On June 26 1955, at the height of apartheid, more than 3,000 people gathered in Kliptown in the township of Soweto to outline the vision for a democratic SA. On the second day of this gathering, known as the Congress of the People, apartheid police meted out their brutality, storming in to break up the meeting.

But by then, the main objective of the gathering had been accomplished. The Freedom Charter had been drafted, read out and adopted by the people. It would serve as a foundational document for the vision of SA, free from the indignity of racial segregation and the dehumanisation and de-civilisation of apartheid. The Freedom Charter was not just a framework outlining the vision for a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic SA – it was a cornerstone for the Struggle against apartheid. Clauses in the charter were not just an articulation of the vision for a new SA – they were a demand for equality and the humanisation of a people who had, since the arrival of Dutch settlers in 1652, known nothing but violence, dispossession, and disenfranchisement...