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ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa.
African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa has told party delegates that they need to draw inspiration from how the organisation operated in the 1950s.
Ramaphosa says the ANC fostered active grassroots participation and deep community engagements during that time.
The ANC which has been losing support over the years, dropped below the 50% threshold in the 2024 national elections.
Ramaphosa was speaking at the 70th Freedom Charter celebrations in Boksburg Ekurhuleni, where the party is hosting its 5th National General Council (NGC).
“Wherever you go in South Africa, you’ll find an ANC branch, whether they like it or not. Now, this moment of memorialising the Freedom Charter, we also need to memorialize and draw inspiration to how our organisation worked in the 50s when apartheid brutality was getting up to a high crescendo after the nationalists had won their election in 1948, and apartheid then started more formally and more brutally. They were able to organize even then.”
Meanwhile, Ramaphosa has characterised the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter as a foundation that helped establish a non-racial South Africa.
Ramaphosa stressed the message of the Charter to party delegates.
“Today, 70 years later, we celebrate this document, not as a historical artifact, but as an enduring vision of a free and democratic society that continues to inspire and guide our struggle. It was the late President O.R. Tambo who said the Freedom Charter was not just another political document, The Freedom Charter is the sum total of our aspirations, but more, it is the road to the new life.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the keynote address at the Freedom Charter commemorative event.
In his address, he pays tribute to the Charter, the document that stood above all others as a moral compass for the liberation struggle and later shaped South Africa’s… pic.twitter.com/1JvZEGF3Gg
— ANC – African National Congress (@MYANC) December 9, 2025
