Sharpeville Massacre

Monday, 21 March 1960, was the date chosen by the PAC for a national launch of the first phase of their Positive Action Campaign against the minority rule in South Africa. The first phase of the campaign was targeted at the pass laws, the most reviled of all the apartheid laws.

The campaign was lead by the PAC President at the time, Mr. Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe. His intention was to organize a peaceful, mass demonstration where every Black pass book holder would march to their nearest police station, without their passes, and offer themselves up for arrest.  The principal aim of the campaign was to ensure that a large number of the Black labour force was behind bars, thus crippling the industries and forcing the Government to accept the PAC’s terms.

On 21 March 1960, in a little known township called Sharpeville, demonstrators gathered at the police station in Seeiso Street. Saracen armoured vehicles were stationed in the surrounding area and SAAF jets flew overhead
The crowd was relaxed, although rowdy. They sang songs like Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika and Senzane na iAfrika and shouted slogans like Izwe Lethu, I’Afrika, which means “Our Country.”  The exact reason for what was to happen is uncertain. A shot was fired by police into the crowd and a domino affect ensued.

No order to fire was given, however the policemen started firing on the crowd for 20 to 40 seconds after hearing the initial gunshot.  After the guns stopped there was silence for a long time. Many witnesses to the Sharpeville Massacre recall the rain that fell after the tragedy that washed the blood off the streets. One witness, Mr. Ruben Rapoetsoe, recalls, “Immediately after the massacre, the rain came and cleaned the despair from the streets.” 

Sixty-nine people lay dead in the streets of Sharpeville, 180 lay injured. Seventy per cent of those killed were shot in the back. A massacre of innocent people.  That same day two demonstrators were killed at Vanderbijlpark and five at Langa and Nyanga in Cape Town.

Soon after the massacre, the Government banned the PAC and the ANC, a State of Emergency was declared and most of the country’s leading anti-apartheid activists were arrested or forced to work underground. The question of apartheid was brought up for the first time in the United Nations Security Council and the international community started putting pressure on the South African Government to end the racist regime.  The Sharpeville Massacre can be viewed as the beginning of the end.

To honour those lives lost during the Sharpeville shooting and to all those who died for the liberation of South Africa, the Sharpeville Memorial was opened on 21 March 2002, a day now known as Human Rights Day. It is located in Seeiso Street in Sharpeville, opposite the police station where the shootings took place.