Sharpeville massacre survivors feel betrayed by government

As Human Rights Month winds down, survivors of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre and organisers of the protests have related their experiences on that fateful day when 69 people were mowed down outside the Sharpeville police station by the apartheid government.

In a webinar on Facebook organised by The 70s Group, several marchers such as former Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) vice-president for the Witwatersrand, Dr Molly Nkosi, PAC member Selina Mnguni and Sikhumbuzo Nkosi, son of the late PAC organizer, Stanley Nkosi, told their tale of how the march was organised and what they experienced.

The march was meant to a be a peaceful protest organised by the PAC, which had broken away from the ANC a year earlier, to present their passes to police and allow themselves to be arrested for defying the apartheid-era dompas law.

It ended in tragedy when police opened fire and killed 69 people, including 10 women and eight children, and injured 180.

‘I’ve never seen so many dead bodies’

A message was read by discussion facilitator Nzinga Qunta from veteran photographer Dr Peter Magubane, who documented the massacre in his photographs.

Magubane arrived on the scene 10 minutes after the shooting and was shocked to see so many dead bodies. The photographer was stunned for a few minutes by what he saw before he discreetly took pictures.

In his message, Magubane, who could not attend the talk due to illness, described the event as an “innocent protest” to which the police opened fire.

“I had never seen in my life so many dead bodies. I was shocked, I was there, I took pictures of the dead and the injured. It’s hard to remember, I am not speaking from hearsay, I was there to witness and my pictures showed the world what happened on that day,” Magubane said.

Mass funeral for the victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.

At the funeral a few days later, Magubane took photographs of the row of coffins stretching into a distance. He had to be discreet at both events because the apartheid authorities did not want a record of the happenings.

“We heard people were dying in Sharpeville”

Former PAC activist and journalist Joe Thloloe, at only 17 years old, was one of those who participated in the Soweto part of the 1960 anti-pass march, alongside PAC president Robert Sobukwe and other leaders.

An emotional Thloloe related that on 16 March 1960 Sobukwe wrote a letter to the commissioner of police about the PAC’s sustained and peaceful campaign.

“I instructed people not to allow themselves to be provoked … I therefore appeal to you to instruct your men not to give impossible commands to my people,” Sobukwe wrote to the commissioner.

Earlier on 19-20 March, the PAC NEC received a mandate to devise a plan for the campaign. During a meeting at the Orlando Community Hall, women delegates taunted male delegates to go fight or “give us those trousers”, otherwise they would do it themselves.

Thloloe said Sobukwe was moved by the women’s fighting spirit and he cried openly when he saw them in the hall.

Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe and husband Robert Sobukwe.

According to Thloloe, Sobukwe led them to the Orlando police station where they were to present themselves for arrest. At 10 am while on the way, a police convoy appeared and scattered them, but while some ran away Sobukwe and others continued with the march.

They stood outside the police station telling the police to arrest them, but they refused. Instead members of the police Special Branch arrived with a list and called out the names of Sobukwe, PAC secretary-general Potlako Leballo and NEC member Zephania Motopeng and arrested them – taking them to police headquarters in Von Wielligh Street, Johannesburg.

“We heard that people were dying in Sharpeville. What Sobukwe feared would happen in fact happened,” Thloloe said.

A total of 142 marchers were arrested and instead of being charged with contravening pass laws, they were charged under the Criminal Procedure Act which provided for a 10-year maximum sentence. After three weeks in detention, they were fined £300 or three years imprisonment, half of which was suspended for three years.

The group were put in jail where they could not sleep on the first night, as they were bitten severely by bedbugs that Thloloe said “rained from the ceiling”. They tried used burning newspapers to kill the parasites but that failed.

“So we had to dance around all night singing songs of Africa. We sang ‘We shall serve, we shall suffer, we shall sacrifice for our freedom’.”

Sharpeville marks the birth of the armed struggle

Molly Nkosi said the Sharpeville massacre marked the turning point from non-violent to armed struggle.

He said it was shocking that in 1958, 10 years exactly after it came to power, the National Party went ahead with its intensification of the pass laws.

Also Read: Sharpeville was not a human rights transgression – Steve Hofmeyr

Name change akin to spitting on victims’ graves

A common refrain among the survivors was that the renaming of the solemn Sharpeville Day to Human Rights Day by the democratic government, not only ignored the plight of the victims and the pain suffered by their families, but is tantamount to spitting on the graves of the massacre victims.

Thloloe, who was only 17 years old then, lashed out at the democratic government for being ignorant to what happened in Sharpeville.

“The most painful part of this whole process is the fact that we took this solemn day 21 March, Sharpeville Day, and we transfer it into an abstract Human Rights Day. It says we have no feeling for the ugly things that happened to us on 21 March. That’s probably where we need to start to remind ourselves of where we come from,” Thloloe said.

Thloloe said when Mandela launched the South African Constitution in Sharpeville decades later, it was a great gesture.

Also Read: Call it ‘Sharpeville Day’ to reflect correct history – Analyst

“This meant that South Africa as a nation acknowledged the contributions of the people of Sharpeville to the liberation. The preamble to the Constitution (which highlights the provision of quality of life for all citizens) gives us a campus to live on, these were beautiful words. But we haven’t even started this. These are beautiful words we could write but we don’t live by them.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa lays a wreath at the Sharpeville Memorial during commemorations in 2019. Photo: Deaan Vivier

He was critical of the continued suffering of poor South Africans and questioned the ongoing inequality and poverty in the country.

“Of course suffering and poverty are the legacy of apartheid but we have been blinded by greed around us – a few blacks who ascended to the status of erstwhile oppressor while the vast majority are stuck in the graves that were first dug by the colonisers and the oppressors.”

ericn@citizen.co.za

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