‘We need to live the Freedom Charter again’
Two signed copies of the document go on display tomorrow as part of a campaign to highlight its principles, writes Tymon Smith
NEXT month, on June 26, it will be 60 years since the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown.
Tomorrow, two original copies of the document — signed by members of the organisations represented at the congress — will be put on display at the Liliesleaf Centre in Rivonia, Johannesburg.
Nicholas Wolpe, CEO of the Liliesleaf Trust and son of activists Harold and AnnMarie Wolpe, says that although the charter was recognised as a fundamental document by the ANC and the anti-apartheid movement, he doesn’t remember a copy hanging on the walls of his home growing up in England in exile with his parents.
“It’s one of those conundrums — it was an important document but somehowit . . . became lost,” he says.
Once it had been adopted, the handwritten charter was taken to Royal Printers in downtown Johannesburg, where it was typeset and thousands of copies were made. The search for the original handwritten copy continues.
What makes these two copies significant is that, although they are printed, they are signed by Albert Luthuli and the heads of the five organisations represented at the Congress of the People: the ANC, the South African Congress of Democrats, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress and the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
Luthuli’s signature is dated 1960 — which has left researchers wondering why it took so long for him to sign it. After being adopted in 1955, the charter was ratified by the five organisations in 1956.
The first signed copy was acquired by the trust in 2010 and belonged to Sactu leader and treason triallist Leon Levy. The other was bought from an auction house in 2013. It’s not known who owned it, but it does have a Congress of Democrats stamp on the back.
Wolpe says the trust relied on Dr Scott Couper, the development manager at Inanda Seminary and author of a book about Luthuli, to analyse the signatures on the documents and establish their authenticity.
Although the events leading up to the adoption of the charter are well documented, “the various layers of what happened next are unclear”, he adds.
For Wolpe, these copies are not about showing off interesting pieces of historical ephemera.
Rather, he believes that, like the Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence, the Freedom Charter is a document that talks about “the inalienable rights of the people and the fact that no government can claim legitimacy unless it’s predicated on the will of the majority”.
It was the document that laid down the core principles of the struggle against apartheid and served as what Govan Mbeki termed “the liberation movement’s moral compass”.
It was on the back of these principles that the constitution and Bill of Rights were written.
But today many see the charter as a document of its time rather than as Wolpe sees it: “[It’s] the most important document written. If the ideas of the Freedom Charter were kept alive, the issue of debating the question of our roles and where we all fit in to South Africa would not be the issue. The issue would be how to take South Africa forward and make this a society where all people are truly able to participate in its wealth and benefit from the freedoms that we have won.”
He believes the charter’s preamble should be memorised by all pupils and recited each morning like the American Pledge of Allegiance.
The display of these copies is a first step towards a campaign around the 60th anniversary of the charter’s adoption to raise awareness of it and the ways in which its principles are still relevant today.
If UK Prime Minister David Cameron can claim that the Magna Carta, signed into law 800 years ago, offers a blueprint for what it means to be British in the 21st century, it seems reasonable that the much younger Freedom Charter could still be useful to South Africans.
As Wolpe says: “We are putting it on display because we want people to see it. That may sound strange, but the reality is that we need to show people that this is a real document, it exists, here it is. We now need to start living it again.”
We are putting it on display because we want people to see it . . . we need to show people that this is a real document