How ANC justified Freedom Charter propaganda

THEMBILE NDABENI

IT IS absurd that people commemorate or celebrate distorted events out of being misinformed.  Generations need to be salvaged from this scourge of deception! 

Records must be put straight!

The Freedom Charter was controversial from the outset: Firstly, the ANC did not meet alone and never consulted its “constituency” broadly before deciding to work with other formations.  Secondly, the way the Freedom Charter was drafted; in fact who drafted it? 

It is clear that the Communists, especially Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein, dominated the drafting. This was why Jordan Ngubane, an African politician, journalist, former ANC Youth League founder and a highest-ranking African in the Liberal Party said the Charter’s ultimate aim was “to condition the African people to accept communism via the back door”.

It was not only communism that was being accepted through the back door, but non-racialism as well. Stephen Ellis puts it: "the Freedom Charter – meant a non-racialism derived ultimately from the SACP…”  

Though communist ideas dominated the Freedom Charter, the irony is that the Africanists also questioned the class background of these white people who dictated its drafting. The argument is that they were a petty-bourgeoisie class, not working class. The Africanists also criticised the involvement of Indians, saying they and the Whites would undermine the self-reliance of Africans. 

Yet Ben Turok  refers to them as “whites of a different stamp”. Perhaps they were different because they dictated the terms for Africans in their own cause. Turok continues “… communists and committed democrats, who were active within the liberation movement. Can the charge of diluting the struggle be made about them?”

 This is not about wrongness or rightness of those communist ideas but proving facts, Bernstein/communist domination. Even on the claim of delegates who represented the “four congresses”, the document was already drafted and brought forward afterwards. This is why the other Africanists broke away out of discontent! 

Dale McKinley writes: “Despite the impressive number of people who participated in the Charter’s adoption at Kliptown in June 1955, the process by which the document was drawn and adopted involved a select Alliance membership.”

The Freedom Charter was dictated, and the ANC's propaganda followed to justify it, but contradictions which involved conflict in facts/claims still remain. Writers like Rob Davies, Dan O’ Meara and Sipho Dlamini argue that the Freedom Charter was a result of the Defiance Campaign. According to them, the Defiance Campaign demonstrated a need for a popular programme that would go beyond the “1949 Programme of Action”.

Even the wild claim that the Defiance Campaign is the translation into action of the 1949 Programme of Action is just a justification for detracting from the latter by the 'diluted ANC'. 

How can they say beyond the 1949 Programme, which was not even implemented; but was replaced instead? Therefore, the Defiance Campaign and the Freedom Charter are connected. 

Many people, including writers just write/say the Freedom Charter resulted from a gathering of people in Kliptown in 1955. When people say it, especially the advocates/adherents/converts/loyalists of the ANC, they look like Hitler’s indoctrinates. 

Those people who dug deeper (even though some divert along the way) will tell you that the idea started with Prof. ZK Matthews, leader of the ANC at the Cape. It is later on where the issue of the Freedom Charter started to move towards the boiling point.  People like Eli Weinberg have the audacity of saying, after the Freedom Charter was made a final draft, “Eventually, all these demands were collated and formulated in the Freedom Charter”.

But R. W Johnson who writes that: “The congress discussed and adopted the Freedom Charter – which was indeed drafted by white communists, though the pretence had to be gone through that it was based on black suggestions”.     

Bernstein was the main man, as David Welsh and J.E Spence present it: “The actual drafting was entrusted to Rusty Bernstein, a former member of the Communist Party”.  Dr Motsoko Pheko refers to it as the “Freedom Cheaters”. It suits cheaters, like Suttner, Cronin and their “dad”, Rusty Bernstein.   

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, drafted by white communists, with Bernstein in the forefront, in the period 1953-1955. He should have felt good for being a star/author for the African people by drafting them “a policy” which serves like a constitution.

The Freedom Charter, a white communist diktat camouflaged as a “people drafted” document, is responsible for the split in the ANC in the period 1958-1959. It caused a division in the “African family yet is celebrated as a revolutionary and a unitary document!” 

In any form of colonialism, the natives are the ones most oppressed. Therefore nobody can tell them what or how to engage against their oppression. Michael Harmel, one of the earliest communist activists in a way verifies this.

 “From the outset the African National Congress asserted the right of the African people as the indigenous owners of the country, entitled to determine its direction and destiny.”

That the ANC turned into Charterists, they should, on one hand, have also changed name to South African Charterists Party or South African Congresses Party (SACP: share the abbreviation with their master, the South African Communist Party). The reason is they changed from being African Nationalists into becoming Charterists. Secondly, the decisions were taken by four congresses (organisations) and not by just one, the ANC. On the other hand, let the Africanists retain the name African National Congress (ANC) because they were the ones who still stuck to the ideology: African Nationalism.

June 26  marked the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter.

Ndabeni is a freelance writer and holds a Master’s Degree in South African politics and political economy from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.