Let Us Rise to the Occasion: 70th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter

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 commitment to struggle and our determination to bring into being the kind of social order in South Africa that we, the oppressed majority, consider just and equitable.

When we together drew up and adopted the Freedom Charter we set ourselves firmly against all so-called reformist solutions of the South African problem. We said we do not fight to reform apartheid but to abolish it in its entirety. We said we do not fight to gain some illusory liberties in areas set aside for by the enemy or as this or the other national group. We said we want freedom for all our people as equals, brothers and sisters in one united and democratic South Africa. We did not call for “power sharing” with the regime of the oppressors but firmly and unequivocally challenged the legitimacy of that regime and its right to govern us.

Neither did we speak of special and unequal relations between South Africa and her neighbours, Africa and the rest of the world. Rather we stated the matter plainly that each people has a right to independence and self-government and to equal status one with the other, and that it was on this basis that peace, friendship and cooperation among the peoples can be secured.

This means that when we observe the 25th anniversary of the Freedom Charter we must simultaneously direct our attention against the enemy’s strategy in its totality because it is in fact diametrically opposed to what we are fighting for. … We call on all our people everywhere to take up the challenge of the 80’s which have brought the centre of gravity of Africa’s liberation struggle to our land – to its cities, towns and villages; its industries, factories and farmland; its mountains, plains and bushveld.

The struggle continues!
Forward to a People’s Government!
Victory is Certain!
All Power to the People!

Source:
President Oliver Tambo, “Let Us Rise to the Occasion”, Sechaba, March 1980.

Castro Khwela
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