The Sharpeville Massacre: Deaths not in Vain

On 18 March 1960 an important event occurred that changed the course of inter-racial relations in South Africa. That day on Bree Street in Johannesburg, Pan-African Congress (PAC) leader Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe announced his group's non-violent campaign to challenge the law requiring black South Africans to present travel passes to police when entering or leaving a township. The pass laws were very degrading to the black majority and contravened the most basic notions of human rights. The PAC planned peaceful protests in several townships across Gauteng Province, and campaigners would present themselves at police stations and would demand to be arrested for failure to have their passes. The plan seemed a reasonable and appropriate challenge to the pass law, but on 21 March 1960 it went very wrong during a march in the Sharpeville township.

The march in Sharpeville began quite like any other peaceful protest. Then without warning police opened fire on the unarmed marchers. When the shooting ended a short time later sixty-nine people were killed, and at least a hundred more were wounded. The white authorities claimed the massacre was an accident, but the PAC leaders did not accept that explanation or the lack of apology that accompanied it. Precisely what triggered the gunfire is left to the ambiguities of Apartheid history.

As a result of the Sharpeville massacre, the PAC and the African National Congress (ANC) shed their previous vigilant broad commitment to non-violent tactics to fight Apartheid. Practices such as "necklacing" soon took prominence in the liberation struggle. Despite the instinctive recourse to meet violence with violence, the Sharpeville massacre did not obliterate all semblance of peaceful expressions of opposition. The Black Sash was one such pacifist movement. The Black Sash began when groups of white women gathered at police stations to protest law enforcement officers' violations of human rights. The group took its name from the signature black mourning sashes the women wore. The Black Sash transformed from a protest group to a judicially active group pledged to use the courts to fight police brutality, public sector corruption, and other forms of civil and human rights violations. The Black Sash eventually investigated and successfully prosecuted several provincial justice ministers and induced their resignations.

The fallen at Sharpeville were the start of the end of Apartheid. The battle for the validity and application of the pass laws continued after the Sharpeville massacre, but the policy and the protests it caused led to the collapse of the then-current government, and the ruling National Party was forced to moderate its position if it wanted to maintain its one party grasp on power. Eventually the National Party agreed to free and fair multi-party elections that included black voters' participation. The National Party knew that meant it would lose to the ANC, but it was a risk the National Party knew it must take, and it was a risk taken only after more bloodshed in Sharpeville in 1984.

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