For me the most striking feature of the Freedom Charter is its people centeredness. Every little statement the Charter makes has to do with the people as a whole as well as individual being. In the final analysis it advocates dignified human existence.

I believe it is in this context that Prof. Raymond Suttner put emphasis on the ‘The People Shall Govern’. It was by no co-incidence that the first words of the Charter are; ‘We, the people of South Africa….’but for me it was a clear demonstration of an intention to establish a democratic state governed by ‘the people’.
That understanding of the Freedom Charter’s philosophical stand point should enjoin us into striving for the establishment of a working participatory democracy.

Where people are directly involved or participate in governing their affairs they take responsibility for the realisation of all that the Freedom Charter contains.

The past (almost) twenty years of our democracy has many examples of how impossible will it be to realise the ideals of the Freedom Charter without ‘the people’ governing. One such example is on the housing front; ‘There shall be houses, security and comfort’ so said ‘the people’ in 1955, then the ‘people’s government’ allocated money for that, millions of houses were built for the people and not by the people. The result of that was shoddy work by the contracted few leaving people with insecure structures and no comfort at all. As we speak today thousands if not millions of those ‘RDP houses’ are being demolished and new houses built. I doubt if this would have happened if ‘the people’ had ample space to govern. There are a number of such examples in other sectors too.

Maybe as our democracy enters its third decade we should introduce a well structured ‘National Civic Education Programme’ as a deliberate effort to build ‘people’s capacity to engage with and influence the system, in the true sense of them being their ‘own liberators’. An open society in practise, as envisaged by the Freedom Charter will also reduce the possibilities fraud and corruption.

Finally I believe that the Unisa Freedom Charter discourse should be taken to local communities so as to raise the conscious of the ordinary folk who should be governing.