[1] The party was founded by ex-ANC members Mosiuoa Lekota, Mbhazima Shilowa and Mluleki George and will contest the 2009 general election. The party was announced following a national convention held in Sandton on 1 November 2008, and was founded at a congress held in Bloemfontein on 16 December 2008. The name echoes the 1955 Congress of the People at which the Freedom Charter was adopted by the ANC and other parties, a name strongly contested by the ANC in a legal move dismissed by the Pretoria High Court.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Lekota stated that the ideology of the party will be one that embraces multiracial and multicultural participation in governance, promoting of the free market and removed from the Marxism that had long influenced the ANC’s ideology since it first allied with the South African Communist Party in the 1950s during the anti-apartheid struggle.
