The ANC adopted the Freedom Charter at its national conference in March 1956. There were, however, rumblings in certain quarters. According to Chief Albert Luthuli: “Congress did not unanimously adopt the Charter, though the majority was large. But our extreme right-wing [the Africanists, now independently led by Mr Robert Sobukwe] dismissed it in toto. Their compromising [sic] stand made discussion very difficult.”

The Africanists had problems with the opening of the preamble of the Charter: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white … “ They argued that South Africa belongs by right only to the original African inhabitants.

In Natal and the Cape some elements within the ANC felt that the economic clauses of the Charter went too far. Billy Nair talks about these rumblings.

Nair: The ANC adopted the Charter as an organisation at its 1956 Congress. They called a special conference to discuss the problem that arose when certain elements in the ANC felt that the Charter had gone a bit too far, you know, on the land question. Some of these guys were small landowners – from Durban – that caused the trouble.

Q: Were these PAC people or Natal ANC?

Nair: Natal ANC, and you had certain elements in the Transvaal too, who later broke from the ANC to form the PAC. That was in ’58. Now, they too felt like the state at the time of the Treason Trial, that the Charter was a socialist document.

Q: A combination of a sort of radicalism in relation to whites – wanting to “kick them out”, but conservative economically, presumably?

Nair: Ja. They felt, in the case of the PAC, that the white man had no place whatsoever … in a future South Africa, and that they had to be thrown out – they had to be thrown into the sea.

In the Cape too there were some within the ANC who were unhappy with the economic clauses of the Charter.

Veteran: In Cape there were people like Z.K. Matthews that were not happy with the clause of nationalising the means of production.