Charter proclaims democratic changes of a far-reaching nature it is by no means a blue-print for a socialist state but a programme for the unification of various classes and groupings amongst the people on a democratic basis’ (1956: 5–6). In the same article, however, Mandela asserted: ‘The Charter is more than a mere list of demands for democratic reforms. It is a revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisages cannot be won without breaking up the economic and political set-up of present South Africa’ (1956: 5). The demands of the Freedom Charter were not socialist but rather a confluence of revolutionary nationalist and social democratic approaches. This was reflected in demands for nationalisation of mineral wealth, banks and monopoly industry, which at a minimum implied an actively interventionist state. It would be in the emphasis placed on the implementation of economic and social policies that the limits of the Freedom Charter’s objectives would be revealed, as they presupposed the establishment of a democratic government sympathetic to its implementation. Luthuli’s comments to the 44th Annual Meeting of the ANC in December 1955 are instructive as to the interpretation of the Freedom Charter within the leadership of the ANC. Arguing that the Freedom Charter should be ratified (which it was eventually at a Special Conference of the ANC in April 1956), Luthuli asked:
What is the implication of the charter? The charter definitely and unequivocally visualises the establishment of a socialistic state. It therefore brings up sharply the ideological question of the kind of state the African National Congress would like to see established in the Union of South Africa.
…
My own personal leanings are towards the modified socialistic state, patterned on the present-day Great Britain, a middle-of-the-road state between the extreme ultra-capitalistic state as we see it in the United States, and the ultra-socialistic state as we see it in Communist Russia … My advice to the conference would be to accept the charter with the qualification that it does not commit itself at present until further discussion on the principle of nationalisation, of means of production, as visualised in Section 3 of the charter (in Pillay 1993: 84–85).
Luthuli explicitly identified with the social democracy of Fabian socialism as found in the post-war British Labour Party, which ushered in the welfare state. Reflecting the plurality of thinking in the ANC, he considered himself a ‘Christian socialist’ (in Pillay 1993: 32). In an interview in Drum magazine in 1953, Luthuli was asked whether he considered communism a ‘serious menace to South Africa’, to which he answered:
No, I do not. The nature of our own movement at present is Nationalist rather than Communist. There should be room for all political parties among us. At the moment we are only concerned with rescuing ourselves out of the mire, and we cannot yet say which direction we shall follow after that. For myself, I would wish for Socialism, in the British sense – if I were in England I would vote for [Clement] Attlee. But in Congress we have people of many different political beliefs – Capitalists, Socialists, and the rest … (Luthuli 1953: n.p.).
The key issue is that Luthuli identified himself as a non-communist socialist, rather than as anti-communist. In a response to an article in 1956 by prominent ANC Youth League intellectual and later member of the Liberal Party and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Jordan K Ngubane, on the communist influences on the ANC as reflected in the Freedom Charter, Luthuli distinguished the Freedom Charter from Soviet-style communism as follows:
Mr. Ngubane poses as an expert on the Communistic doctrines of Marx, Lenin and Engels and finds the Freedom Charter a Congress implementation of these doctrines. I do not claim to be such an expert, but I deny categorically Mr. Ngubane’s charges and I dare him to prove them. The most that could be said about the Freedom Charter is that it breathes in some of its clauses a socialistic and welfare state outlook, and certainly not a Moscow communistic outlook. Mr. Ngubane is concerned that the Charter calls for the nationalisation of certain branches of commerce and industry – in actual fact the number of such industries and commercial undertakings so mentioned is very limited; the Charter in this regard reads: ‘The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people; all people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.’ ‘The Land shall be shared among those who work it.’ Mr. Ngubane would like the world to believe that this is a document preaching the Moscow communistic creed. In modern society, even amongst the so-called capitalistic countries, nationalisation of certain industries and commercial undertakings has become an accepted and established fact (Luthuli 1956: n.p.).
Even though the comments of Mandela and Luthuli suggest that there was contestation within the ANC over the redistributive emphasis of the Freedom Charter, it was ratified at the Annual Conference of 1955. Its strong advocacy of social rights and state intervention in securing such rights made it compatible with the development of a Keynesian, social democratic welfare state, based on the social rights of citizenship. This represented an unequivocal continuity with the social democratic agenda established in the 1940s by the ANC. Far from being a ‘minimum programme’, the Freedom Charter suggested such a far-reaching transformation of South Africa that it would take a social revolution to achieve the goals of the ‘good society’ implied in the realisation of its demands. Seen from the lens of a democratic South Africa, the realisation of these demands implies a radical transformation in the organisation of political and economic power in the country.
The National Party under Hendrik Verwoerd viewed the Freedom Charter as a direct challenge to its state authority, and the charter was met with a hostile response. The National Party arrested the leadership of all the major political groups that had been involved in the Freedom Charter campaign, foremost of which was the ANC. Over a period of four years, during the Treason Trial, it attempted to prove that the citizenship demands of the Freedom Charter could be achieved only by a violent overthrow of the ruling government. The attempt to do so failed, and the case was dropped in March 1961 when the court ruled there was no case to answer.
The ANC was committed to civil disobedience campaigning, which, it hoped, would lead to the ruling party agreeing to a national convention. Such a national convention would allow for meaningful negotiations on a future constitutional order, based on the universal extension of the franchise. The National Party regime rejected the proposal for a national convention and resorted to increased violent repression of political protest, culminating in the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed anti-pass law protesters in Sharpeville on 21 March 1960. A state of emergency was declared nine days later, effectively outlawing all opposition political activity. The ANC and the PAC were banned following the promulgation of the Unlawful Organisations Act No. 34 of 1960.
The ANC’s response to the banning was contained in a statement by an Emergency Committee of the ANC on 1 April 1960. Recording that the ANC had historically attempted a non-violent, peaceful solution to resolving South Africa’s political problems, the statement indicated that such a solution was not possible under the current government of Verwoerd: ‘The first essential towards resolving the crisis is that the Verwoerd administration must make way for one less completely unacceptable to the people, of all races, for a Government which sets out to take the path, rejected by Verwoerd, of conciliation, concessions and negotiation’ (in Karis and Carter 1987: 573).
It reiterated political citizenship as its primary demand: ‘We cannot and never shall compromise on our fundamental demands, as set forth in the Freedom Charter, for the full and unqualified rights of all our people as equal citizens of our country. We do not ask for more than that; but we shall never be satisfied with anything less’ (in Karis and Carter 1987: 573).
Finally, the statement listed a set of proposals calling for the end of the state of emergency and the release of political prisoners, scrapping the system of pass laws, and doing away with laws curbing civil and political rights, concluding with the demand for a ‘new National Convention representing
