Find out more about our work towards the Sustainable Development Goals. [16], The Sharpeville massacre contributed to the banning of the PAC and ANC as illegal organisations. The PAC called on its supporters to leave their passes at home on the appointed date and gather at police stations around the country, making themselves available for arrest. The Sharpeville massacre was a turning point in South African history. He was followed by Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, Chairperson of the South African Indian Congress and Chairperson of the underground South African Communist Party. Some were shot in the back as they fled.[1]. The Sharpeville massacre sparked hundreds of mass protests by black South Africans, many of which were ruthlessly and violently crushed by the South African police and military. Protestors asyoung as 12and13were killed. [10], PAC actively organized to increase turnout to the demonstration, distributing pamphlets and appearing in person to urge people not to go to work on the day of the protest. Three people were killed and 26 others were injured. His colleagues followed suit and opened fire. Everyone should have an equal rights and better community . The targeted protest became infamous in the Civil Rights Movement, marked Bloody Sunday and was crucial to gaining favor of the public (civilrights.org). The poet Duncan Livingstone, a Scottish immigrant from the Isle of Mull who lived in Pretoria, wrote in response to the Massacre the Scottish Gaelic poem Bean Dubh a' Caoidh a Fir a Chaidh a Marbhadh leis a' Phoileas ("A Black Woman Mourns her Husband Killed by the Police"). It include with civil right that violence verses non-violence that the government could or. The argument against apartheid was now framed as a specific manifestation of a wider battle for human rights, and it was the only political system mentioned in the convention: Nazism and antisemitism were not included. This shows a significant similarity in that both time periods leaders attempted to achieve the goal of ending. [21], In 1998, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that the police actions constituted "gross human rights violations in that excessive force was unnecessarily used to stop a gathering of unarmed people. p. 334- 336|Historical Papers Archive of the University of the Witwatersrand [online] Accessed at: wits.ac.za and SAHA archive [link no longer available]. Many thousands of individuals applied for the amnesty program and a couple thousand testified through the course of 2 years. About 69 Blacks were killed and more than 180 wounded, some 50 women and children being among the victims. Police officers attempted to use tear gas to repel these advances, but it proved ineffectual, and the police fell back on the use of their batons. Ingrid de Kok was a child living on a mining compound near Johannesburg where her father worked at the time of the Sharpeville massacre. At this conference, it was announced that the PAC would launch its own anti-pass campaign. The Sharpeville massacre sparked hundreds of mass protests by black South Africans. In 1960, states had no binding international human rights obligations and there were no oversight mechanisms. This march is seen by many as a turning point in South African history. The Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960 at the police station in the township of Sharpeville in the then Transvaal Province of the then Union of South Africa (today part of Gauteng ). Both were tasked with mobilizing international financial and diplomatic support for sanctions against South Africa. The subject of racial discrimination in South Africa was raised at the UN General Assembly in its first session, in 1946, in the form of a complaint by India concerning the treatment of Indians in the country. By the end of the day, 69 people lay dead or dying, with hundreds more injured. Sharpeville Massacre Newzroom Afrika 229K subscribers Subscribe 178 Share 19K views 2 years ago As South Africa commemorates Human Rights Day, victims and families of those who died at the. After some demonstrators, according to police, began stoning police officers and their armoured cars, the officers opened fire on them with submachine guns. They met a police line a few blocks from the Courthouse and were forbidden from proceeding because they did not have a parade permit (Reed 26). It also came to symbolize that struggle. It's been 60 years since the Sharpeville massacre, when 69 unarmed civilians were killed by armed South African police on March 21 1960. The Department of Home Affairs (a government bureau) was responsible for the classification of the citizenry. On March 21, demonstrators disobeyed the pass laws by giving up or burning their pass books. On this 60th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, the world should remember the contingency and fragility of the international human rights law system that we so easily take for granted today. Although this event in itself acted as a turning point in the struggle of black South Africans towards restoring dignity, but there were certain events which happened before Sharpeville massacre that caused widespread frustration and resentment in the black African community. Perseverance and determination are also needed to build on the lessons learnedfrom the Sharpeville tragedy and repair the injustices of the past. 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. In response, a police officer shouted in Afrikaans skiet or nskiet (exactly which is not clear), which translates either as shot or shoot. Dr. Verwoerd praised the police for their actions. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. The term human rights was first used in the UN Charter in 1945. News reports about the massacre spread across the world. Baileys African History. [20], Sharpeville was the site selected by President Nelson Mandela for the signing into law of the Constitution of South Africa on 10 December 1996. It was adopted on 21 December 1965. And with the 24th Amendment, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965 being ratified, the civil rights movement and the fight to end segregation reached its legal goal (infoplease.com). Mandela and was given a life sentence in prison for treason against the South African government in 1964. Freedom Now Suite includes the composition Tears for Johannesburg in response to the massacre. The police ordered the crowd to disperse within 3 minutes. Sharpeville had a high rate of unemployment as well as high crime rates. 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. The incident resulted in the largest number of South African deaths (up to that point) in a protest against apartheid . Sharpeville Massacre, The Origin of South Africa's Human Rights Day [online], available at: africanhistory.about.com [accessed 10 March 2009]|Thloloe, J. In Pretoria a small group of six people presented themselves at the Hercules police station. As the small crowd approached the station, most of the marchers, including Sobukwe, were arrested and charged with sedition. That day about 20,000 people gathered near the Sharpeville police station. As the number of UN members from Africa increased, the commission reversed its no power to act position and turned its attention to the human rights situation in South Africa. The Sharpeville Massacre On the morning of March 21, 1960, several thousand residents of Sharpeville marched to the township's police station. However, the nations mentality needed work - though the popularity of Civil Rights was rising, many riots and racial hate crimes continued to occur throughout the country, with many casualties resulting from them (infoplease.com). Sobukwe was only released in 1969. In 1946, the UN established the Commission on Human Rights, whose first job was to draft a declaration on human rights. On the 21st of March 1960, black residents of Sharpeville took to the police station to protest against the use of the dompas in South Africa. On the day passes were suspended (25 March 1960) Kgosana led another march of between 2000 and 5000 people from Langa to Caledon Square. The logjam was only broken after the Sharpeville massacre as the UN decided to deal with the problem of apartheid South Africa. Many of the civilians present attended voluntarily to support the protest, but there is evidence that the PAC also used coercive means to draw the crowd there, including the cutting of telephone lines into Sharpeville, and preventing bus drivers from driving their routes. The presence of armoured vehicles and air force fighter jets overhead also pointed to unnecessary provocation, especially as the crowd was unarmed and determined to stage a non-violent protest. Lancaster University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK. A new, third level of content, designed specially to meet the advanced needs of the sophisticated scholar. Another officer interpreted this as an order and opened fire, triggering a lethal fusillade as 168 police constables followed his example. [6]:p.534, By 10:00, a large crowd had gathered, and the atmosphere was initially peaceful and festive. His protest was ignored, and the government turned a blind eye to the increasing protests from industrialists and leaders of commerce. The massacre was one of the catalysts for a shift from passive resistance to armed resistance by these organisations. This, said Mr Subukwe, would cause prisons to become overcrowded, labour to dry up and the economy to grind to a halt. Find out what the UN in South Africa is doing towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Attending a protest in peaceful defiance of the apartheid regime, Selinah and many other young people were demonstrating against pass laws designed to restrict and control the movement and employment of millions of Black South Africans. In my own research, I have looked to complexity theory a theory developed in the natural sciences to make sense of the ways that patterns of behaviour emerge and change to understand the way that international human rights law developed and evolved. . Mandela went into hiding in 1964, he was captured, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the day that changed the course of South African history. This was in direct defiance of the government's country-wide ban on public meetings and gatherings of more than ten persons. Reddy. Under the country's National Party government, African residents in urban districts were subject to influx control measures. Later the crowd grew to about 20,000,[5] and the mood was described as "ugly",[5] prompting about 130 police reinforcements, supported by four Saracen armoured personnel carriers, to be rushed in. Mr. Tsolo and other members of the PAC Branch Executive continued to advance - in conformity with the novel PAC motto of "Leaders in Front" - and asked the White policeman in command to let them through so that they could surrender themselves for refusing to carry passes. On 21 March 1960, sixty-nine unarmed anti-pass protesters were shot dead by police and over 180 were injured. That date now marks the International Day for the. It also contributed the headline story at the Anti-Racism Live Global Digital Experience that marked March 21 internationally with acclaimed artists, actors and prominent speakers from South Africa including Thuli Madonsela, Zulaikha Patel and Zwai Bala. Professor of International Law, Lancaster University. Its been 60 years since the Sharpeville massacre, when 69 unarmed civilians were killed by armed South African police on March 21 1960. All that changed following the worlds moral outrage at the killings. the Sharpeville Massacre By 1960, however, anti-apartheid activism reached the town. The people were throwing their hats to the aeroplanes. However, Foreign Consulates were flooded with requests for emigration, and fearful White South Africans armed themselves. A dompass in those days was an Identification Document that determined who you were, your birth date, what race you are and permission from your employers to be in a specific place at a specific time. In particular, the African work force in the Cape went on strike for a period of two weeks and mass marches were staged in Durban. The Sharpeville Massacre, 1960 Police Attack Demonstrators in Sharpeville, March 21, 1960 Few events loom larger in the history of the apartheid regime than those of the afternoon of March 21, 1960, in Sharpeville, South Africa. This shows a major similarity as they wanted to achieve the same things. Later, in the fifties and the sixties, these same goals, enlign poll taxes and literacy tests, were once again fought for by African American leaders, through advocacy and agitation. Furthermore, the history of the African civil rights movement validated: Nationalism has been tested in the peoples struggles . But in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, the UN adopted a more interventionist stance towards the apartheid state. Eyewitness accounts of the Sharpeville massacre 1960 The day of the Massacre, mourning the dead and getting over the shock of the event Baileys African History Archive (BAHA) Tom Petrus, author of 'My Life Struggle', Ravan Press. Improved homework resources designed to support a variety of curriculum subjects and standards. Even so and estimated 2000 to 3000 people gathered on the Commons. Sharpeville, a black suburb outside of Vereeniging (about fifty miles south of Johannesburg), was untouched by anti-apartheid demonstrations that occurred in surrounding towns throughout the 1950s. At the end of the bridge, they were met by many law enforcement officers holding weapons; thus, the demonstrators were placing their lives in danger. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. March 16 saw a demonstration in Montgomery, Alabama in which 580 demonstrators planned to march from the Jackson Street Baptist Church to the Montgomery County Courthouse (Reed 26). The only Minister who showed any misgivings regarding government policy was Paul Sauer. He became South Africa's . This angered the officers causing them to brutally attack and tear gas the demonstrators. The Minister of Native Affairs declared that apartheid was a model for the world. The ratification of these laws may have made the separate but equal rhetoric illegal for the U.S. but the citizens inside it still battled for their beliefs. Significant reshaping of international law is often the result of momentous occurrences, most notably the two world wars. I will argue that the massacre created a major short-term crisis for the apartheid state, a crisis which appeared to By lunchtime, the crowd outside the police station had grown to an estimated 20,000 people. As the campaign went on, the apartheid government started imposing strict punishments on people who violated the segregationist laws. The Sharpeville massacre. That date now marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and without the Sharpeville massacre, we may not have the international system of human rights that we have today. This translates as shot or shoot. . Philip Finkie Molefe, responsible for establishing the first Assemblies of God church in the Vaal, was among the clergy that conducted the service.[11]. [13], A storm of international protest followed the Sharpeville shootings, including sympathetic demonstrations in many countries[14][15] and condemnation by the United Nations. A week after the state of emergency was declared the ANC and the PAC were banned under the Unlawful Organisations Act of 8 April 1960. Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone. All the evidence points to the gathering being peaceful and good humoured. The Minister of Justice called for calm and the Minister of Finance encouraged immigration. Corrections? 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. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. The commission completed this task, under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt, when it finalised the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. After translating an article, all tools except font up/font down will be disabled. Sixty-nine Africans were killed and 186 were wounded, with most shot in the back. As the protesters tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into the crowd. The event has been seen by some as a turning point in South African history. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. In the following days 77 Africans, many of whom were still in hospital, were arrested for questioning . [4] Leading up to the Sharpeville massacre, the National Party administration under the leadership of Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd used these laws to enforce greater racial segregation[5] and, in 19591960, extended them to include women. On the morning of 21 March Robert Sobukwe left his house in Mofolo, a suburb of Soweto, and began walking to the Orlando police station. Stephen Wheatley is a professor of international law at Lancaster University. A black person would be of or accepted as a member of an African tribe or race, and a colored person is one that is not black or white. To share with more than one person, separate addresses with a comma. International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. The adoption of the convention was quickly followed by two international covenants on economic, social and cultural rights and on civil and political rights in 1966, introduced to give effect to the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. and [proved to be] the only antidote against foreign rule and modern imperialism (Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom 2008, 156) . The PAC and the African National Congress, another antiapartheid party, were banned. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a splinter group of the African National Congress (ANC) created in 1959, organized a countrywide demonstration for March 21, 1960, for the abolition of South Africas pass laws. Courtesy BaileySeippel Gallery/BAHA Source. By standing strong in the face of danger, the adults and children taking part in this demonstration were able to fight for their constitutional right to vote. The two causes went hand in hand in this, rocketing in support and becoming the main goal of the country - the end of segregation was the most dire problem that the Civil Rights Movement needed to solve. The moral outrage surrounding these events led the United Nations General Assembly to pronounce 21 March as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which recognized racism as a gross human rights violation. It had wide ramifications and a significant impact. Across the street came 40 or so students who planned on joining the group en route to the Courthouse. On 24 March 1960, in protest of the massacre, Regional Secretary General of the PAC, Philip Kgosana, led a march of 101 people from Langa to the police headquarters in Caledon Square, Cape Town. Both organisations were deemed a serious threat to the safety of the public and the vote stood at 128 to 16 in favour of the banning. Baileys African History Archive (BAHA)Crowds fleeing from bullets on the day of the Massacre. On 21 March 1960, the police opened fire on a group of demonstrators who had gathered peacefully outside Sharpeville police station in response to a nationwide call by the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) to protest against the hated pass system; 67 people died and hundreds more were wounded. Others were throwing rocks and shouting "Pigs off campus. As well as the introduction of the race convention, Sharpeville also spurred other moves at the UN that changed the way it could act against countries that breached an individuals human rights. Many people need to know that indiviual have their own rights in laws and freedom . NO FINE!" Sharpeville is a township near Vereeniging, in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Some of them remain in prison", "Sharpeville Memorial, Theunis Kruger Street, Dicksonville, Sharpville ABLEWiki", Calls for inquiry into Israels Gaza killings, Storming of the Kempton Park World Trade Centre, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sharpeville_massacre&oldid=1140778365, Killings by law enforcement officers in South Africa, Short description is different from Wikidata, Use South African English from April 2016, All Wikipedia articles written in South African English, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2023, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 21 February 2023, at 19:08. March 21, is celebrated as a public holiday in honor of human rights and to commemorate the . On March 21, 1960. These protests were to begin on 31 March 1960, but the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe, decided to pre-empt the ANC by launching its own campaign ten days earlier, on 21 March, because they believed that the ANC could not win the campaign. By 9 April the death toll had risen to 83 non-White civilians and three non-White police officers. On March 21, 1960, without warning, South African police at Sharpeville, an African township of Vereeninging, south of Johannesburg, shot into a crowd of about 5,000 unarmed anti-pass protesters, killing at least 69 people - many of them shot in the back - and wounding . The world should remember the contingency and fragility of the international human rights law system that we so easily take for granted today. Eyewitness accounts and evidence later led to an official inquiry which attested to the fact that large number of people were shot in the back as they were fleeing the scene. The Sharpeville massacre 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 21, an estimated 7,000 South Africans gathered in front of the Sharpeville police station to protest against the restrictive pass laws. A few days later, on 30 March 1960, Kgosana led a PAC march of between 30 000-50 000 protestors from Langa and Nyanga to the police headquarters in Caledon Square. The police also have said that the crowd was armed with 'ferocious weapons', which littered the compound after they fled. We hope you and your family enjoy the NEW Britannica Kids. The events also prompted theInternational Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discriminationwhich took effect on 4 January 1969. By comparing and contrasting the American Jim Crow Laws and South African apartheid, we have evidence that both nations constitutions led to discrimination, activism, reform and reconciliation. We need the voices of young people to break through the silence that locks in discrimination and oppression. Other witnesses claimed there was no order to open fire, and the police did not fire a warning shot above the crowd. Amid confusion, two shots were fired into the air by somebody in the crowd. The Sharpeville Massacre awakened the international community to the horrors of apartheid. Updates? There was no evidence that anyone in the gathering was armed with anything other than stones. The argument against apartheid was now framed as a specific manifestation of a wider battle for human rights and it was the only political system mentioned in the 1965 Race Convention: nazism and antisemitism were not included. In response, a police officer shouted in Afrikaans skiet or nskiet (exactly which is not clear). Early on that March morning, demonstrations against the pass laws, which restricted the rights of apartheid South Africas majority black population, had begun in Sharpeville, a township in Transvaal. Sources disagree as to the behaviour of the crowd: some state that the crowd was peaceful, while others state that the crowd had been hurling stones at the police and that the mood had turned "ugly". Many others were not so lucky: 69 unarmed and non-violent protesters were gunned down by theSouth Africanpolice and hundreds more were injured. Unfortunately, police forces arrived and open fired on the protesters, killing ninety-six in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre. Lined up outside was a large contingent of armed police with some atop armoured cars. Throughout the 1950s, South African blacks intensified their resistance against the oppressive apartheid system. The Sharpeville Massacre took place in a south african police station of Sharpeville. Omissions? In conclusion; Sharpeville, the imposition of a state of emergency, the arrest of thousands of Black people and the banning of the ANC and PAC convinced the anti-apartheid leadership that non-violent action was not going to bring about change without armed action. It was adopted on December 21 1965. Race, ethnicity and political groups, is an example of this. They also perpetuated the segregation within, The increase in the segregationist laws in the 1950s was met with resistance in the form of the Defiance Campaign that started in 1952. In 1946, the UN established the Commission on Human Rights, whose first job was to draft a declaration on human rights. Nelson Mandela was a member of the banned African National Congress and led an underground armed movement that opposed the apartheid by attacking government buildings in South Africa during the early 1960s. Plaatjie, T. (1998) Focus: 'Sharpeville Heroes Neglected', The Sowetan, 20 March.|Reverend Ambrose Reeves (1966).