not the few.
During the struggle, this clause inspired radical debates within the ANC and broader liberation movement. It provoked discussion around nationalisation, worker control, economic democracy, socialism and redistribution. The clause became a rallying cry for economic justice — one that underscored the inseparability of political and economic freedom.
Post-1994, this principle was partially realised through BEE, state ownership in key sectors and policies such as the Mining Charter. The constitution itself, while protecting property rights, allows for expropriation in the public interest and demands redress. The preamble speaks of improving the quality of life for all citizens and freeing the potential of each person.
However, inequality remains endemic. South Africa is one of the most unequal societies globally. Wealth, particularly financial and mineral wealth, is still held by a minority. Economic exclusion continues to fuel frustration, especially among the youth. Calls for structural reform, including wealth taxes, universal basic income grants, and public ownership of key resources, ownership control of the commanding heights of the South African economy and radical economic transformation are all contemporary attempts to effect this foundational Freedom Charter principle.
4. The land shall be shared among those who work it
Land dispossession is the original sin of South African colonialism. From the 1913 Land Act to the Group Areas Act, dispossession was the basis of racialised poverty, labour exploitation and spatial injustice. The Freedom Charter’s insistence that “the land shall be shared among those who work it” was a radical affirmation of historical redress, agrarian justice and restitution.
This clause fuelled mass mobilisation in rural areas and informed the ANC’s long-standing commitment to land reform. It became a pillar of the ANC’s 1949 Programme of Action and later of the post-apartheid land restitution and redistribution frameworks.
After 1994, land reform was constitutionally recognised. Section 25(5)-(9) of the constitution provides for land redistribution, restitution and tenure reform. Yet implementation has been sluggishly slow and uneven. After 30 years, less than 10% of land has been transferred, often to the detriment of emerging black farmers. The 2018 constitutional review on land expropriation without compensation reignited national debate, reflecting the unresolved nature of this historic injustice.
Land reform is not only about hectares — it is about justice, dignity, reparations and the reconstitution of belonging. Whether in the cities or countryside, to realise this clause means confronting private land monopolies, transforming ownership patterns, and enabling productive, sustainable land use for the majority.
5. All shall be equal before the law
In a society built on codified racial injustice, the assertion that “all shall be equal before the law” was nothing short of revolutionary. Under apartheid, the law was not neutral — it was an instrument of oppression. Laws like the Pass Laws, the Group Areas Act, and the Immorality Act criminalised black existence and elevated white supremacy to the status of legal doctrine. Legal equality was not only denied — it was systemically inverted.
The Charter’s demand for equal treatment under the law reflected a commitment to justice over legality. It distinguished between the rule of law and the rule by law, insisting that legality without justice is illegitimate. This principle became a rallying point for organisations such as the Legal Resources Centre and countless community advice offices, which used the law as a terrain of resistance. Post-apartheid, this principle found binding expression in section 9 of the constitution: “Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.” The Bill of Rights further entrenches access to courts, fair trial rights and protection against arbitrary arrest and detention.
However, the persistence of inequality within the criminal justice system — and continued barriers to accessing legal aid — suggests that formal equality has yet to become substantive equality. Rebuilding trust in legal institutions, transforming prosecutorial priorities and reforming policing practices remain urgent tasks if this Freedom Charter clause is to be fully realised.
6. All shall enjoy equal human rights
This principle extended beyond legal equality to affirm a universalist vision of human dignity. In 1955, this was a radical departure from the colonial idea that human rights were privileges reserved for Europeans. The Freedom Charter declared that freedom of speech, religion, press, movement and association should be universal and indivisible. It anticipated the international human rights consensus that would emerge in the latter half of the 20th century.
The anti-apartheid struggle drew strength from this vision. Whether through freedom songs, underground newspapers, religious sermons or global solidarity networks, activists claimed their right to speak, to assemble and to be heard. The demand for human rights was not an imported value — it was forged in struggle.
Our Bill of Rights is one of the most comprehensive in the world. It gives legal effect to every right demanded by the Freedom Charter — and more. It includes all the first, second and third generation rights (civil and political, socio economic and environmental rights) as contemplated in the Freedom Charter. It prohibits torture, guarantees freedom of expression, protects cultural and linguistic communities, protects the environment and protects workers’ rights and all other socio economic rights including health and education. It establishes a number of Chapter 9 institutions to protect these rights including the South African Human Rights Commission to uphold these freedoms.
Yet the erosion of rights — through gender-based violence, xenophobic attacks and the rise in right-wing racism and racist organisations such as AfriForum among others undermines the Freedom Charter’s vision. Ensuring that human rights are not abstract guarantees but lived realities requires vigilance, education and mobilisation.
7. There shall be work and security
In a country where racial capitalism denied employment and security to the black majority, the demand that “there shall be work and security” was both practical and visionary. In 1955, unemployment among black South Africans was a structural feature of the economy, reinforced by job reservation and discriminatory education. Migrant labour, exploitive conditions and absence of social protection left millions vulnerable.
The Freedom Charter’s vision was not merely for jobs, but for dignified, secure work. It called for equal pay for equal work, labour rights, social insurance and protection for the aged and disabled. This shaped the demands of worker organisations from Sactu to Cosatu, and underpinned the fusion of class and national struggle in the liberation movement.
After 1994, this principle of protection of worker rights was entrenched in our constitution and influenced and found expression in a myriad of laws including but not limited to the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the Employment Equity Act and the creation of statutory institutions such as the CCMA. The expansion of social grants — now reaching over 18-million people — also reflects the Freedom Charter’s concern with security.
Yet today, unemployment — especially youth unemployment — remains a crisis. Job insecurity, precarity and technological disruption threaten hard-won rights. Realising this Freedom Charter clause requires not only labour regulation but an inclusive development path grounded in full employment, industrial policy and a social wage.
8. The doors of learning and culture shall be opened
Apartheid deliberately constructed ignorance as a form of control. Apartheid education was designed to produce docile labourers, not critical citizens. The Freedom Charter’s demand that “the doors of learning and culture shall be opened” was thus a call for liberation through education. It linked education to freedom, asserting that all people — regardless of race, class, gender or geography — had a right to learn, to create and to participate in culture.
This principle guided the ANC’s Education Charter and informed the creation of alternative education spaces during the 1980s, such as People’s Education for People’s Power. It also supported the intellectual flowering of black consciousness, African literature and radical historiography.
Post-apartheid, the right to education is constitutionally enshrined. The National Curriculum promotes inclusivity, redress and the decolonisation of knowledge. Arts and culture policies support heritage restoration, language diversity and creative expression.
Yet inequality in education persists. Rural schools lack infrastructure. University access remains unequal. The #FeesMustFall movement was a contemporary invocation of this Freedom Charter clause. The ongoing struggle for knowledge justice, mother tongue instruction and curriculum transformation reflects its continued urgency.
9. There shall be houses, security and comfort
Apartheid created not just poverty but engineered destitution. It used forced removals, migrant labour hostels and racial zoning to deny black people dignified shelter and safety. The Freedom Charter’s vision — “there shall be houses, security and comfort” — was not simply about roofs over heads, but about creating humane living conditions.
The demand shaped the post-1994 housing policy. The RDP housing programme and the subsequent policies of integrated human settlements, which have delivered more than 3-million houses, and the constitutional right to access adequate housing (Section 26), are direct expressions of this clause. The National Housing Code and human settlements strategies aim to integrate communities and overcome apartheid spatial legacies.
Yet spatial injustice remains entrenched. Informal settlements grow. Urban gentrification displaces the poor. Many RDP homes are far from economic opportunities and basic services are unevenly delivered. Realising the Freedom Charter’s vision requires not only building more houses, but reimagining cities — ensuring that security and comfort are not luxuries for the few, but the right of all.
10. There shall be peace and friendship
One of the most remarkable and visionary elements of the Charter lies in its insistence that: “There Shall Be Peace and Friendship’’ It unpacks this principle saying that:
- South Africa shall be a fully independent state which respects the rights and sovereignty of all nations;
- South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all international disputes by negotiation — not war;
- peace and friendship among all our people shall be secured by upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all;
- the people of the protectorates Basutoland [today Lesotho], Bechuanaland [today Botswana] and Swaziland [today Eswatini] shall be free to decide for themselves their own future;
- the right of all peoples of Africa to independence and self-government shall be recognised and shall be the basis of close co-operation.”
These were not idle words. They were a moral, ethical and political challenge to the global (dis)order of 1955 — an era of Cold War, nuclear arms races, colonial subjugation, imperialism, racism and the denial of sovereignty to most of the Global South. For a movement and its people brutalised by three centuries of colonialism and an apartheid regime backed by powerful Western allies, to call for negotiation, not war, and friendship among peoples was an assertion of ethical and moral progressive internationalism. It reflected a deep understanding that South Africa’s freedom was bound to the liberation of Africa and the rest of the world and that justice, peace and stability at home could not be sustained without justice, peace and stability continentally and globally.
As we mark the 70th anniversary of this immortal document, let us reflect on its profound relevance for South Africa’s place among the community of nations — its impact on our commitment to the principles of non-racialism and non-sexism globally. Our commitment to global peace, stability, security, multilateralism, international human rights and international law. And our commitment to Pan Africanism, anti-imperialism, non-alignment, sovereignty, self-determination and international solidarity with oppressed people globally.
It is due to the Freedom Charter that over the past three decades, South Africa’s foreign policy has sought to be a force for justice and the peaceful resolution of conflict, mediation and multilateralism
It is also not a coincidence that the Freedom Charter and the Bandung Conference were born in the same year — 1955. Unsurprisingly both texts cohere with and complement each other having emerged from a global rebellion against empire, racial hierarchy, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and great-power domination. The ANC found affirmation in the Bandung spirit, just as Bandung found an intellectual and moral twin in the Freedom Charter. Today, democratic South Africa still draws deeply from both fountains. Our continued commitment to multipolarity, sovereignty, and global equality flows from this twin legacy.
The founding fathers and negotiators of South Africa’s democratic constitution drew directly from the Charter. The preamble to the constitution echoes its ethos: human dignity, equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. But beyond that, the constitution enshrines in both the letter and spirit what the Freedom Charter envisioned in principle — a South Africa that is at peace with itself and with the world.
To this end section 198 of the South African constitution affirms that national security must be pursued in compliance with international law and that peace, democratic values, and human rights underpin South Africa’s engagement in the global arena. This legal foundation for South Africa’s post 1994 foreign policy is a direct legacy of the Freedom Charter’s demand that we “strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all international disputes by negotiation — not war”.
It is therefore due to the Freedom Charter that over the past three decades, South Africa’s foreign policy has sought to be a force for justice and the peaceful resolution of conflict, mediation and multilateralism. Whether opposing the Iraq war, championing Palestinian self-determination, advocating for Sahrawi independence in Western Sahara or demanding accountability for violations of international law in Palestine, South Africa has consistently attempted to apply the Freedom Charter’s moral lens to global affairs. Thus, over the past 31 years South Africa has positioned itself as a regional and continental peacemaker — facilitating talks in the DRC, Burundi, Northern Ireland, Sudan, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Comoros and Madagascar, among others,
Equally, South Africa’s commitment to progressive Pan Africanism, African unity and regional and continental integration — through the AU, the African Continental Free Trade Area and its leadership within Sadc — echoes the Freedom Charter’s affirmation of the right of African peoples to self-determination and co-operation.
Today, the world grapples with escalating geopolitical tensions, resource conflicts, climate insecurity and a breakdown in trust in global institutions. We are in the throes of a poly-crisis, characterised by instability, fragility, conflict, injustice, flux, volatility and insecurity. Within this challenging geopolitical context the values of the Freedom Charter are needed more than ever and South Africa’s moral leadership based on the principles and spirit of the Freedom Charter must be reaffirmed.
This vision and clarion call is rooted in the hard-won lived experience of a people who knew what it meant to be colonised, dispossessed and dehumanised — yet chose the principle of peace and friendship over revenge and war and which has stood the test of time.
The Freedom Charter was also a call to reimagine the world — a world free of domination, of racial and gender oppression, of war and imperial conquest. A world that is just, fair, inclusive, non-racial, non-sexist, anti-discriminatory, anti-imperialist, multipolar and multicultural. As we mark its 70th anniversary, let the principles of the Freedom Charter continue to be the moral compass for our diplomacy and progressive internationalist foreign policy outlook.
We would do well to remember that the vision of the Freedom Charter was born not in comfort, but in struggle and because it was born in struggle, it endures. Seventy years later, in a time of global upheaval the progressive internationalist principles of the Freedom Charter are more relevant now than ever before. Today the Freedom Charter still speaks. It is up to us to ensure that the world still listens.
To honour the Charter at 70 is to recommit to a world where:
- power is not used to bully the weak;
- disputes are resolved through the peaceful resolution of conflict and mediation, not through missiles and wars;
- sovereignty is respected for all nations, not just the powerful; and
- solidarity is extended to those still struggling for liberation — whether in Palestine, Western Sahara, or elsewhere.
The Charter endures
The Freedom Charter was not born in a policy room or elite council — it was born in the dust and defiance of Kliptown, carved out by the voices of those who had suffered the brunt of colonialism, racism, patriarchy and economic exploitation. It was written in struggle, ratified in resistance and defended in blood. Seventy years later, its demands remain thunderously alive.
The Charter's genius lies not merely in its idealism, but in its synthesis of moral clarity, political imagination and material justice. It called for a radical reordering of power — political, economic, cultural and international — and offered a blueprint for a truly emancipated society. It rejected incrementalism and half-measures. It refused to separate civil and political rights from economic and social rights. And it placed people — ordinary people — at the centre of its vision.
Each of its 10 clauses remains a site of unfinished work. Our democracy has delivered much — universal suffrage, social grants, a human rights-based constitution, and access to basic services. But the deep structural legacies of apartheid — landlessness, inequality, spatial injustice, gendered poverty and elite capture — persist. The promise of shared wealth remains elusive. The gap between formal equality and lived experience continues to grow.
Globally, too, the Charter speaks with renewed urgency. In an era of rising fascism, economic inequality, ecological breakdown and multipolar uncertainty, its call for peace, international solidarity and self-determination resonates far beyond our borders. As global institutions falter and power reconsolidates among the few, the Freedom Charter offers an emancipatory vision rooted in cooperation, multilateralism and human dignity.
To honour the Charter at 70 is to resist cynicism and fatalism. It is to remember that every freedom we enjoy today — however imperfect — was once dismissed as impossible. It is to reclaim the Charter not merely as a historical artefact, but as a living document, a manifesto still guiding our steps.
It is also to ask hard questions: are we still governed by the people? Have all national groups truly attained equal rights? Do the people share in the country’s wealth? Has the land been restored to those who work it? Are all truly equal before the law? Are human rights upheld not only in theory, but in practice? Do our people enjoy dignified work and economic security? Is education liberatory, accessible, and transformative? Do all have access to shelter, safety, and a life of comfort? And have we, as a nation, upheld peace, justice and friendship at home and abroad?
These questions are not rhetorical — they are diagnostic. They point us towards the work ahead. The Freedom Charter endures not only because it is morally powerful, but because it remains painfully relevant.
We must recommit — at every level of state, society and movement — to realising its vision. Let it once again become the standard by which we judge our actions, the map by which we navigate policy, and the moral centre of our national discourse.
To reclaim the Charter is to reclaim the soul of our democracy. The Freedom Charter still speaks. Our task, now and always, is to ensure that the world still listens.
• Andile Lungisa is an ANC NEC member
For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za
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