On March 21, 1960. at a police station in the small Black South African township of Sharpeville near Johannesburg , following a day of demonstrations, police opened fire on a crowd of around 5,000 to 7,000 protestors. The crowds had gathered to protest the establishment of apartheid pass laws which restricted movement of non-whites. designed to segregate the population.
The Sharpeville Massacre took place in a South Africa that denied even
basic democratic rights and freedoms to those considered as "non-white"
under an apartheid (racial segregation and discrimination) system.
Apartheid means “apartness” in the Afrikaans language. The concept was
endorsed, legalized and promoted by the National Party, which was
elected in South Africa in 1948 by a minority, exclusively white
electorate.
Apartheid laws placed all South Africans into one of four racial
categories: “white/European,” “native/black,” “coloured,” (people of
“mixed race”) or “Indian/Asian.” White people – 15 percent of the South
African population – stood at the top, wielding power and wealth. Black
South Africans – 80 percent of the population – were relegated to the
very bottom. Apartheid laws restricted almost every aspect of black
South Africans’ lives.
The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) planned a series of national protests
against the pass laws in 1960. Black South Africans were asked to gather
outside police stations around the country on March 21 and offer
themselves up for arrest, for not carrying their pass books.
At Langa Township in Cape Town, two people were killed and 49 injured when police opened fire. Sharpeville,
was through the 1950s a community untouched by anti-apartheid
demonstrations that occurred in surrounding towns. By 1960, however,
anti-apartheid activism reached the town. In March 1960, Robert
Sobukwe, a leader in the anti-apartheid Pab=Adricn Congress (PAC)
organized the town’s first anti-apartheid protest. In order to reduce
the possibility of violence he wrote a letter to the Sharpeville police
commissioner announcing the upcoming protest and emphasizing that its
participants would be non-violent.
Nearly 300 police officers arrived to put an end to the peaceful
protest. As they attempted to disperse the crowd, a police officer was
knocked down and many in the crowd began to move forward to see what had
happened. Police witnesses claimed that stones were thrown, and in a
panicked and rash reaction, the officers opened fire into the crowd.
Other witnesses claimed there was no order to open fire, and the police
did not fire a warning shot above the crowd. As the thousands of
Africans tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into
the crowd. Sixty-nine unarmed Africans were killed and 186 were wounded with
most shot in the back.
Sharepville became a symbol of the violence and racist cruelty of the apartheid
regime that divided black and white and reduced Africans to third class
citizens in the land of their birth.
But there was also resistance. As the bodies were being carted away so news of the
massacre raced around the countries’ poverty stricken townships. In Cape
Town thousands of African workers stopped work and stevedores walked
off the ships.
A “day of mourning” a week later resulted in riots and
shooting around Johannesburg, and police baton charges at the crowds in
Cape Town.
Nelson Mandela and his 29 co-accused in the infamous Treason Trial were
still on trial when the massacre happened. In his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom,
Nelson Mandela recalled: “The massacre at Sharpeville created a new
situation in the country ... A small group of us – Walter [Sisulu], Duma
Nokwe, Joe Slovo and I – held an all-night meeting in Johannesburg to
plan a response. We knew we had to acknowledge the events in some way
and give the people an outlet for their anger and grief. We conveyed our
plans to Chief Luthuli, and he readily accepted them. On March 26, in
Pretoria, the chief publicly burned his pass, calling on others to do
the same. He announced a nationwide stay-at-home for March 28, a
national Day of Mourning and protest for the atrocities at Sharpeville.
In Orlando, Duma Nokwe and I then burned our passes before hundreds of
people and dozens of press photographers.”
Nelson Mandela burning his pass
The world was shocked too and condemnation was universal. International
solidarity and the isolation of apartheid South Africa became one of the
key elements contributing to its demise. People abroad, by linking
hands with South Africa’s oppressed, provided inspiration and decisive
support. On April 1, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a resolution
condemning the killings and calling for the South African government to
abandon its policy of apartheid. A month later, the UN General Assembly
declared that apartheid was a violation of the UN Charter. This was the
first time the UN had discussed apartheid. Since then, apartheid and many of its elements have been codified as crimes against humanity.
The massacre also sparked hundreds of mass
protests by black South Africans, many of which were ruthlessly and
violently crushed by the South African police and military. On March
30, the South African government under Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd declared a state of emergency which
made any protest illegal. The ban remained in effect until August 31,
1960. During those five months roughly 25,000 people were arrested
throughout the nation. The South African government then created the
Unlawful Organizations Act of 1960 which banned anti-apartheid groups
such as the Pan Africanist Congress and the African National Congress.
The South African’s government’s repressive measures in response to the
Sharpeville Massacre, however, intensified and expended the opposition
to apartheid, many members of both organizations mentioned decided to go underground. Nelson
Mandela was among those who chose to become outlaws. He would later say,
“We believe in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
that ‘the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the
government,’ and for us to accept the banning was the equivalent of
accepting the silencing of Africans for all time.'
Mandela and others no longer felt they could defeat apartheid
peacefully. Both the PAC and the ANC formed armed wings and began a
military struggle against the government.Nelson Mandela became commander-in-chief of the ANC’s armed wing, “Umkhonto we Sizwe”
or “Spear of the Nation”They took to acts of sabotage against
government targets, which sometimes killed civilians. These were
denounced by South Africa’s main backers, Britain and the United States
and the ANC was labelled as a “terrorist organisation”.Following his arrest, Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on four counts of sabotage.
However, many
foreign investors pulled out of the country and a number of sporting
boycotts followed. Many long years of struggle
and suffering lay ahead. but the Sharpeville massacre was a turning point South African history and
led to a chain of events that shaped the direction of resistance to
apartheid both in South African and internationally and heped create a receptive political setting for the British
Boycott Movement’ Sharpeville certainly played a decisive role
in the Boycott Movement's transformation into the Anti-Apartheid
Movement (AAM).
The incident and its repercussions alsp led to the growing politicisation of
the South African working class and created a more militant younger
generation in the townships. The struggle in the townships grew
steadily, with a major uprising in Soweto, Johannesburg in1976. By 1985,
the regime had lost control of these working class districts and
declared a state of emergency. The country was on the brink of civil
war. Elements in the regime and leading businessmen opened talks with
the ANC, recognising that it was the only organisation that could quell a
revolutionary upsurge.
President F. W. de Klerk released the ANC’s Nelson Mandela from prison
on February 2, 1990, heralding the end of the Apartheid system. White
minority rule finally collapsed in 1994 in elections that brought the
ANC and Mandela to power. Had he not released Mandela when he did, de
Klerk said, “The prospects for a satisfactory negotiated settlement
would have diminished with each successive cycle of revolution and
repression”.
Symbolically in 1994, Mandela signed the nation’s first post-apartheid
constitution near the site of the 1960 massacre. The anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre is remembered the world over
every March 21as Proclaiming the day in 1966, the United Nations General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.
While the Sharpeville Massacre and its annual commemoration serve as a
stark reminder of the violent consequences of the apartheid regime in
South Africa and its threat to fundamental rights, freedoms, and human
dignity, it is also a time to commemorate the ultimate defeat of this
institutionalised system of oppression, and encourages us to continue to
work to bring an end to all forms of racial discrimination, racial
segregation, and apartheid around the world. But this work is not done,
particularly as apartheid endures in Palestine.
For decades, Israel has established and maintained an apartheid regime
over the Palestinian people, through a plethora of laws, policies, and
practices designed to ruthlessly segregate, fragment, and isolate
Palestinians. The Palestinian people have been deliberately divided into
four separate legal, political, and geographic domains, including
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, Palestinian residents of
Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza subject to Israeli
military law, and as a result, Israel ensures that
the Palestinian people are unable to meet, group, or live together, nor
exercise any collective rights.
As I mark the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, more
efforts must be taken to ensure the legacy of apartheid, and all other
forms of racial discrimination and oppression, are finally brought to an
end. In the same way that apartheid fell in South Africa, supporters of
human rights, international law, social justice, and equality must
exert pressure today to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian
people.
What is important
about Sharpeville
is not that seventy died:
nor even that they were shot in the back
retreating, unarmed, defenseless
and certainly not
the heavy caliber slug
that tore through a mother’s back
and ripped through the child in her arms
killing it
Remember Sharpeville
bullet-in-the-back day
Because it epitomized oppression
and the nature of society
more clearly than anything else;
it was the classic event
Nowhere is racial dominance
more clearly defined
nowhere the will to oppress
more clearly demonstrated
what the world whispers
apartheid with snarling guns
the blood lust after
South Africa spills in the dust
Remember Sharpeville
Remember bullet-in-the-back day
And remember the unquenchable will for freedom
Remember the dead
and be glad.
