Q: How did you discover the Freedom Charter?

Chikane: When I came to university there were reading materials available and I began to read about the history of the fifties and before. I began to read books by Mandela and so on which were floating around. That's when I came in contact with the Freedom Charter. My immediate reaction was: “I mean this document is so good! It's so Christian!” For me as a Christian I just found it a fantastic document.

The non-racial stance just made so much sense to me. Then, I didn't see it as a contradiction to the BC [Black Consciousness] approach at all. I just saw it as expressing the reality of the type of society we wanted to have.

Q: Were you involved in the BC movement at University?

Chikane: Ja, when I came to Turfloop it was automatic to become a member of Saso [South African Students’ Organisation]. The organisation was seen as an internal mobilising force which didn't necessarily take a particular position vis-a-vis the exiled organisations. So, at that particular moment we saw BC as a way of making blacks to be conscious and accept themselves as human beings. We never saw it as an end in itself. In my opinion it was a means to an end.

Q: To what end?

Chikane: The end is that we’d move into a non-racial type of society where there would be justice. You use BC for people who still want to get out of that depressed state of accepting that they are less than human. Immediately they have got out of that, they are able to focus on a more concrete desirable society that we intend to look into.

Q: So you are saying that there's no barrier between BC and a non-racial position? That it is not necessary to counterpose the two?