The Freedom Charter and the struggle songs

“I have read the ANC Youth League’s arguments about the Freedom Charter's authorisation, as it were, for the nationalisation of the mines and the banks and the monopoly industries. I have also read their arguments about the struggle songs.  But Julius Malema seems unaware of who the real authors were,” writes Piet Swanepoel.

These are things which have their origin in the distant past, but since I am one of the few people still alive from that period readers may be interested in what I remember of that time.

In January 1952 I attended for the first time a public meeting of the ANC in the Bantu Social Centre in Durban. It was followed in the next eight years by hundreds of similar meetings in that hall, at the "Red Square" and at numerous other venues in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and other places in Natal.

Most of the meetings were held under the auspices of the Natal Indian Congress and from 1954 onwards under the auspices of the Congress of the People (COP).

At all these meetings singing was a major part of the proceedings. The main song was Nkosi Sikilela Afrika. This song is really a prayer and my Zulu colleague and I always stood up to sing it with the rest of the audience.

The very first "struggle song" I ever heard was "Vula Malani". Basically it called upon prime minister Malan to open the door for black people who were knocking on it .

The next most popular song was "Mayibuye, Mayibuye, Mayibuye Afrika". This song called for the return of Africa after it had been taken by the Boers and the English "while we were in dreamland".

"Kill the Boer" was something unheard of and would never have been sanctioned by chief Albert Luthuli.

As for the Freedom Charter: I was at Kliptown on the day it was adopted. It had been preceded by hundreds of meetings of the Congress of the People. At all these meetings people were called upon to submit their "demands" which were to be incorporated into a charter.

Communities were exhorted to hold meetings and to get their members to formulate these demands. At every Special Branch office in the country we "invented" Ratepayers' or other fictitious interest groups which submitted "demands" and appointed delegates to go to Kliptown.

The main purpose was to find out who would actually be the authors of the final charter and to discover whether our "demands" received any attention. What our hundred or more informers discovered in the end was that all their "demands" might just as well have been submitted to Father Christmas. The charter had already been drawn up by a few white communists long before the meeting at Kliptown had even commenced.

So I am sorry to have to tell the ANC Youth League  that their "Kill the Boer" song is of very recent origin and their "Freedom Charter" was white man's magic.