The Freedom Army Grows Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #149)

important bearing on the matter. Though we welcomed SACOD as a sister organisation in the Congress Alliance and believed that it provides the real home to whites who are prepared to work for a non racial South Africa, we none the less welcomed the Liberal Party as an anti apartheid ally, while at the same time drawing attention to those aspects which would certainly hamper a common approach and common action between our respective organisations. It is in this light that we continue to be ready and always welcome any sections among the white community who may be willing to break away from the white supremacist ideas. A few months after Chief Luthuli was elected President of the ANC,Professor Z.K. Matthews, stimulated by his Accra meeting with Dr. Kwame Nkrumah on his way back from the United States, arrived with a novel idea which was to become the central political issue for the next 2 years and which would ultimately lead to South Africa's marathon Treason Trial, involving no less than 156 people and lasting for a little more than 4 years. In his presidential address to the August 1953 Caoe Conference of the ANC Professor Matthews proposed a national convention of all South Africans to draw up a charter of freedom embodying principles on which a new South Africa would be built. Four months later the national conference accepted the proposal and referred it to the executive committees of the ANC, SAIC, SACPO and SACOD and recommended that they create suitable machinery to give practical effect to the idea. In pursuance of this recommendation the 4 executives met in Johannesburg to set up a Council of the Congress of the People with Chief Luthuli as chairman and Walter Sisulu and Yusuf Cachalia