THE FREEDOM CHARTER PEOPLE'S CHARTER (front)
30th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter (back)


Opening with the demand, "The People Shall Govern!", the Freedom Charter was created in 1955 by the South African Congress Alliance (SACA) as a statement of their core principles. The SACA was made up of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People's Congress.

Intended as an act of resistance against the increasingly oppressive apartheid government, the Charter includes demands such as, "Land to be given to all landless people," "Living wages and shorter hours of work," and "Free and compulsory education, irrespective of colour, race or nationality." The ANC aimed to make the creation of the Charter as democratic as possible, sending 50 000 volunteers into marginalised rural and urban communities to collect the demands of the South African people. Resistance leaders Z.K Mathews, Lionel Bernstein, Ruth First, Ethel Drus, and Alan Lipman synthesised the demands of the people into the Charter's final form.

The Freedom Charter was officially adopted on June 26, 1955, at the Congress of the People, held in Kliptown, Soweto with 3000 people in attendance.