VITA VISSUTA

During the long hours of walking over the past few months, as I prepared for the Camino de Santiago, I abandoned the company of music and chose instead to listen to a wide range of podcasts. One of them, created by Paolo Colombo for Il Sole 24 Ore, brought me back to my studies of history, sociology, and political science, reminding me of the Freedom Charter, a document that sought to sketch the future of an entire nation: it’s a document and a story worth to be remembered. This is the full text FREEDOM CHARTER

Photos from the times I was working in South Africa, visiting Soweto. Leica Q2.

In a dusty field outside Johannesburg on June 26, 1955, more than 3,000 delegates gathered for what would become one of the most consequential political meetings in modern African history. Representatives of different races, religions, professions, and communities came together in Kliptown to adopt a document that challenged the foundations of apartheid South Africa. They called it the Freedom Charter.

At a time when racial segregation governed every aspect of life, the Charter articulated a radically different vision of society. Its opening words remain among the most powerful statements in the country’s political history:

“South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.”

The statement was revolutionary because it directly contradicted the apartheid doctrine that reserved political power and economic privilege for the white minority. Instead, the Charter proposed a democratic nation founded on equality, citizenship, and human dignity.

The document emerged from a nationwide consultation process organized by the Congress Alliance, a coalition that included the African National Congress (ANC), trade unions, women’s organizations, and community groups. Thousands of ordinary South Africans submitted ideas about the country they wished to build. These proposals were collected, debated, and ultimately transformed into a shared vision.

The Charter was not merely a protest manifesto. It was a blueprint for a future state. Its demands covered political rights, education, labor, land ownership, housing, and economic justice. One of its central declarations stated:

“The people shall govern!”

Another proclaimed:

“All national groups shall have equal rights.”

The Charter also addressed economic inequality, arguing that the country’s immense wealth should benefit all citizens rather than a privileged minority. It declared:

“The people shall share in the country’s wealth.”

For the apartheid government, such ideas were perceived as a direct threat. Many leaders associated with the Charter, including a young lawyer named Nelson Mandela, were arrested and charged with treason in 1956. Although the lengthy Treason Trial ultimately failed to secure convictions, it marked the beginning of years of intensified repression.

Yet the document survived. Throughout the decades of struggle that followed, the Freedom Charter became a moral compass for the anti-apartheid movement. Its principles influenced generations of activists, political prisoners, trade unionists, and community leaders.

When South Africa finally held its first democratic elections in 1994, many of the Charter’s aspirations found expression in the country’s new constitutional order. Universal suffrage, equal citizenship, protection of human rights, and non-racial democracy all reflected ideals first articulated in Kliptown nearly four decades earlier.

Today, debates continue about how fully the Charter’s economic promises have been realized. South Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal societies, and questions about land, wealth, education, and opportunity remain at the center of public discourse.

Yet the Freedom Charter endures because it was never simply a political program. It was a statement of collective imagination—a declaration that another South Africa was possible.

More than seventy years later, its opening words still resonate as both achievement and challenge: South Africa belongs to all who live in it.