Speeches
Intergenerational Dialogue
Day of reflection and commemoration of the Matola Raid
- Snuki Zikalala, ANC VL President
- 28 June 2025
- Gauteng Legislature, Gauteng
Good morning comrades
Today is a day of sharing memories of the past to draw lessons for the future.
I’d like to begin by sharing a piece of my past, a memory that remains as sharp as yesterday. I was just eleven when my family was forcibly evicted from our home in Alexandra. I can still see it: my mother, my two younger sisters, my four brothers, and all our furniture piled onto the back of an open truck. We drove through Louis Botha Avenue, past the mining dumps, only to be suddenly dumped in Diepkloof, Johannesburg—a four-bedroom house, yes, but with nothing more than an outside pit latrine.
In those years, the apartheid government was deeply engaged in what they called “social engineering.” They were tearing apart established communities in Alexandra, removing permanent residents, to build single male hostels. These hostels were meant to house cheap migrant labour for Johannesburg’s industries. Even at eleven, I asked myself: Why us? Why only black South Africans? What about our human rights? Why were we evicted without a say, separated from everything we knew?
When we were dumped in Diepkloof, we were deliberately ethnically separated from other Nguni and Sotho groups. This was no accident; it was the classic divide and rule strategy of the apartheid regime, designed to keep us fractured and powerless. The apartheid government, plain and simple, disregarded the human rights of the black majority in our own country.
A few years later, around fourteen, my brothers and I, along with other young people, would stand at the intersection of Jan Smuts Avenue and Empire Roads. We sold lollipops to white families taking their children to the Johannesburg Zoo. Those children were happy, and we had to smile, compete with other vendors for every sale. But inside, I was seething. I was angry that we, as black people, had no rights in our own country. It was only white people who had rights and privileges in South Africa.
I remember seeing the Wits University buildings. Only white students were allowed to study at that prestigious institution. I couldn’t hold back. I turned to another vendor and said, “It’s unfair that only white students have rights and privileges to study at such prestigious institutes!” I was agitated, telling him we should demand to be allowed to study at Wits after matriculating. His response was sobering: “That’s what landed Mandela and others on Robben Island.” The apartheid government made sure the doors of learning and culture were slammed shut for most of us, ensuring they were not opened to all racial groups in South Africa.
My political consciousness was ignited when Comrade Winnie Mandela asked me to establish an underground group of young, angry youth. Comrade Joyce Sikhakhane, Winnie Mandela and Samson Ndou introduced us to the Freedom Charter literature, which was, of course, banned in the country. It was made clear to us that we wouldn’t be politically involved, wouldn’t be trained as underground members of the then-banned MK, until we had internalized and understood the values and principles of the ANC, which are firmly based on the Freedom Charter.
This is our history, a history we must never forget, so we can fully appreciate how far we have come and how much further we still have to go to truly build a just and equitable South Africa for all.
It is fitting, as we near the end of June, a month when we both recall the struggles of the youth of 1976 and confront the challenges that today’s youth face, that we are hosting this inter-generational dialogue.
Today’s event, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter, provides us with an opportunity, together with the young leaders of today, to draw lessons not mechanically but dynamically, to guide the development of strategies and tactics that will better the lives of our people and create a safe and prosperous SA. Drawing on the collection of demands for inclusion in the Freedom Charter, the hosting of the Congress of the People, and the subsequent debates and adoption of the Freedom Charter by the ANC, I would like to share seven lessons.
The first lesson is about reading the moment, and the second is about seizing the moment.
In 1948, the National Party came into power, entrenching segregation and introducing more extreme measures of oppression and high levels of exploitation. And so, in 1952, the ANC, which at that time had only African members, joined forces with the South African Indian Congress to launch the Defiance Campaign. It involved thousands of volunteers deliberately breaking discriminatory laws, resulting in mass arrests and imprisonment. Support for and participation in the Congress movement grew rapidly. It became clear that by uniting with other racial groups, we could strengthen the fight against racial segregation.
Reading the moment was recognising that there was an imperative to both consolidate the mobilisation and solidarity across races as well as provide a vision of a future without apartheid. And so, the idea of the Freedom Charter was borne.
The ANC was then able to seize the moment to consolidate the gains of the Defiance Campaign, develop the organisational and social basis of the Congress movement as a mass movement, clarify its political policies and principles, unite the emerging trade union movement and women’s organisations and enable the Congress movement to assume a fully non-racial character.
We need to ask ourselves today, how do we read the moment, and how do we seize it to intensify the struggle for the achievement of all the clauses in the Freedom Charter The third lesson is about the significance of connecting with the people
Before the Defiance Campaign, the ANC was not a mass movement. However, between this campaign and the Congress of the People, organisations blossomed. ANC branches multiplied, Freedom Volunteers were recruited, and organised committees to collect demands and elect delegates to the Congress of the People.
The local Congress of the People committees drew in a range of social, cultural, religious, sports, educational, traders and youth groups into the work and activities of the Congress movement. The process enabled the ANC to advance into rural areas, making invaluable contacts with influential rural individuals, including chiefs and priests.
This period also saw the formation of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation, the South African Congress of Democrats, comprising white people who opposed apartheid, the Federation of South African Women, and the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
Since then, the ANC has placed a strong emphasis on its mass base, non-racial and multi-class or broad-church nature. Even when it was banned and forced out of the country, the ANC recognised mass mobilisation as one of the four pillars of the struggle required to overthrow the government.
When the United Democratic Front was launched in 1983, it embarked on a million signature campaign, enabling it to go door to door across the country to collect signatures opposing a divide and rule strategy to set up tricameral parliaments.
We thus have a rich history of door-to-door work, street committees, sectoral work – reaching out to our people wherever they are. But we have stopped doing this today. We use Whats App groups, loud hailers and T-shirt distribution to promote the ANC.
Comrades, do we still want to have a mass base and if so, how do we reconnect with them? And how do we organise ourselves to reconnect with them, which brings me to the next lesson.
The fourth lesson is about the necessity for strong organisation founded on political consciousness and discipline – not resources!
Let me read to you extracts from a pamphlet, circulated amongst Indian youth in the run-up to the Congress of the People:
“What is required of a Freedom Volunteer. You are not being required to give up your job or leave your studies. You will pledge yourself to undertake regular, active and intensive work for the Congress of the People, and for resistance to the Apartheid policy of the Government.
“You will be asked to take a pledge to serve your country and your people to the best of your ability, and in accordance with the policy and programme of the organisation to which you belong.
“You will be asked to study the political and economic life of our country, and classes will be organised for that study”.
To be a member of the ANC required a high standard of self-discipline, political consciousness and selfless dedication to the cause. As a result of their commitment to a strong and disciplined organisation, ANC members were able to withstand exile, detention, working in the underground, living in the military camps, and preventing the infiltration of enemy forces.
In addition, mobilisation in the 1950s and even in the 1980s did not require a massive outlay of funds and financial inducements to get people to act. More often than not, we dug into our own pockets.
When I was arrested in 1969, I was detained in solitary confinement for about twelve months. However, the political education we received in the underground from comrades like Cde Winnie Mandela, Joyce Sikhakhane, Samson Ndou and Sam Poloto , enabled us to withstand torture and repression. The Freedom Charter, which was taught to us in the underground, was the beacon of hope that we were required to use to mobilise communities, do underground work and be ready to join the armed wing of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Today, we require ANC members to take an oath. To enhance the quality of our members and cadres, all ANC members are required to complete a Foundation Course in political education. But can we say that our activists and cadres stand proud to be ANC members, stand confident in holding their own in the battle of ideas, relating to people on the ground, and continuing the commitment to build strong local units to carry on the struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist, and prosperous SA?
And how much of this decline in organisation has contributed to our decline of support? How do we undertake organisational work and mass campaigning in today’s SA? Let us reflect on this in our intergenerational dialogue today.
The fifth lesson is about the importance of a unifying minimum programme of action
During the mid-1950s, the apartheid regime sought to divide the different racial groups and classes. The ANC understood that to overthrow and defeat apartheid regime, it needed to unite different racial groups and classes around a common programme.
The Freedom Charter was able to draw the maximum number of forces in society around a minimum yet radical political programme, drawing a line between the aspirations of the majority of the people and the policies of an apartheid minority regime.
The Congress movement also understood the relationship between the achieving national liberation and the more radical demands of the working class for socialism.
Cdes Raymond Suttner and Jeremy Cronin, when compiling the book 30 Years of the Freedom Charter, interviewed Cde Christmas Tinto, who was a volunteer in chief in Langa, Cape Town and also an organiser for SACTU. He talked about being a “two card carrying member of the struggle…you must have a card of Sactu, of a trade union and you must have a card of a national oppression. ANC and Sactu both”.
This was because, at the time, Suttner and Cronin argued, although the Charter was not a programme of the working class, it nevertheless reflected their interests. The Freedom Charter reflected the minimum demands of the progressive bourgeoisie – and the minimum for the working class. The bourgeoisie will not strive for more than is contained in the Charter, while the working class will have sufficient clauses to aspire beyond its demands, they argued.
The Freedom Charter also introduced a degree of ideological uniformity and cohesion within the liberation movement that did not previously exist. After the Freedom Charter was adopted at the Congress of the People, it had to be adopted by the individual organisations that attended, including the African National Congress (ANC). The Africanists in the ANC, who later led by Robert Sobukwe broke away to form the PAC in 1959, objected to the clause that “the land belongs to all who live in it both white and black”, and others, like ZK Mathews, referencing the clauses on nationalisation, felt it was a socialist document.
Today, we find ourselves in a government of national unity, with liberal and conservative forces on one hand, and face increasingly strident, radical left, but actually right-wing populist demands from opposition parties outside the GNU on the other. Should we not be revisiting the value of a minimum programme that can unite the broadest number of people?
The sixth lesson is about being able to listen to and accurately reflect the views of the people, while providing a cohesive and progressive vision of the future
Let us return to look at the documents produced in the run-up to the Congress of the People. A circular issued in January 1955 to all ANC volunteers has a section on how a meeting should be conducted. It reads:
“The volunteers should carefully write down the demands and grievances that are voiced…They must encourage people to talk of small things, and not speak generally of ‘unjust laws’ or ‘oppression’…. At the end of the meeting, all the demands of the people should be read out by the volunteers, and the meeting be asked to vote for or against their inclusion in the Freedom Charter”
Thus, the Freedom Charter gave the space to ordinary people, irrespective of race, ethnic group, language, gender, religion, class, educational standard, personal beliefs, values, and organisational affiliation, to speak about their hopes and dreams for the future. The process reflected a deep respect for the views and aspirations of the people.
The drafters of the Freedom Charter were then able to take the demands of ordinary people and link them to the need for radical transformation of the socio-economic and political structures of the time.
Content was able to be given to the abstract goals of “national liberation” and “self-determination of the African masses” and the Congress slogan of “Freedom in our lifetime”, by articulating what that freedom would mean in practical terms in various spheres of life in South Africa.
As ANC President at the time, Chief Albert Luthuli argued in an interview with Drum magazine, the Charter is the direct outcome of the harsh, oppressive, and unjust conditions of the time. It is not perfect, but practical and relevant, reflecting the deep yearnings for security and human dignity.
Even then, some of the demands foresaw the future. For example, the demand that “the state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers” talks about both the need to advance farmers and to conserve the land for future generations.
The seventh and last lesson is about non-racialism and non-sexism, what today we more commonly refer to as gender equality.
An organisation that is 113 years old develops and changes over time. The ANC is different now than at it was at its formation in 1912. The adherence to the principles formulated in the Freedom Charter, of inclusivity both racial, ethnic, class and gender took many years to achieve. Through the Congress of the People campaign, an urban-based movement evolved into a fully-fledged national movement, assuming a non-racial character that was broadly representative of the South African population.
The Freedom Charter also enabled the Congress leadership to establish a structured relationship among the various components of the liberation forces in South Africa, the different national groups, women’s organisations, trade union movement and communist party based on a common and shared vision of an alternative and radically different social order.
And before the rise of feminism in the next decade, the Freedom Charter called for equal pay for equal work for all, as well as creches and maternity leave on full pay for working mothers. It recognised also the particular brunt that women face when for example, it calls for free medical care and hospitalisation…with special care for mothers and young children”.
The struggle for gender equality encompassed the concept of the ‘triple oppression of women’ – referring to racial oppression, class oppression and gender oppression. Today, we should be asking ourselves how far have we advanced to address these three forms of oppression and the intersectionality between them, especially in the face of the gender-based violence pandemic.
These are the seven lessons.
The Freedom Charter became a beacon of hope that the Treason Trial judges could not extinguish and that guided the determination of the struggle as it shifted to the armed struggle and the difficult and dark times of the 1960s and 1970s.
Through the efforts of youth organisations, working with the ANC underground, Nusas, Azaso (the forerunner to SASCO), and Cosas, the Freedom Charter was popularised again in the late 1970s and 1980s. In February 1984, these three student organisations launched the Education Charter Campaign, based on the clause, “the doors of learning and culture shall be open”, to formulate alternatives to apartheid education and create a basis for student mobilisation. This campaign also led to the emergence of progressive teacher unions, organised under the National Union of Educators of South Africa (NEUSA).
Thus, in 1994, when we achieved the first phase of our national democratic revolution, we included the preamble to the Freedom Charter in our Constitution, whose clauses remain our aspirational goal.
However, putting something on paper does not make it happen. To advance the aspirational goals of the Freedom Charter, now entrenched in our national Constitution, we must understand the current balance of forces to determine the most effective set of strategies and tactics.
In today’s dialogue, let us revisit the experience of the Freedom Charter and examine its clauses to consider how we should review and refine our strategy and tactics to achieve them. Our struggle remains an unfinished struggle, one that the youth of today need to continue. The Veterans League is here to support the next generation. It is about passing on the baton.
Amandla!