The sources and questions relate to case study 2: Apartheid South Africa (1948–1964) — Protests and action: non-violent protests: Freedom Charter.

Source O

Anthony Sampson, a British journalist who had met and worked with leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, writing in the obituary of Lionel Bernstein in the British newspaper The Guardian (26 June 2002).

Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein was one of the most influential and dedicated members of the small group of white revolutionaries who supported the black liberation movement.

He played a crucial role in drafting [writing] the 1955 African National Congress (ANC) Freedom Charter … [and] coined [wrote] the document’s opening slogan “Let us speak of freedom”, including rousing phrases like “the people shall govern” and “all shall be equal before [under] the law”.

In 1956, Bernstein was among the 156 people charged—and acquitted—in the so-called treason trial …

He was, quite simply, driven to protest by his sense of outrage at the segregation and oppression of black people …

As the only multi-racial party, the SACP [the South African Communist Party, which Bernstein and his wife had joined in 1938] acquired a heroic reputation among blacks leading the fight against racism, and the Bernsteins were always welcoming to the black ANC leaders …

Restricted by bans and harassment [by the authorities], in 1955 Rusty resigned from his high-earning architectural partnership. He and his wife were now totally committed to the struggle.

[Source: adapted from Lionel Bernstein: White fighter in South Africa’s black freedom struggle, by Anthony Sampson,
from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jun/26/guardianobituaries1, reprinted by permission of
Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Anthony Sampson.]

Source P

Saul Dubow, a professor of African history, writing in the academic book Apartheid 1948–1994 (2014).

Note: “Africanists” refers to black leaders who believed that the anti-apartheid struggle should be fought only by black people.

Whereas Africanists within the African National Congress Youth League, like Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo, came to value cooperation with non-Africans through the struggles in the early 1950s, others … remained deeply suspicious of white and Indian interference. They were able to exploit popular thinking that viewed freedom as synonymous [identical] with African leadership.

The highpoint of multi-racial opposition to apartheid came in 1955 [in a meeting that came to be known as the Congress of the People] when the African National Congress (ANC) and its partners, the Indian Congress, Coloured People’s Organization and the Congress of Democrats (mainly consisting of white members of the outlawed Communist Party), met to agree the Freedom Charter … Africanists resented the inclusion of whites, coloureds and Indians. Some left-wing critics objected that the multi-racialism of the Congress of the People mirrored the official racial categories of the apartheid state …

Although the Freedom Charter was said to have been produced by “the people” in a democratic process of consultation, critics alleged that its formulation [production] was controlled and manipulated by a group of white left-wingers in the Congress of Democrats … It is now widely accepted that Communist Party intellectual Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein was the guiding hand in the formulation of the Freedom Charter.

[Source: Saul Dubow, Apartheid, 1948–1994 (Oxford University Press, 2014). © Saul Dubow 2014.
Reproduced with permission of Oxford Publishing Limited through PLSclear.]