Elizabeth, East London, Cape Town, and Johannesburg
and Parliament
had enacted severe penalties for civil disobedience.I"
In 1955, the ANC formed a coalition representing a broad spectrum of
South African society to organize a campaign designed to enlist the par-
ticipation of the black masses and win the sympathy of the outside world.
With the cooperation
of the South African Indian Congress, the South
African Coloured People's Organisation, the small, predominantly white
Congress of Democrats, and the multiracial South African Congress of
Trade Unions, the ANC convened a Congress of the People. On June 26,
1955, 3,000
delegates (over 2,000
Africans, 320
Indians, 230
Col6ureds,
and 112 Whites) met in an open space at Kliptown near Johannesburg
and adopted a Freedom Charter before the crowd was broken up by the
police.V
The Freedom Charter was destined to endure as the basic policy state-
ment of the ANC. It was drafted by a small committee, including white
members of the Congress of Democrats, after numerous individuals and
committees in various parts of the country had submitted lists of griev-
ances. The charter started with the ringing assertion that "South Africa
belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can