Heritage Cases

In the early 1950s Prof ZK Matthews proposed a national convention where the people of South Africa would draft a document, a Freedom Charter, capturing the hopes and aspirations for a future democratic South Africa. People from all over South Africa and from different liberation movements were asked to submit their ideas. Suggestions flooded in and sifted through by the Congress Alliance with representatives from the ANC, South African Indian Congress, South African Coloured People’s Organisation and the Congress of Democrats. On 26th June 1955 thousands gathered on an open field in Kliptown, Soweto to discuss and adopt the charter. This gathering, the Congress of the People, was to be the most representative gathering in South Africa. The Freedom Charter was adopted and became the common goal and inspiration of the liberation movement for decades afterwards. The Charter reflected the demands for and the people’s commitment to a non-racial and democratic South Africa and become the foundation on which South Africa’s progressive Constitution and Bill of Rights was written. The Congress of the People was one of those momentous events in the history of South Africa, both in its representivity of the people of South Africa especially at a time of extreme racial divisions and as a progressive documentation of core principles for democracy. Therefore Freedom Square, now referred to as the Walter Sisulu Square and the Charter are both of high national significance.