Your donation is fully tax-deductible. 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. Updates? The protesters offered themselves up for arrest for not carrying their passes. It was a system of segregation put in place by the National Party, which governed in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker mentioned the Sharpeville Massacre in her verse. "[18][19], Since 1994, 21 March has been commemorated as Human Rights Day in South Africa. During those five months roughly 25,000 people were arrested throughout the nation. 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 protesters offered themselves up for arrest for not carrying their passes. Robert Sobukwe and other leaders were arrested and detained after the Sharpeville massacre, some for nearly three years after the incident. As segregation and civil rights become national topics, their. 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. The adoption of the Race Convention was quickly followed by the 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. The Sharpeville Massacre awakened the international community to the horrors of apartheid. 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. Massacre in Sharpeville. Both were tasked with mobilizing international financial and diplomatic support for sanctions against South Africa. For them to gather means violence. 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. Omissions? The ANC Vice-President, Oliver Tambo, was secretly driven across the border by Ronel Segal into the then British controlled territory of Bechunaland. Confrontation in the township of Sharpeville, Gauteng Province. The Sharpeville massacre sparked hundreds of mass protests by black South Africans. Under this system there was an extended period of gruesome violence against individuals of colored skin in South Africa. Just after 1pm, there was an altercation between the police officer in charge and the leaders of the demonstration. On 24 March 1960, in protest of the . At its inaugural session in 1947, the UN Commission on Human Rights had decided that it had no power to take any action in regard to any complaints concerning human rights. The quest for international support, mass mobilization, armed operations, and underground organization became the basis for the ANCs Four Pillars of Struggle. The rally began peacefully, the iron bell was rung (usually it was rung to signal victories in football games) and one speaker started to speak. Unfortunately, police forces arrived and open fired on the protesters, killing ninety-six in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre. Sharpeville was much more than a single tragic event. Journalists who rushed there from other areas, after receiving word that the campaign was a runaway success confirmed "that for all their singing and shouting the crowd's mood was more festive than belligerent" (David M. Sibeko, 1976). Eventually a few of the demonstrators dared to cross the street, led by James Forman who had organized the march. 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. A robust humanrights framework is the only way to provide a remedy for those injustices, tackle inequality and underlying structural differences, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. On 20 March Nana Mahomo and Peter Molotsi has crossed the border into Bechuanaland to mobilize support for the PAC. At the annual conference of the African National Congress (ANC) held in Durban on 16 December 1959, the President General of the ANC, Chief Albert Luthuli, announced that 1960 was going to be the "Year of the Pass." Individuals over sixteen were required to carry passbooks, which contained an identity card, employment and influx authorisation from a labour bureau, name of employer and address, and details of personal history. This abuse towards people of colour in South Africa made people around the world want to protest against South Africa's government. 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 1960 the. In my own research on international human rights law, I 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 had developed and evolved. 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. Stephen Wheatley explores how this tragedy paved the way for the modern United Nations, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. The story of March 21 1960 is told by Tom Lodge, a scholar of South African politics, in his book Sharpeville. 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. Mandela went into hiding in 1964, he was captured, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. 20072023 Blackpast.org. Our work on the Sustainable Development Goals. At this point the National Guard chose to disperse the crowd, fearing that the situation might get out of hand and grow into another violent protest. a photographer whose pictures of the killings caused an . "[6]:p.537, On 21 March 2002, the 42nd anniversary of the massacre, a memorial was opened by former President Nelson Mandela as part of the Sharpeville Human Rights Precinct.[22]. Police arrested more than 11,000 people and kept them in jail. The Sharpeville massacre. As part of its response, the General Assembly tasked the UN Commission on Human Rights to prepare the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the first global human rights treaty. Other PAC members tried to stop bus drivers from going on duty and this resulted in a lack transport for Sharpeville residents who worked in Vereeniging. It also came to symbolize that struggle. . Plaatjie, T. (1998) Focus: 'Sharpeville Heroes Neglected', The Sowetan, 20 March.|Reverend Ambrose Reeves (1966). Find out more about our work towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Tafelberg Publishers: Cape Town. 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 . Others were throwing rocks and shouting "Pigs off campus. Approximately 10,000 Africans were forcibly removed to Sharpeville. In 1994, Mandela signed the nations first post-apartheid constitution near the site of the 1960 massacre. Police reports in 1960 claimed that young and inexperienced police officers panicked and opened fire spontaneously, setting off a chain reaction that lasted about forty seconds. The South African governments repressive measures in response to the Sharpeville Massacre, however, intensified and expended the opposition to apartheid, ushering in three decades of resistance and protest in the country and increasing condemnation by world leaders. Sharpeville Massacre. Furthermore, during the nineties to the twenties, leaders of African Americans sought to end segregation in the South, as caused by Plessy v. Ferguson. The police were armed with firearms, including Sten submachine guns and LeeEnfield rifles. But attempts to transform this non-binding moral declaration into a binding legal code were immediately bogged down in cold war disputes. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Expert Answers. Please note: Text within images is not translated, some features may not work properly after translation, and the translation may not accurately convey the intended meaning. 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. Weve been busy, working hard to bring you new features and an updated design. The University had tried to ban the protest; they handed out 12,000 leaflets saying the event was cancelled. Just after 1pm, there was an altercation between the police officer in charge and the leaders of the demonstration. 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. 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. 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 Sharpeville Massacre occurred on March 21, 1960, in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa. International sympathy lay with the African people, leading to an economic slump as international investors withdrew from South Africa and share prices on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange plummeted. 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. It is likely that the police were quick to fire as two months before the massacre, nine constables had been assaulted and killed, some disembowelled, during a raid at Cato Manor. People often associate their behavior and actions from the groups they belong to. This year, UN and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) joined South Africans in commemorating the 61st anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, using the flagship campaign #FightRacism to promote awareness of these critical issues. However, the police simply took down the protesters names and did not arrest anyone. It authorized the limited use of arms and sabotage against the government, which got the governments attentionand its anger! Along the way small groups of people joined him. [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. To re-enable the tools or to convert back to English, click "view original" on the Google Translate toolbar. Reddy. South Africa had already been harshly criticised for its apartheid policies, and this incident fuelled anti-apartheid sentiments as the international conscience was deeply stirred. Pass laws intended to control and direct their movement and employment were updated in the 1950s. To read more about the protests in Cape Town.