On March 21 1960 South African police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing 69 people, in what would become known around the world as “The Sharpeville Massacre”.
On that occasion while the ANC was in the process of launching a campaign of protests against pass laws it was their rival Pan Africanist Congress which was responsible for the mass demonstrations that resulted in the bloodshed. They cannot, however, be blamed for the scale of the tragedy which falls fair and square on the shoulders of the police and government of South Africa at the time.
On that fateful day a group of between 5 000 and 7 000 people converged on the local police station in the township of Sharpeville, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books.
As the large crowd gathered the atmosphere was peaceful and festive with less than 20 police officers in the station at the start of the protest. Police and military tried using low-flying jet fighters in an attempt disperse the crowd without success.
As a result the police set up Saracen armoured vehicles in a line facing the protesters and, at 13:15, incredibly, opened fire on the crowd.
Police reports claim that there was stone throwing as a result of which the inexperienced police officers opened fire spontaneously. In light of the casualties sustained, that is patently nonsensical.
The police were armed with Stens and tear gas which offered a viable alternative to crowd dispersal with minimum loss of life. Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar, the commanding officer of the police forces denied giving the order to fire and stated that he would not have done so. His attitude towards the protestors is, however, revealed in his statement which claims that “the native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence”.
The official casualties were 69 people killed, including 8 women and 10 children, with more than 180 injured.
To date the worst case of police insanity in the history of this country.
As a result there followed a spontaneous uprising among black South Africans with demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and riots taking place throughout the country.
This led to the government declaring a state of emergency on March 30 1960, which saw more than 18 000 people detained.
On February 23 2010 Sharpeville was once again the focal point of public frustration against a South African government but this time it is that of the ANC who 50 years ago were preparing to launch their campaign against the pass laws.
The cause of their grievance — like so many poorer communities around the country — is the continuing failure to speed up service delivery.
Fortunately for protesters this time around there are police who are not armed with ludicrous preconceptions about “the native mentality” and thirteen people were arrested for allegedly stoning a police vehicle.
That as you may recall was the signal for mass bloodshed five decades before.
Superintendent Nthabiseng Mazibuku confirmed that the arrests are for acts of public violence and malicious damage to property. The only injury was to a woman who was struck while a bus picking up passengers was stoned. She was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Mazibuku said residents had used “anything they could find”, including burning tyres, to barricade roads.
Later in the morning, community leaders and residents gathered at the Sharpeville Stadium to meet government officials “under the supervision and control” of the police, Mazibuku said.
Every day South Africans realise more and more that the billions that go missing through arms deals, social grant fraud, tender fraud and nepotism and the negligence of unqualified cronies who occasion losses of billions in damages to the economy, are going to extract a very heavy price sooner rather than later.
The defence to this is to unchain the media completely and mandate the Hawks to go where the Scorpions had gone before them.
Get rid of the corruption and cronyism before the masses of the country get rid of those who stand in the way of ridding South Africa of this blight on our political landscape.
Get rid of corruption and cronyism?
“Vote for opposition” should have been your solution line, Traps.
Are you brave enough?
The usual urban myth, omission and deliberate distortion. Get reliable, sworn-statement accounts and not encyclopedia accounts. And then re-start your epistle.
The station they marched against was Orlando West. Start from there. The PAC leader was Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe,and he handed in his pass without aggravation or incident. What happened in Sharpeville was a separate angry mob that were throwing stones.
I don’t doubt your motives, but base them on reality please. Begin again and get it right this time.
Why so emotional, the last (pale) regime was packed with cronies of every despicable sort. Through superb propaganda they terrified the balance of pale SA that white slavery (and worse) was always just around the corner. They and their cronies negotiated a very soft landing for themselves, pensions, assets intact, no retrospective war crimes, all of course for the good of reconciliation and the pale masses fell for that also. The new regime are largely much the same and the masses of all shades are being screwed over again and again. Welcome to the real Africa.
Absolutely – we are fortunate no to have had another Sharpville, right now inthis day and age and for extremely good reasons.
How would you feel if a mining company had come on to your land, told you to move off whilst you have crops in the field and then forcefully move you off, leaving crops and livestock behind. You are then placed in a shanty town with no access to water or land. Your cattle are starving and you have no crops to feed your children or yourself. There is no fresh water because the mining company is using and polluting it for its own use.
Apartheid South Africa? No this South Africa and it is happening in Limpopo right now – incidentaly Mr Malema’s Province.
As an environmental justice activist, I am appalled!
Traps
The version I heard (from actual reporters not from the edited papers) was that the police in the station which was being stormed shot first; and then only did the Saracens come in.( MY friends at the time were Cape Times and Argus – the liberal press). I heard a lot which could not be published because of the media laws.
You omit a few things that changes the tone of your message. A few weeks before the Sharpville killings in Cato Manor Durban a mixed police patrol had been brutally hacked to death by a mob so the police were a bit edgy. Also your figures advise 5000 vs 20 and also omits that the 20 were effectively surrounded. The first rule of crowd control worldwide is never box in a crowd and never never get surrounded.
Most of those young cops were petrified and it is true that no oder to fire was given, someone cracked and let rip and the terrible tragedy happened.
Brent
‘Fraid Belle is right, MT. “Get rid of” sounds like its assuming Zuma & co. can do this. They cannot. They owe too much to too many. Too much is known about them that they would rather not see light of day. We don’t want anarchy. We just want people in their millions to start realising that voting for the ANC is voting AGAINST their own best interests. As long as they are swayed by a braai and promises of 500 000 jobs before elections, we have no hope. Hopefully the fact that it turned out to be 500 000 job LOSSES will sink home. The discouraging thing is the massive enrichment thru govt tenders of the ANC itself, and their hiring of sophisticated advisers at election time who get them votes in spite of everything.
Judith, according to activist Dan Roodt the strict enforcement of laws against water pollution was one of the reasons why the mining companies worked hard to get rid of the apartheid government. One of their gambits was to sponsor Marxist revolutionaries to study at Wits. That paid off, since the SACP are now officially opposed to the nationalisation of mines and they can pollute our water with impunity.
Stens don’t have safety catches, and they are prone to continue firing when you take your finger off the trigger.
Equipping riot policemen with weapons of this nature automatically means that you are content to have a massacre.
@ Graham Johnson, brent, Lyndall Beddy and others
Sounds like you have been listening to the best kind of Afrikaner-Nationalist propaganda which sought to de-legitimize the actions of the ANC (and all anti-apartheid groups) by associating them with “violence extremism”. You criticize the accurate historical account represented by Mike Trapido with the usual dismiss “you-don’t-understand-your-history-drawl” but why? The question that you can’t seem to able to get around seems to be: how could these White Afrikaner policemen open fire on unharmed and (semi)peaceful protestors? The answer: protestors must have be they were violent rabble. As if White Afrikaners were not capable of unprovoked violence (he said with irony twinkling in his eye). You do not consider the de-humanizing affect played by Afrikaner-Nationalism (and of White segregationist ideology in general) nor the explicit mandate given by the Afrikaner-Nationalist government to their police forces in Sharpville (and other black townships). But Afrikaner-Nationalist propaganda never considered these things so why should you.
On 23/1/1960 a black mob attacked Cato Manor police station and killed 9 policemen (5 black, and 4 white)
On 21/3/1960 a black group of 5000-7000 blacks marched on Orlando West police station in Soweto.
Those are historic facts – check them on Google.
If I say any more I will be censored again.
“speeding up service delivery”?????. How about demonstrating about complete “non-delivery of local services”?? The real issue – rather more bluntly put – is that corruption is taking such vast sums out of municipal and govt. budgets, that service delivery becomes nigh-on impossible in many areas. That is what major demonstrations wil eventually & very clearly be about.
Still on about Sharpville 50 years later Traps..
Shame. That mess was eclipsed decades later by massacres thousands of times larger in the rest of this continent. I know black-on-black violence doesn’t count for journalists of your ilk, but it does date you.
You write: Fortunately for protesters this time around there are police who are not armed with ludicrous preconceptions about “the native mentality” and thirteen people were arrested for allegedly stoning a police vehicle.
Yes the corrupt police nowdays have other preconceptions, like ignoring crime and raping women. Big improvement? I don’t think so. They just confirm that the ‘native mentality’ hasn’t changed.
And what about the Shell House Massacre of unarmed IFP by the armed ANC – which Mandela would NOT allow to be investigated by the TRC?
There were more dead at Shell House than at Sharpeville.
@Lyndall Beddy
Kind of funny, for if it was not investigated by the TRC, that leaves future court action as a possibility – there are no theoretical time limitations on murder charges, even if practical matters of evidence and politics can limit such charges. Further, you should supply a reference.
@Traps
Did Spyker van Wyk ever talk at the TRC hearings? I don’t recall hearing anything like that, so I wonder what opportunities remain for his victims.