We have tried to trace the process through which the Freedom Charter was created. Immediately after its adoption the state brought charges of high treason against 156 leading democrats. The charge of treason was based, in large measure, on the allegation that the Freedom Charter was a blueprint for a dictatorship of the proletariat. Africanists also attacked the Freedom Charter as importing “foreign” socialist ideologies.

In our own time the Charter has been attacked as bourgeois or petit-bourgeois (that is, as primarily addressing the needs of the wealthy or professionals, small traders and so on, rather than the workers). Alternatively, it has sometimes been defended as a socialist document.

Our view is that the Charter is a people's document. It was created through a democratic process, unprecedented in this country and probably in most other countries of the world. It continues to speak to the interests of all oppressed South Africans who suffer under apartheid, and it wins support from democrats who struggle to end racial oppression and class exploitation.

The character of the Charter is not the result of any one original thinker nor even a group of people with fine intellects. Its content derives from the conditions under which the black people live in South Africa. In the first place, the Freedom Charter is a response to the denial of self-determination. In consequence of not controlling their own destiny, all blacks, but especially Africans, endure national oppression. All blacks, irrespective of class, are victims of this oppression. It is not only black workers, but all blacks who are disenfranchised and endure disabilities in almost every aspect of their lives.

One of the peculiarities of the South African society is that written into its structure is this systematic national oppression of all blacks. It is one of the factors that facilitates capitalist exploitation in South Africa. National oppression and capitalist exploitation are inextricably interlinked. In combination they ensure higher rates of profits than those found in most other parts of the world.