In 1953 whilst traveling abroad Professor Z.K. Matthews was repeatedly asked by the many audiences that he addressed what type of South Africa the people of this country wanted in place of the present apartheid order. He was embarrassed by his inauthoritative replies to this question. Consequently, on his arrival back here, he raised the question within the African National Congress of which he was one of the leading members. This unchained a series of activities that led to the answer.

And so, thirty years ago the people of South Africa met at the historic Kliptown pitso (meeting place) and drew up the Freedom Charter as the programme of minimum demands for a non-racial and democratic future.

In search of the Charter

At the time of the great Kliptown come together the majority of the present generation of anti-apartheid activists were too young to make sense of that epoch-making event.

This unfortunate situation was worsened by the conscious attempts of the state to suppress the Freedom Charter and those organisations and individuals who were responsible for its drafting and popularisation.

The banning of the ANC in 1960, the arrest and imprisonment of its leaders, the banning and banishment of leading activists of that time, plus the exiling of uncompromising opponents of apartheid opened a wide and yawning gap between the following generations and those which had gone before.

But, as we shall soon see, this was only a temporary set-back. The youth of our country was determined to crown past efforts with success. And so, with uncertainty and painful slowness, black and white youth in the late sixties began to piece together the splinters from the repression waves of the early sixties.

The South African Students Organisation (Saso) emerged side by side with the National Union of South African Students and the University Christian Movement.