.jpg)
Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 35. No. 13. 14 June 1972
South Africa Freedom Day June 26
South Africa Freedom Day June 26
.jpg)
"We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no Government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people...."This is how the freedom charter of the South African people begins. To many people such a declaration may seem a statement of the obvious. But to state it today in South Africa is to be a criminal. It is to lay oneself open to the kind of brutality that students in South Africa have recently suffered at the hands of that country's storm troopers.
There is no doubt that the latest instances of repression in South Africa have shocked many people in this country out of their lethargy. The realities of life in South Africa have once again broken through to the surface despite the attempts of Jacks Marshall and Sullivan to build a "New Zealand-South Africa Mutual Admiration Society". Now is the time to make our point again.
June 26th is the first Monday back after Study Week. In the four main centres H.A.R.T. will be taking action in support of South African freedom day. Locally we will be taking to the streets with the specific intention of giving people reason to pause in their everyday routines and to consider the true meaning of Apart-Hate.
From 12 o'clock on H.A.R.T. will be providing entertainment, relevant to the issue, in the Union Hall. At one o'clock a march will leave from the quadrangle outside Hunter. The plan of action for the march will be submitted to the session going on from 12 to 1.
H.A.R.T. is calling on all its supporters to turn out in force on June 26th; many (hopefully) in black masks or with black painted faces. Suggestions as to courses of action will be welcomed. The proposed plan is very flexible and will be finalised to suit the will of the majority. If you Support H.A.R.T. be there.
P.S. - Phone numbers of people who may be interested in your views on apartheid, particularly on S.A. Freedom Day.
S.A. Consulate: 44-854, 44-855
Information division: 43-663.
S.A. Consul-General, Peter Philip: 42-867 (home).
N.Z.R.F.U. - 46274
Jack Sullivan- (Caltex office): 46027
(home): 758-323.
Ring a Racist Today. Demonstrate on June 26
June 26 is a memorable date in the postwar history of the world. It was on this date, in the year 1945, that the Charter of the United Nations was formally signed at a ceremony in the auditorium of the Veterans' Memorial Hall in San Francisco, pledging the world to a common effort towards peace, progress and justice.
June 26 is also a memorable date in the postwar history of the people of South Africa. It was on that day, in 1950, that the first national stay-at-home strike was organized in that country as a mark of protest against the Suppression of Communism. Act and other undemocratic and unjust laws, it was, again on 26 June 1952 that the historic Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws was launched Finally, it was on 20 June, in 1955, that the Congress of the People of South Africa, a multiracial conference of the [unclear: oppenents] of apartheid and racial discrimination, adopted, [unclear: at meeting] klipton, near Johannesburg, a document which has [unclear: come] to be known as the "Freedom Charter".
Ten years later, in 1965, the African National Congress which adopted the Freedom Charter as its programme, had this to say of its significance. "To understand the meaning and significance of the Charter, it is essential to take into account the real, living back ground from which it emerged. This is no abstract to hairsplitting legalistic analysis by parlour theoreticians. It is not only a statement of what should be, and what the people want to be in South Africa; it is at the same time an angry call of anguish against what is in South Africa."