A couple of weeks ago I said that I was going to look into global warming and I have not written anything since. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly I did what I said that I should not do and got lost in all the amazing facts in Wikipedia, second I have been involved in two football tournaments where kids from all backgrounds have a chance to improve their lot in life by playing and doing well in the tournaments. That is the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup and the Danone Nations Cup World Finals.
What I want to talk about is the place that the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup took me to. The winners of this cup are Jet Nteo from a place called Boipatong, a township in a city called Vanderbjilpark which is about 90km from Johannesburg.
Even if you speak to South Africans about Boipatong they will not know what or where you are talking about. Our current captain of the South African Football team was actually born in Boipatong but not many people know that. As a matter of fact I only found that out this weekend. More importantly Boipatong is famous or infamous for something that happened just down the road in a place called Sharpeville.
I went to Boipatong to take part in a street parade to honour the winners of the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Schools Cup, Jet Nteo, and little did I know that in doing the street parade we would end up driving through Sharpeville. I was not born when the event took place but I learnt all about it at school and it blew my mind. I was brought up in Apartheid South Africa but I never bought the Apartheid and racism legacy.
So what happened in Sharpeville? On the 21st March 1960 about 5000 to 7000 protestors marched on the local police station to protest against South Africa’s Pass Law and the police panicked and opened fire and killed 69 people including 8 women and 10 children. They also wounded 180 people including 31 women and 19 children. This is known as the Sharpeville Massacre or Sharpeville Shooting.
What was the Pass Law? Since the 1920’s the movement of Black people in South Africa was controlled by Passes that Black, and more correctly all non-white people, had to carry around with them. The first time this law was implemented was by Earl Macartney in 1797 to restrict the local black tribes from moving into the Cape Colony but in 1923 the idea reached new levels.
Black people were designated what we called Homelands where they were supposed to have come from. Only people that could prove that they had been born or had lived for more than 10 years in a town could live in the town but only in the townships that were given to them. Many people were moved from the only homes that they knew to these townships. What the pass did was allow you access to White areas for a certain time period and only to certain White areas or if you lived in one of the homelands you could get a pass that allowed you into a town but only for work. These people would live in hostels that were built for them. They were horrible places with bad plumbing, little light and just generally speaking bad living conditions.
A practical example of how it worked is that a Non-White person would live in a township close to a White area, and then during the day they would be able to go into a White area too work, after work they would have to leave and go back to the township. Some of the luckier people had domestic work in the White Suburbs and they were allowed to live in the servant’s quarters on the White person’s property but they were not allowed to be seen after dusk walking the streets.
That is the Pass Law simplified but I am sure that you can imagine how horrific it was. Families were split; people were imprisoned for not having their passes with them or being in the wrong area or being in a certain area at the wrong time of the day etc. It was terrible for the poor people that had to live through it. I can remember when I was small when I saw my grandparents helping their domestic workers (Elsie and Anna) to reapply for their passes. I could not understand why they needed them and how come they were so desperate to get their passes.
There was another part to the pass law. Black people were only allowed to work in positions in companies where they too up a position that was below the lowest level a white person could take in that company. That made sure that white people always had better jobs that black people. Today people complain about the government’s affirmative action scheme but it is far better than the job preservation that the apartheid government had instituted.
What happened in Sharpeville was after many years of resistance to the pass laws. The ANC decided that they were going to march on the 31st March 1960 to protest the pass laws but the PAC thought that the ANC would not win their protest so they held their own protest 10 days earlier than the date set by the ANC. The PAC’s objective was to march on the local police station without their passes and offer themselves up for arrest. Roomers have it that the PAC intimidated local people and forced them to participate in the march. Even though they were coerced into coming to the protest the protest was quite festive.
There are a lot of accounts as too what happened and the truth and reconciliation commission got close to finding out what happened but no one really knows exactly what happened. The story goes that the protest started with 5000 – 7000 people at 10AM but soon the amounts swelled to over 20 000 people. Once the larger group and more disgruntled group arrived the festive mood changed into a more aggressive mood. The local police station felt under pressure and called for reinforcements. About 130 police arrived supported by 4 Saracen armoured cars. The police were armed with Sten sub-machine guns and the crowd were armed with stones. They flew in Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers to try to disperse the crowd but all that happened was that the crowd responded by throwing stones. They managed to hit three policemen and after a while the police tried to arrest a protestor. There was a little bit of a scuffle and the crowd moved in on the police station. The pressure got to the police someone opened fire which sparked fire from other police men. The protestors dispersed as quickly as possible but it was already too late, people had died. Most of the people that were shot were shot in the back trying to flee the slaughter.
The result was a huge international outcry. The shooting was condemned by the UN, on the 1st April the United Nations Security Council passes resolution 134. There were protests in many countries in sympathy of what happened. In South Africa the ANC, PAC and other black groups protested and marched, striked and rioted. Over 18 000 people were arrested when on the 30th March the state declared a state of emergency. The PAC and ANC were banned and what soon happened was that the peaceful marches that had led up to the massacre changed to armed resistance. The ANC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the PAC formed Poqo, both military divisions. In 1961 South Africa left the Commonwealth of Nations.
This was one of many horrific stories of the apartheid era but this one had a huge backlash. The people that died did so pointlessly but I personally believe that they, together with many other people in many other situations, helped lead to the end of apartheid. I believe that they should be honoured as roll models to the young of today because they stood up for their rights. As a matter of fact, today we celebrate the day as Human Rights Day. Now there is a museum that was built in dedication to them. It is something to visit in South Africa.
Sharpeville (A Day That Made History Series)
Shooting at Sharpeville : The Agony of South Africa
