[They are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. This document was drafted with the involvement of a lot of hard-core communists. It contains lots of impossible pie-in-the-sky ideals which no nation has ever attained. As with all Communist Marketing – it promises heaven on earth… which never will, and can never actually materialise.

It talks, for example about universal, free, compulsory education. Mugabe came the closest to achieving it for a while. But these things never last. Its all impossible, idealistic stuff which has no basis in fact.

The Freedom Charter forms the corner-stone of the current S.African Constitution. There are many outright Marxist ideas contained in it. One could say it is the Holy Writ of the ANC. Jan]

The loyalty of the overwhelming majority of South Africans to the Freedom Charter”s vision has made the country what it is today, which many have described as a miracle, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.

“The determination made by the Freedom Charter, that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, now also reflected in our Constitution, decisively repudiated the dismal future for our country that those who had superior weapons had sought to impose,” he said.

Writing in the African National Congress” online publication, ANC Today, Mbeki said the Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955 gave an opportunity to all South Africans, black and white, to decide together what needed to be done to end the conflict first heralded by the events at Mossel Bay in 1488 with the arrival of a Portuguese fleet under the command of Bartolomeu Dias.

What defined the outcome of the Congress of the People was the support of the masses for the vision for South Africa explained by then ANC president Albert Luthuli as “a true partnership of all communities making up its multi-racial nature”.

“This month all our people will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the adoption of this one basic political statement of our goals to which all genuinely democratic and patriotic forces of South Africa adhere.

“We will participate in these celebrations inspired that the perspective projected by that basic political statement now informs our constitutional order and defines the relations among our diverse people.

“As we engage in these celebrations, we will also reaffirm that the victory of the perspective advanced by the Freedom Charter means that there will never again be the kind of conflict exemplified by the skirmish at Mossel Bay in 1488.

“Instead, our people will continue to strive to work together in the true partnership of which Chief Luthuli spoke, together to eradicate the legacy of centuries of colonialism and apartheid and build a South Africa that truly belongs to all who live in it, united in their diversity,” Mbeki said. – Sapa

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…br>