To Still Speak of Freedom
Seventy years ago, the Congress of the People was broken up by apartheid police while discussing the Freedom Charter, a vision for a just society. The document remains a guide for building a free South Africa today, writes Mervyn Bennun, one of the meeting’s participants.
The Freedom Charter was notable precisely for its insistence that economic and political rights were equally important. (Photo credit: Eli Weinberg / UWC Robben Island Mayibuye Archives)
On 25 and 26 June 1955, the Congress of the People was held in Kliptown, South Africa. Proposed two years previously by Z. K. Matthews, a prominent academic, it was organised by the National Action Council. This later became known as the Congress Alliance — a coalition consisting of the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress […]
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