Academic and ANC member Z. K. Matthews publicly proposes convening a representative Congress of the People to gather South Africans’ demands and frame a shared political program—an idea that became the basis for the later Congress of the People campaign and the Freedom Charter process.
Local committees affiliated with the Congress Alliance (including the ANC and its allies) begin collecting written and oral “freedom demands” across the country, creating a mass-participation foundation for drafting the Freedom Charter.
Leaders of the ANC and allied organisations coordinate plans for a large multiracial convention in Kliptown where a draft charter—drawn from the collected demands—would be debated and adopted as a common platform.
Delegates and observers from across South Africa assemble in Kliptown for the two-day Congress of the People (commonly dated 25–26 June 1955), meeting under heavy police scrutiny as part of a broad, nonracial anti-apartheid coalition.
On the Congress’s second day, participants adopt the Freedom Charter—opening with the principle that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it”—as a shared statement of democratic, nonracial goals for the anti-apartheid movement.
Police surround the Kliptown gathering, search delegates, and record names and addresses; the state later uses this documentation and seized materials as part of the evidentiary basis for repression and prosecutions linked to the Charter.
In the months following Kliptown, the Security Branch intensifies surveillance and raids on offices and homes of Congress Alliance leaders, seizing documents as the state builds a major “show trial” case aimed at the Charter and its supporters.
Before dawn, police arrest 156 Congress Alliance figures across South Africa and charge them with high treason, marking the start of the Treason Trial process—widely understood as the state’s central legal attack on the Freedom Charter coalition.
Initial court proceedings begin in Johannesburg (commonly dated 19 December 1956 for the start of hearings at the Drill Hall), as the state formally moves from arrests into a prolonged judicial process.
The prosecution revises its approach and proceeds with a separate, focused case against 30 accused—an escalation that keeps the Charter-centered prosecution alive despite earlier reductions in the defendant pool.
A long preparatory examination tests the state’s evidence; over time, the prosecution drops or withdraws cases against many accused, narrowing the number of defendants who remain before the court.
The main trial phase begins (commonly dated August 1959), with the state continuing to argue that the Congress Alliance and the Freedom Charter program amounted to a revolutionary conspiracy.
After years of proceedings, the court finds the remaining defendants not guilty, ending the state’s flagship treason prosecution against the Congress Alliance leadership associated with the Freedom Charter.
Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter (1955–1956)
