Let Us Rise to the Occasion: 70th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter
(Extracts of a speech by President O.R. Tambo on the occasion of 8 January 1980, “The Year of the Charter”)
This year, 1980, marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People on June 26th, 1955. It is the task of all the patriotic and democratic forces of our country to observe this anniversary in a fitting manner.
What is the Freedom Charter? The Freedom Charter contains the fundamental perspective of the vast majority of the people of South Africa of the kind of liberation that we all of us are fighting for. Hence it is not merely the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress and its allies. Rather it is the Charter of the people of South Africa for liberation. It was drawn up on the basis of the demand of the vast masses of our country and adopted at an elected Congress of the people. Because it came from the people, it remains still a people’s Charter, the one basic political statement of our goals to which all genuinely democratic and patriotic forces of South Africa adhere.
In observing the 25th anniversary of its adoption, therefore we need to make available millions of copies of the Freedom Charter to all our people both young and old, in the towns and the countryside so that these great masses of our people can once more renew their pledge of dedication to the future that it visualises. By that act we shall be reaffirming our com
