The Good News: You have rights!
What did you do with your public holiday on Tuesday? Did you have a braai with your family and friends, go on a hike, or just relax in front of the television all day?
Perhaps you piled the kids into the car and went away for the long weekend, and now as you sit reading this, you are thankful for the short work week.
Do you know why government had proclaimed an arbitrary Tuesday a public holiday?
It was on a Monday in 1960 when police opened fire, without order, on a crowd that had gathered at Sharpeville Police Station in Gauteng to peacefully protest the pass laws; regulations which required black South Africans to carry documentation and produce it on request wherever they were and at any time.
On that day, March 21, 69 unarmed civilians were killed and another 180 injured.
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In 1985, on the same date, tens of thousands of people gathered near KwaNobuhle Township in Langa, Eastern Cape to attend a mass funeral and commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre. Unbeknown to the Langa demonstrators, however, the government had banned the event. Police opened fire on the crowd, killing between 20 to 43 people – the exact number is not known.
When South Africa held its first democratic elections some 34 years later and Nelson Mandela was elected as its first democratic president, March 21 was officially proclaimed a public holiday.
This iconic date in the country’s history serves as a reminder of our rights and the cost paid for them by those brave people all those years ago.
On Human Rights Day, citizens are asked to “reflect on their rights, to protect their rights and those of all people from violation, irrespective of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, whether they are foreign national or not”, the parliamentary website says.
Human rights apply to everyone, equally.”
In the wake of the Marikana massacre, another brutal police attack, and the xenophobic violence, the ongoing threat to vulnerable women and children and the worrying undertone of extreme violence in our society, what exactly are we celebrating?
We are celebrating an extraordinary Constitution and Bill of Rights. We are celebrating the right to freedom of assembly, association, belief and opinion, and expression. We are observing the right to demonstrate, picket and petition, the right to privacy and exercising political rights.
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We are honouring the right to marry the partner of one’s choice and to gain access to information in one’s mother tongue. We can be thankful for the right to be able to move from place to place freely.
Human rights are rights which everyone should have just by being human. In South Africa, we have not reached a place where this is true for all. The struggle continues.
On March 21 and every other day, let us remember the past and celebrate the bright future of this city and South Africa as a whole. Happy belated Human Rights Day.
