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(Report of the National Executive Committee to the ANC annual conference, 17-18 December 1955)

We of the African National Congress meet once again to review South African and world events; our Congress policy of rights and progress for all the people of our country; our desire for world peace and friendship among the peoples of the world.

Apartheid is enslaving the people of South Africa today but in the great world outside, race discrimination and colonialism are being replaced by human brotherhood and the independence of nations. Countries which less than one decade ago were the subjects of colonial powers have thrown off their bonds and asserted their right to take part in international affairs as complete equals. In the last ten years the maps have had to be redrawn, the face of the world has changed, the people of great parts of Asia have risen to their feet, and now the freedom struggle is spreading to our own continent, Africa. Centuries of colonial oppression have been ended for many millions and for millions more the struggle for liberation is reaching new heights. We do not doubt that within our lifetimes the millions still oppressed throughout the world will govern themselves freely.

The road to freedom is no easy one. Savage wars have been unleashed against the peoples of Kenya, Malaya and Vietnam; savage campaigns of annihilation against the peoples of French Africa, by those seeking to stamp out the people’s freedom movements. The colonialists strive to prevent the floodlight of world enquiry being focussed on what happens in their colonies; they seek to deny the United Nations the right to discuss their policies and to actively safeguard those liberties enshrined in the UN Charter and Declaration of Human Rights.

The deprivation of human liberties; policies of genocide or mass extermination against a subject people; the denial of rights to a people because of their colour; these evils are not the domestic concern of ruling nations: they are the affair of all peoples. Even from those colonies in Africa where the people have been kept in the most dire subjection, denied rights of assembly and organisation and cut off from contact with the outside world, the demands for self-government, for independence and for freedom are ringing out.

Colonialism will be overthrown. It will take longer in some countries than others. Nowhere will freedom come about independently of the people’s struggles, and everywhere the colonial and master powers will fight bitterly to retain their possessions. But everywhere the people’s movements are growing, developing, maturing; new militant forms of struggle are adopted; a new determination is growing among the people; a brotherhood and a confidence for freedom are being forged and the day to liberation draws nearer.

This was the great significance of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in April of this year. The conference of 29 Asian and African powers represented the new era of colonial liberation and was therefore one of the most important events of our time.

There entered into the world arena a great new force for freedom and for peace. The resurgent peoples of Asia and Africa who for centuries experienced the bitterness of colonial oppression will not rest until all are liberated from this evil. So the conference at Bandung pledged to fight until the last remains of colonialism have been wiped from the face of the earth. The conference deplored the policies of racial segregation and discrimination which form the basis of government and human relations in large regions of the still exploited world – including our own country, South Africa. It proposed economic and cultural co-operation between the Asian and African people, and demanded increased representation for the people of these two continents in the United Nations.

With the greatest enthusiasm, we greet the achievements of the Bandung Conference which will inspire colonial people everywhere to redouble their efforts for freedom.

We greet with enthusiasm the decision to convene yet another Afro-Asian conference next year in Cairo.

The coming together of the Asian and African powers is a great force in the world not only for freedom but also for peace, and none should feel the need for peace more deeply than the colonial people who have seen so many wars fought against them in their own lands to rob them of their country’s natural wealth and of their liberty. National rights and independence are not secure in a world at war; and peace is needed for the people to advance and prosper. All mankind needs the ending of the cold war that divides the world into two hostile armed camps and prevents the development of trade, of economic and cultural exchange.

The pessimism of those who once used to say that war is inevitable has been confounded by the great victories for peace won recently by the peace-loving people of the world. Concrete steps towards peace and the easing of world tension were taken at top-level meetings of the big powers. The pressure of the people brought to a stop the colonial wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The people see the choice clearly as one of co-existence: all nations, governments and systems learning to live in one world – or of no existence: a war of atomic horror weapons which threatens to wipe out mankind. The people made their pressure felt and forced their governments to negotiate around the conference table. Great steps have been taken to preserve the peace but the dangers of war can only be averted while the people remain vigilant and organise and fight for peace. War is an opportunity and the means to colonial powers to invade new territories, to swell their profits from the armaments industry and the pillage of subject countries.

The colonial peoples need liberation, freedom, independence. But we who fight for freedom fight also for peace that our children may grow up in a world of prosperity and international friendship.

At Bandung where Africa and Asia took their stand so firmly for world peace and freedom were present Moses Kotane and Maulvi Cachalia. In the great Bandung Assembly our voice was heard, and Kotane spoke there for the real aspirations of the South African people, as he had done for many years at home.

At the United Nations, by contrast, the South African government representatives have withdrawn from this session of UN rather than face the criticism and denunciation of the world. But running away from criticism does not defeat the critics and serves only to condemn the South African government and isolate it from world opinion. South Africa cannot evade the judgement of the world: the judgement is against apartheid and discrimination and for equality and human rights.

The suggestion in the latest United Nations report on South Africa, while still condemning the apartheid practices of our government, is that the application of apartheid is “slowing down” that the operation of this policy is characterised by “gradualism” and “flexibility”. The events of the past year alone do not bear out this theory, nor do the experiences of those who are the chief victims of the apartheid policy: the non-white people.

Above all, this approach misses so sadly the real purpose of the apartheid policy of the Nationalists. Under cover of the airy talk of complete territorial apartheid, of the endless discussions by the Dutch Reformed Church ministers and the SABRA professors, one bout after another of oppressive, discriminatory legislation is being inflicted on the people. While its long term alms are theorised about in the press and the debating chambers, the people are already experiencing the disasters of apartheid. The repression of the state has never been so severe, both the attacks on the political movements and on the rights of the individual and the family; and these attacks have never been directed against such large numbers of the people as they are today. What are these if not the results of apartheid? The talk may be of “separate homes for the Africans in the Reserves” of “their own cities”, rights in “their own areas” and “separate development”; but these plans are an apartheid pipe dream, an illusion, and the actuality of apartheid today is the denial of all rights to those millions living and working in the towns and poverty-stricken rural areas.

This is exactly the purpose of the apartheid theory: to inflict discriminatory laws on the non-white people under the guise of letting them develop one day in their own areas. It may well be recognised that the facts of history work against this illusion of apartheid and that it is a political and economic impossibility, but meanwhile none should fail to see that the Nationalists are today whittling away our rights, sacrificing us on the altar of apartheid, and reducing the people to a state of semi-slavery.

If ever there was a year when apartheid played havoc with the rights of the people, it is the period under review.

The forcible removal by army and police of the people of Johannesburg’s Western Areas to Meadowlands; the plans of the Minister of Native Affairs, Dr Verwoerd, to move the entire African population of the Western Cape Province; the enforcement of the Bantu Education system; the packing of the Senate by Nats in preparation for the removal of coloured voters from the common roll; the implementation of the Population Registration Act; the reclassification of coloureds; the alteration of the judiciary to suit the interests of the Nats; the enforcement of the Bantu Authorities Act; the continuation of exiles and bannings of leaders; the ruthless raids on people’s meetings, private offices and private homes and even religious institutions; the introduction of ethnic grouping; the creation of slums under the site-and-service scheme; the application of the Group Areas Act with the sole purpose of economically ruining the non-Europeans – the Indians in particular; the shameless pass laws and beer raids, persecution of people under the pass laws and finally the threat of the extension of pass laws to women by January next year.

Here in South Africa none can be in doubt as to the growing ruthlessness of the Nationalists and their determination, to use the words of the Prime Minister, to pursue their policies “relentlessly”.

The relentless pursuance of Nationalist policies, instead of striving to stiffen the opposition of the United Party has helped to dismember it. Instead of presenting to the electorate an alternative to the Nationalist Party policies, the United Party offers a copy of these policies, a slightly milder version. “To get into power again the United Party must get more votes, and these votes can only come from the moderate Afrikaners”, said Sir De Villiers Graaff, the Chairman of the Cape United Party, in November. “The moderate Nationalists must be made to feel that there is a place for them in the United Party” Here is a simple telling admission of the policies of capitulation followed by the United Party, policies which have led many former United Party supporters to abandon the faint-hearted policies of the official opposition and to seek more principled opposition to the Nationalists in such protest movements as the Covenant Movement and the campaigns of the Black Sash women. The will to fight the Senate Act and other dictatorial measures is stirring many European voters who have turned to mass protest movements in an attempt to revive and revitalise the opposition. But so long as it is not recognised that the only real bulwark, the only firm defence against dictatorship and fascism is the will of the non-white people for democracy, all opposition politics of white voters alone will continue to be shadow play, unreal and ineffective.

More votes, yes, that is the issue. Not winning Nationalist votes to the side of the United Party, but extending the vote to all the people.

“No government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people”, says the Freedom Charter:

Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as candidate for all bodies which make laws. All people shall be entitled to take part in the administration of the country.

This is the only way to defeat the police state, this is the only way forward.

The great road forward is lit by the Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown on June 25 and 26. Which of us who heard the idea of the Congress of the People first proposed at our Queenstown Conference by Professor Matthews foresaw that it would be such a brilliant success? History was made at Kliptown in June of this year. The Freedom Charter was not just another political document, the Congress of the People just another conference. The Freedom Charter is the sum total of our aspirations, but more: it is the road to new life. it is the uniting creed of all the people struggling for democracy and for their rights; the mirror of the future South Africa. The defeat of the Nationalists and the course of the Congress movement depends on every fighter for freedom grasping fully the meaning and significance, and the purpose of the Freedom Charter.

The Charter is no patchwork collection of demands, no jumble of reforms. The ten clauses of the Charter cover all the aspects of the lives of the people. The Charter exposes the fraud of racialism and of minority government. It demands equal rights before the law, work and security for all, the opening of the doors of learning and culture for all. It demands that our brothers in the Protectorates shall be free to decide for themselves their own future; it proclaims the oneness of our aims for peace and friendship with our brothers in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

This is the pattern of the new South Africa which must make a complete break with the present unjust system.

The Freedom Charter has opened up a new chapter in the struggle of our people. Hitherto we have struggled sometimes together, sometimes separately against pass laws, and Group Areas, against low wages, against Bantu Education and forced removal schemes. With the adoption of the Charter all struggles become part of one: the struggle for the aims of the Charter.

… We would … be failing in our duty if we did not express our high appreciation of the efforts made in the carrying out of our major campaigns during this period.

In the anti-removal campaign in the Western Areas, the anti-Bantu Education campaign, the campaign for the Congress of the People, there are regions and branches which distinguished themselves as a result of which they have emerged strong.

In conclusion, friends, we thank all those who made it their duty to put personal business aside in order to serve the nation during the period under review. We further call upon them in the coming year and upon all true patriots, all democrats, all lovers of freedom to resolve once more that South Africa shall become a free land, free from Nationalist tyranny and become a happy place for all to live in, during our lifetime.

Mayibuye iAfrika!