Extract from the Address to the South African People Delivered by President Oliver Tambo on Behalf of the NEC of the ANC on January 8th, 1980
This year, 1980, marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People on June 26, 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 demands 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 us 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.
In this Year of the Charter, we must address ourselves afresh to the question of the illegitimacy of the apartheid regime. We must state the point boldly that this regime has no right to rule our country.
The apartheid regime has brought untold suffering to the vast majority of the people of South Africa. There is no need for us to spell this out in detail because we all of us are suffering daily as a result of the criminal policies of this regime.
Forward to a People's Government
There are over two million blacks unemployed in our country while billions of rand are spent on the war machinery to suppress us. More than five million Africans have been rendered stateless. More than three million Africans have been affected by the brutal system of mass removals. Cemeteries throughout the country continue to fill up with the graves of black infants and children in this Year of the Child, at a time when the pockets of the already rich white minority bulge out dramatically with the money earned from the prices of gold and other minerals which have gone sky high. The jails are full to overflowing with people imprisoned under the pass laws as well as so-called criminals many of whom turned to crime as a result of the apartheid system.
Millions go to bed hungry with little prospect of food the following morning. Millions are ill in health but with no possibility of medical attention. Even beyond our borders yet other millions cannot go about their legitimate business with a feeling of peace and security because the murderous agents of P.W. Botha and Magnus Malan are bent on committing aggression against independent Africa.
These crimes against our people, against Africa and against humanity are perpetrated by a regime devoid of any legitimacy to rule our country because, as the Freedom Charter states, it is not "based on the will of all the people". All our struggles at all levels this year must be accompanied by the call - "Forward to a People's Government!"
To give meaning to this call, and in observing the 25th anniversary of the Freedom Charter and renewing our commitment to the democratic demands contained within it, we must launch mass struggles everywhere and around all the issues that both agitate us and are reflected in the Freedom Charter.