Mbeki: Honour Freedom Charter
2005-06-26 18:14
South Africa - President Thabo Mbeki pledged on Sunday to do everything in his power to fulfil the dream of a united, non-racial South Africa set out in a Freedom Charter drafted by his anti-apartheid movement-turned-governing party 50 years ago.
The document adopted by the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups at a "Congress of the people" on June 26, 1955, inspired generations in the struggle against white-minority rule and established principles for the constitution drafted after apartheid's end in 1994.
"Central to that vision is the course on which the Freedom Charter set our country when it said 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white,"' Mbeki told about 20 000 people gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the charter.
The document provided a blueprint for a post-apartheid South Africa. While the goal of a free and democratic society was achieved with the first all-race election in 1994, ANC leaders concede that the promise of improved lives and a share of the country's wealth for all remains out of reach for millions of impoverished blacks.
"While we have been forging ahead on the political and human rights front, we are lagging far behind in the battle for economic freedom," the ANC-allied Cosatu said in a statement. "The right to work is a fiction for the more than 22 million people who still live in poverty because unemployment remains at over 40 percent of the working population."
After his speech, Mbeki lit an eternal flame and unveiled the design of a Freedom Charter National Monument at the site where the document was drafted in the Kliptown section of Soweto, SAPA reported.
Among those present were leading members of the anti-apartheid struggle including South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, his ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and Albertina Sisulu, widow of Mandela's friend and mentor Walter Sisulu, to whom the venue was dedicated.
Many opposition leaders, however, gave the occasion a miss. They complained it was inappropriate to spend state funds on what they argued was a party-political event.
- AP