Baileys African History. [13], A storm of international protest followed the Sharpeville shootings, including sympathetic demonstrations in many countries[14][15] and condemnation by the United Nations. Crowds fleeing from bullets on the day of the Massacre. Sharpeville is a township near Vereeniging, in the Gauteng province of South Africa. 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. Confrontation in the township of Sharpeville, Gauteng Province. 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. To read more witness accounts of the Sharpeville Massacre, click on the 'Witness accounts' tab above. On March 30, the South African government declared a state of emergency which made any protest illegal. 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 foundation of Poqo, the military wing of the PAC, and Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, followed shortly afterwards. 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. A deranged White man, David Pratt, made an assassination attempt on Dr. Verwoerd, who was seriously injured. Courtesy BaileySeippel Gallery/BAHA Source. On March 21, demonstrators disobeyed the pass laws by giving up or burning their pass books. As the protesters tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into the crowd. Everyone should have an equal rights and better community . What happened on 21 March in Sharpeville? 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 her moving poem Our Sharpeville she reflects on the atrocity through the eyes of a child. All the evidence points to the gathering being peaceful and good humoured. Despite the Sharpeville massacre feeling seismic in its brutality, "we all thought at that moment that it would cause a change in the political situation in South Africa," said Berry - "it was really ten years before anything changed." . [6]:p.534, By 10:00, a large crowd had gathered, and the atmosphere was initially peaceful and festive. Although the protests were anticipated, no one could have predicted the consequences and the repercussions this would have for South African and world politics. 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. 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. Some estimates put the size of the crowd at 20,000. This shows a major similarity as they wanted to achieve the same things. The massacre occurred at the police station in the South African township of Sharpeville, A child demonstrates in front of Johannesburgs city hall after the Sharpeville massacre (AFP/Getty), The aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, The BritishAnti-Apartheid Movement marks the tenth anniversary of the massacre with a re-enactmentin Trafalgar Square, A family member stands next to a memorial toone of the victims of the Sharpeville massacre ahead of Human Rights Day in 2016 (AFP/Getty), Its been 60 years since dozens of protesters were killed at a peaceful anti-apartheid rally in South Africa. Its been 60 years since the Sharpeville massacre, when 69 unarmed civilians were killed by armed South African police on March 21 1960. Selinah Mnguniwas 23 years old and already three months pregnant when she was injured in the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960. UNESCO marks 21 March as the yearly International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in memory of the massacre. Max Roach's 1960 Album We Insist! Sharpeville massacre, (March 21, 1960), incident in the Black township of Sharpeville, near Vereeniging, South Africa, in which police fired on a crowd of Black people, killing or wounding some 250 of them. The Sharpeville massacre also touched off three decades of protest in South Africa, ultimately leading to freedom for Nelson Mandela, who had spent 27 years in prison. By the end of the day, 69 people lay dead or dying, with hundreds more injured. Freedom Now Suite includes the composition Tears for Johannesburg in response to the massacre. For the next two and a half decades, the commission held to this position on the basis that the UN Charter only required states to promote, rather than protect, human rights. The term human rights was first used in the UN Charter in 1945. All Rights Reserved. On 20 March Nana Mahomo and Peter Molotsi has crossed the border into Bechuanaland to mobilize support for the PAC. These resolutions established two important principles: that the human rights provisions in the UN Charter created binding obligations for member states, and that the UN could intervene directly in situations involving serious violations of human rights. Stephen Wheatley is a professor of international law at Lancaster University. The incident resulted in the largest number of South African deaths (up to that point) in a protest against apartheid . The march was also led by Clarence Makwetu, the Secretary of the PACs New Flats branch.
Sharpeville: An apartheid massacre and its consequences On 1 April 1960, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 134. Another officer interpreted this as an order and opened fire, triggering a lethal fusillade as 168 police constables followed his example. The key developments were the adoption of Resolution 1235 in 1967, which allowed for the examination of complaints of gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as exemplified by the policy of apartheid, and Resolution 1503 in 1970, which allowed the UN to examine complaints of a consistent pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights. These protestors included a large number of northern college students. Britannica does not review the converted text. Many others were not so lucky: 69 unarmed and non-violent protesters were gunned down by theSouth Africanpolice and hundreds more were injured. 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. Omissions? 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". 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. Krog was one of these Afrikaners. 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. The term human rights was first used in the UN Charter in 1945. 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. Along the way small groups of people joined him. [16], The Sharpeville massacre contributed to the banning of the PAC and ANC as illegal organisations. Often times individuals feel proud to be a member of their group and it becomes an important part of how they view themselves and their identity. 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"). Policemen in Cape Town were forcing Africans back to work with batons and sjamboks, and four people were shot and killed in Durban. News reports about the massacre spread across the world. At least 180 were wounded. Weve been busy, working hard to bring you new features and an updated design. The Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker mentioned the Sharpeville Massacre in her verse. Time Magazine, (1960), The Sharpeville Massacre, A short history of pass laws in South Africa [online], from, Giliomee et al. [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. Selinah was shot in her leg but survived the massacre. The policemen were apparently jittery after a recent event in Durban where nine policemen were shot.
Apartheid in South Africa. - GCSE Politics - Marked by Teachers.com Sharpeville was much more than a single tragic event. But it was not until after Sharpeville that the UN made clear that the countrys system of racial segregation would no longer be tolerated. Sixty-nine Africans were killed and 186 were wounded, with most shot in the back. This march is seen by many as a turning point in South African history. Amid confusion, two shots were fired into the air by somebody in the crowd. 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. Eventually a few of the demonstrators dared to cross the street, led by James Forman who had organized the march.
How the Sharpeville massacre changed the course of human rights According to his "Testimony about the Launch of the Campaign," Sobukwe declared: At the press conference Sobukwe emphasized that the campaign should be conducted in a spirit of absolute non-violence and that the PAC saw it as the first step in Black people's bid for total independence and freedom by 1963 (Cape Times, 1960). As part of its response, the General Assembly tasked the UN Commission on Human Rights to prepare the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the first global human rights treaty. On March 21, 1960. It can be considered the beginning of the international struggle to bring an end to apartheid in South . In the aftermath of the events of 21 March, mass funerals were held for the victims. On the day passes were suspended (25 March 1960) Kgosana led another march of between 2000 and 5000 people from Langa to Caledon Square. His colleagues followed suit and opened fire. Unlike elsewhere on the East Rand where police used baton when charging at resisters, the police at Sharpeville used live ammunition. 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. [3], South African governments since the eighteenth century had enacted measures to restrict the flow of African South Africans into cities. Some 20,000 Blacks gathered near a police station at Sharpeville, located about 30 miles (50 km) south of Johannesburg. 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. 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. In 1960, states had no binding international human rights obligations with oversight mechanisms. On March 21st, 1960, the Pan Africanists Congress, an anti-Apartheid splinter organization formed in 1959, organized a protest to the National Partys pass laws which required all citizens, as well as native Africans, to carry identification papers on them at all times. March 21 Massacre in Sharpeville In the Black township of Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, South Africa, Afrikaner police open fire on a group of unarmed Black South African demonstrators,. To read more about the protests in Cape Town. The commission completed this task, under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt, when it finalised the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Robert Sobukwe | South African History Online Pogrund,B. [5] The police began shooting shortly thereafter. The United Nations Security Council and governments worldwide condemned the police action and the apartheid policies that prompted this violent assault. Significant reshaping of international law is often the result of momentous occurrences, most notably the two world wars. The Population Registration Act of 1950 enacted, requiring segregation of Europeans from Afrikaans .
Sharpeville Massacre - The Presidential Years - Nelson Mandela NO DEFENCE! Philip Finkie Molefe, responsible for establishing the first Assemblies of God church in the Vaal, was among the clergy that conducted the service.[11]. That day about 20,000 people gathered near the Sharpeville police station. The Sharpsville Massacre was a seminal moment in the history of South Africa. As a result of racial segregation, resistance from coloured people in both the United States and South Africa escalated. Lancaster University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK. The Sharpeville Massacre is commemorated through Human Rights Day, a public holiday in South Africa, which honours those whose lives were sacrificed in the fight for democracy. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. Early in 1960 both the ANC and PAC embarked on a feverish drive to prepare their members and Black communities for the proposed nationwide campaigns. Police witnesses claimed that stones were thrown, and in a panicked and rash reaction, the officers opened fire on the crowd. Corrections? The South African government then created the Unlawful Organizations Act of 1960 which banned anti-apartheid groups such as the Pan Africanist Congress and the African National Congress.
Learn about employment opportunities across the UN in South Africa. Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the day that changed the course of South African history. Nearly 300 police officers arrived to put an end to the peaceful protest. Over five thousand individuals came to protest the cause in Sharpeville. 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. Our work on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Amid confusion, two shots were fired into the air by somebody in the crowd. We must listen to them, learn from them, and work with them to build a better future.. When it seemed the whole group would cross, police took action, with mounted officers and volunteers arriving at 1:12 pm.
Aftermath: Sharpeville Massacre 1960 | South African History Online The only Minister who showed any misgivings regarding government policy was Paul Sauer. The logjam was only broken after the Sharpeville massacre, as the UN decided to deal with the problem of apartheid South Africa. It was a sad day for black South Africa. This set the UN on the path towards the recognition of all human rights for all, and, eventually, the establishment of the Human Rights Council, and the Universal Periodic Review of the human rights performance of all states. To re-enable the tools or to convert back to English, click "view original" on the Google Translate toolbar. 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. The Sharpeville massacre, the name given to the murder of 69 unarmed civilians by armed South African police, took place on 21 March 1960. [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. The Sharpeville massacre was reported worldwide, and received with horror from every quarter. 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.