THEAPARTHEIDERA
equal work, a forty-hour work week, a minimum wage, annual leave, and
unemployment benefits; free medical care and free, compulsory, and equal
education. The Freedom Charter also included some socialist ideas: "The
mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be
transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole," and "Restriction of
land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided
amongst those who work it." But it made a concession to advocates of
group rights: "There shall be equal status in the bodies of the state, in the
courts, and in the schools for all national groups and races."56 Critics
noted the inconsistencies in the document. Liberals as well as government
supporters raised the specter of communism; radicals deplored the conces-
sion to "national groups."
The government responded by enacting further repressive legislation,
and in December 1956 it arrested 156 people and charged them with high
treason, in the form of a conspiracy to overthrow the state by violence and
replace it with a state based on communism. The court was not persuaded
that any of the accused had planned to use violence, but the trial dragged
on, preoccupying the leadership, until March 1961, when the last thirty