The ANC saw the need for a clear statement on the future of South Africa as the country struggled for freedom in the early fifties. The idea of a Freedom Charter was born, and the Congress of the People Campaign was initiated.During this campaign the ANC and its allies invited the whole of South Africa to record their demands so that they could be incorporated in a common document. Thousands of people participated in the campaign and sent in their demands for the kind of South Africa they wished to live in. The demands of the people conceptualised what is in the Freedom Charter today.
On 25 and 26 June 1955 the three thousand delegates who gathered at Kliptown were workers, peasants, intellectuals, women, youth and students of all races and colours. The Congress of the People showed that this gathering and standing up together would prove to be remembered in the history of South Africa. It adopted the Freedom Charter, a vision for a united, non-racial and democratic South Africa.
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