It is apparently difficult to dispel the myth that the ANC’s Freedom Charter has been what it purports to say – a Charter for Freedom. Many, on the left, right and centre, subscribe to the view that the ANC faithfully led the liberation struggle in South Africa and things only started to go wrong after the first, glorious era when it ruled under the baton of an heroic Nelson Mandela and his comrades who had sacrificed so much in its cause.
The record should be set straight as we have endeavoured to do in all our pronouncements. The failures of the ANC are rooted in its perception of the goals of our national struggle. And so it came up with its Freedom Charter which is an ignominiously flawed document. In the first place it presented a set of promises to the oppressed population – “ There shall be, There shall be”, over and over again, as if the leadership of the ANC could guarantee the realisation of these promises. They were effectively telling the oppressed population to “just follow us and there shall be a glorious freedom rendered to all of you”. No leadership can ever make any such guarantee or promise. It is bound to fail, even as the glorious, flowery and objectively deceitful promises of its latest National Development Plan are bound to fail. (Read these at:
A determined and objective leadership rather calls upon the population to accept and adopt a set of programmatic DEMANDS as their OWN which THEY will strive and struggle for. In the final analysis, their success or failure in their endeavours depends on themselves and not simply the political leadership.
Secondly. at the outset, the Freedom Charter set a limit on the goals of the democratic revolution which has resulted in the never-ending target for the completion of its so-called National Democratic Revolution. These limits are completely expressed, firstly in the second point of the Freedom Charter:
“ALL NATIONAL GROUPS SHALL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS
There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races. All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride”.
Here the ANC has accepted the existence of separate racial groups and nationalities as a permanent foundation of South African society. This has resulted in its acceptance and endorsement of a House of Traditional Leaders and outmoded tribal chieftainship and kingship which keeps the rural population in a system of undemocratic rightlessness. The tribal chiefs and kings and their ilk are in the meantime rewarded with rich pickings from the bourgeois system of tax collection. More seriously, in the execution of the ANC’s program of Land Reform, they have been awarded tenure and control of vast tracts of land instead of these being given directly to the landless peasantry who are therefore compelled to exist under outmoded tribal strictures.
The ANC, through its Freedom Charter, has effectively denied the need for a single South African nationality, irrespective of race colour or creed. Indeed, the ANC denied the existence of a single human race, officially right up to its Kabwe conference in 1985, when it reluctantly conceded to dissolving the fraud of separate organisations for Black Africans, Coloureds, Indians and Whites. Today, we have a country bound to African Nationalism with its absurd, implied objectives of Africanities instead of Universities, as if we are apart and separate from the human race with all its historical achievements. Instead, we must look to a so-called African knowledge system instead of a universal knowledge system.
The Freedom Charter is supposedly, a “magnificent” document, coming a full twelve years after the radical 10 Point Programme of the Unity Movement – a set of DEMANDS and not promises, coupled with the policy of Non-collaboration with the oppressor and its institutions. This the ANC opportunistically avoided, participating in the fraudulent Native Representation Council and calling on people to vote for three White members of parliament to “represent” the African population. In the end, the ANC conducted an “anti-apartheid struggle” as if our struggle was against the Afrikaner Nationalist version of oppression only and not against the complete system of racial segregation and class exploitation that existed long before the Afrikaner Nationalists came into power. The ANC relied on its opportunism of promises to the masses which was amply backed by the bourgeois press and media.
One can go on but it is not necessary to debunk the falsified goals of nationalisation of the mines as if nationalisation of any means of production or service is progressive and anti-bourgeois. Historically, we have seen bourgeois governments taking charge of vital industries such as the railways, electricity and water supplies, etc, all to make it simpler for their clients to prosecute their goals of naked profit. Simply to say that today, we are confronted with the Zuma regime and the perceived corruption that is contained within it. May it be observed that this was not by far, where this tendency stems from. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison he was a multi-millionaire. Nobody asked where the money came from, who gave it to him and what did they expect in return. While Mandela gave generously to charity and probably the ANC, that did not preclude him from buying a luxury home in Houghton after his home in Soweto was turned into a grand mansion on the pretext that he would have to host foreign dignitaries in a manner that was befitting. It was never used for that purpose. He also acquired a luxury home in Cape Town and finally died with an estate estimated to be about R42 million in worth. OR Tambo also acquired great personal wealth in exile and all his offspring are extremely well off. Now along comes our latter day ANC leaders many of whom also want a share of the spoils. They adopt more blatant measures to achieve this end. They have simply followed that ANC luminary, Smuts Ngonyama , who stated in 2004 : “I did not join the struggle to be poor”. Today, the lower echelons are shooting and killing one another in order to get onto the party electoral lists for the sake of the money they can potentially earn. Serving their constituencies is an exceedingly minor consideration.
While the ANC has consistently denied and continues to deny the existence of a scientifically established, single human race and persists in its recognition of a so-called Zulu kingdom, a Xhosa Kingdom (with sub-divisions) and all manner of heavily subsidised tribal kingdoms, for so long will South Africa wallow in the realms of historical backwardness and the maintenance of the old system of migratory labour and the serfdom of the rural, landless peasantry.
Today, the leadership of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), in its revolt against the slavish toadyism of the leadership of COSATU, still asks us to hold faith and belief in the Freedom Charter, a charter for tribalism and not in the least a charter for worker liberation. Where do we go from here? We do not now put forward the 10 Point Programme of the Unity Movement as an alternative to the present day promotion of the Freedom Charter, while historically, it has every right to be so regarded. We recognise that with the fall of the rule of Afrikaner Nationalism, circumstances have changed. But the bourgeois revolution has still to be completed and a struggle beyond still remains. In accordance with the logic of the 10 Point Programme and the policy of Non-Collaboration, we call for a new Constituent Assembly that is bound to represent the interests of the working class and the landless peasantry as key to its intrinsic convention. It is a transitional demand, without which there can be no progress in the ongoing South African Liberatory struggle. If, in the present, there is any voice which can present a more progressive demand, then we will be in the forefront of efforts to promote it with all necessary vigour.