YOUTH AND
THE FREEDOM CHARTER

The understanding of the present and future perspectives of our struggle is an essential prerequisite in moulding the type of revolutionary that our struggle demands. All South African youth must be mobilised and made to understand the policy, strategy and tactics of our movement. We have to explain to them what the Freedom Charter is and the crucial role it plays in the present and future South Africa. Only in this way can we ensure that our youth does not allow itself to be deceived that it has any important role to play outside the national liberation movement.

Youth in Struggle

The various forms of battles waged by our entire people including the youth are backed and motivated by the same demands that our people made at the historic Congress of the People. Today, the unity in action in pursuit of these demands, expressed through various organisational formations representing all the social structures of our society, points to the unifying role of the Freedom Charter. That this document embodies the aspirations of our youth also is no accident, but indicates the democratic procedure followed in its compilation and final adoption.

The main part of the vast battlefield on which our youth are making sacrifices and advances is in the sphere of education. Since the imposition of the Bantu Education system, the struggle against it was launched and has since intensified. A record of the demands for a just, universal and non-racial education system is to be found in the Freedom Charter ... The Freedom Charter states that the doors of learning and culture shall be opened to all. In our country, the oppressors' culture dominates and the cultural development of society is determined by them. In all the years of colonial and imperial domination and apartheid rule the oppressors have tried to eliminate the most important value of our culture and to preserve and present that which furthers his interests. Apartheid colonial education has the prime aim of instilling the oppressors' values so as to promote his material interests. The youth, because of its very nature, is that part of the society that absorbs and transforms cultural values from one generation to another. It is therefore most vulnerable to the influences of imperialist ideology which aims to use the youth to penetrate a society with the goal of undermining its cultural development and exploiting this for its own ends.

The implementation of the Freedom Charter and the construction of a free and democratic South Africa, according to equal opportunity to all, has as its basic prerequisite the raising of the social standards of all the oppressed groups to that of the privileged minority. While actively participating in the liberation struggle, the youth must exploit whatever opportunities available, even within the legal framework, to fight now for the social upliftment of our people.