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The Sharpeville Massacre The Sharpeville Massacre

A violent turning point in the history of South African apartheid

By Matthew McRae Published: March 19, 2019 Updated: August 8, 2023

• Civil and political rights

Photo: Peter Magubane

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On March 21, 1960, police officers in a Black township in South Africa opened fire on a group of people peacefully protesting oppressive laws. Sixty‐nine protestors were killed. The anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre is remembered around the world on March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Apartheid and the pass system

The Sharpeville Massacre occurred in South Africa during the era of “apartheid,” a racist legal system that denied rights and freedoms to anyone who was not considered white.

White people were a minority in South Africa, making up only 15 percent of the population. But they stood at the top of politics and society, wielding power and wealth. Black South Africans made up 80 percent of the population but were marginalized, repressed and relegated to the very bottom. White colonial authorities had used racist laws and violence to repress the Black population long before the formal creation of apartheid. But the imposition of apartheid formalized and intensified white supremacist discrimination and inequality.

Apartheid means "apartness" in the Afrikaans language. It was formally endorsed, legalized and promoted by the National Party (NP). The NP was narrowly elected in South Africa in 1948 by an almost exclusively white electorate.

Apartheid laws placed all South Africans into one of four racial categories: "white/European," "native/black," "coloured" (people of "mixed race"), or "Indian/Asian." These laws restricted almost every aspect of Black South Africans’ lives.

A man showing his pass in 1985. Passes restricted where Black South Africans could live, work and travel.

Some of the most restrictive laws were "pass laws." These laws forced Black South Africans to carry special identification that police and other authorities could check at any time. The government used passes to restrict where Black South Africans could work, live and travel.

Similar laws had existed before apartheid, but under apartheid, they became much worse. Pass laws were used to confine the Black population to specific Black‐only settlement areas. They were also used to control and exploit Black workers, who could be forced to live far away from their homes and families. Millions of Black South Africans were arrested, jailed, and brutalized under the authority of these repressive laws.

The origins of apartheid

Apartheid was firmly rooted in South Africa’s colonial history. As in Canada and other colonized regions, European powers violently displaced Indigenous communities and took control of their lands. By the time the NP formally imposed apartheid, the white minority controlled almost all – 92 percent – of the land.

The NP emerged from centuries of conflict among Dutch and British colonizers and Indigenous communities. The Party was formed mainly of Afrikaners – descendants of Dutch colonizers – who believed they had a God‐given mission to establish white rule in Africa. After the NP was elected in 1948, it quickly passed laws to further entrench longstanding practices of segregation, racial oppression and white supremacy.

Resistance and Sharpeville

For years, many South Africans peacefully protested against apartheid laws, including the pass system. In March 1960, a group called the Pan African Congress (PAC) decided to organize a protest in the Black township of Sharpeville. The plan was for protestors to march to the local police station without their passes and ask to be arrested, in an act of civil disobedience.

Just before the massacre begins, an armoured vehicle drives through a crowd of people chanting.

On March 21, thousands of South Africans marched to the Sharpeville police station. They gathered in peaceful defiance, refusing to carry their pass books. They chanted freedom songs and shouted, "Down with passes!" Simon Mkutau, who participated in the protest, would later recall: "The atmosphere was cheerful; people were happy, singing and dancing." 1 However, as time went by, more and more police began to appear, along with increasing numbers of armoured vehicles. Military jets began to fly overhead.

Then, without warning, the police opened fire on the unarmed crowd. Lydia Mahabuke was there when it happened. Mahabuke tried to run but felt something hit her in the back. "After having felt this, I tried to look back. People were falling, scattered. There was blood streaming down my leg. I tried to hobble. I struggled to get home." 2

People flee the shooting at the police station. Nearly all the dead and injured had been shot in the back.

In total, 69 people were killed and more than 180 people were injured, mostly shot in the back as they fled the violence. A later report would state over 700 bullets had been fired, all by police. 3

Afterwards, some witnesses claimed they saw police putting guns and knives in the hands of dead victims, to make it look like the protestors were armed and violent. Others said they saw police mocking people who they found alive. Some even claimed that the police killed injured people as they lay on the ground. In some cases, police followed the wounded to the hospital, arrested them and took them to prison. In other cases, the police waited until victims had healed somewhat, then arrested them. 4

While we were standing there and singing we suddenly saw the police in a row pointing their guns at us. Whilst we were still singing, without any word, without any argument, we just heard the guns being fired.

Lydia Mahabuke

The aftermath of the massacre

After the arrests, people in Sharpeville were afraid to talk about the tragedy. "In the days after the shootings, nothing happened," said Albert Mbongo, who participated in the protest and managed to escape without injury. 5 "Nobody dared say anything," said Mbongo, "because if you did you were arrested. I couldn’t even attend the burial, because only women and children were allowed there."

Away from Sharpeville, however, many people did express their outrage both inside and outside South Africa. To protest the massacre, Chief Albert Luthuli, the President‐General of the African National Congress (ANC) burned his own pass. Nelson Mandela and other ANC members also burned their passes in solidarity. Shortly afterwards, on March 30, approximately 30,000 protesters marched to Cape Town to protest the shootings. 6

The international response to the massacre was swift and unanimous. Many countries around the world condemned the atrocity. On April 1, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a resolution condemning the killings and calling for the South African government to abandon its policy of apartheid. A month later, the UN General Assembly declared that apartheid was a violation of the UN Charter. This was the first time the UN had discussed apartheid.[7] Six years later, as a direct result of the Sharpeville Massacre, the UN declared March 21 to be the  International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination .

March 21 is the day on which we remember and sing praises to those who perished in the name of democracy and human dignity.

Nelson Mandela

Sharpeville and the fight against apartheid

After Sharpeville, South Africa’s government had become increasingly isolated, but the government refused to abandon its policies of apartheid and racial discrimination. First, the government declared a state of emergency and detained around 2,000 people. Then, on April 8, 1960, both the ANC and PAC were banned – it became illegal to be a member of these organizations.

Many members of both organizations decided to go underground. Nelson Mandela was among those who chose to become outlaws. He would later say, "We believe in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that ‘the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the government,’ and for us to accept the banning was the equivalent of accepting the silencing of Africans for all time." 8

Mandela and others no longer felt they could defeat apartheid peacefully. Both the PAC and the ANC formed armed wings and began a military struggle against the government. Many long years of struggle and suffering lay ahead – but Sharpeville was the beginning of the end for apartheid. Prakash Diar, a South African human rights lawyer, explains: "The whole world was outraged at what the police had done. On March 21, 1960, the isolation of South Africa started."

The eyes of the world would turn to Sharpeville again years later. During the 1980s, Diar would defend six people unjustly charged with murder by the apartheid government. The five men and one woman would become known as the Sharpeville Six – their case would attract international attention, once again putting Sharpeville on the world stage and exposing the inhumanity of the apartheid government. 9

In December 1996, two years after the end of apartheid, South Africa enacted a new constitution whose Bill of Rights affirmed the values of dignity, equality and freedom for all South Africans. It was signed by President Nelson Mandela in the town of Sharpeville, very close to where the massacre had happened. In South Africa, March 21 is now known as Human Rights Day.

It took a long time, but the isolation and boycott of South Africa slowly started, because what they were practicing was inhumane and unjust.

Prakash Diar

Ask yourself

How are people resisting injustice in your community?

What kinds of human rights activism make a difference?

How can we ensure our governments respect human rights?

Matthew McRae worked at the Museum as Researcher and as Digital Content Specialist.

Dive deeper

The story of nelson mandela .

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system. He faced harsh conditions meant to break his resolve, but Mandela refused to give up his efforts to achieve equality for all people.

• 1  Lodge, Tom,  Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4.
• 2  Ibid, 10.
• 3  Venter, Sahm,  Exploring Our National Days: Human Rights Day 21 March (Auckland Park: Jacanda Media, 2007), 22.
• 4  Lodge, Tom,  Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences , 13–14.
• 5  Ibid, 17.
• 6   The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 1 [1960–1970]  (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2010), 239.
• 7  Dubow, Sam,  Apartheid 1948–1994 , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 83.
• 8  Asmal, Kader, David Chidester and Wilmot James, éd.,  Nelson Mandela in his Own Words: From Freedom to the Future , London, Abacus, 2013, p. 30.
• 9  You can read the story of the Sharpeville Six in Prakash Diar’s book,  The Sharpeville Six  (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1990).

Suggested citation

Suggested citation : Matthew McRae. “The Sharpeville Massacre.” Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Published March 19, 2019. Updated: August 8, 2023. https://humanrights.ca/story/sharpeville-massacre

BlackPast is dedicated to providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of African America and of people of African ancestry around the world. We aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge to generate constructive change in our society.

Sharpeville massacre.

The Sharpeville Massacre occurred on March 21, 1960, in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa.  The incident resulted in the largest number of South African deaths (up to that point) in a protest against apartheid .  It also came to symbolize that struggle.

Sharpeville, a black suburb outside of Vereeniging (about fifty miles south of Johannesburg ), was untouched by anti-apartheid demonstrations that occurred in surrounding towns throughout the 1950s.  By 1960, however, anti-apartheid activism reached the town.  In March 1960, Robert Sobukwe, a leader in the anti-apartheid Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) organized the town’s first anti-apartheid protest.  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.

On March 21, an estimated 7,000 South Africans gathered in front of the Sharpeville police station to protest against the restrictive pass laws.  Nearly 300 police officers arrived to put an end to the peaceful protest.  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.  Police witnesses claimed that stones were thrown, and in a panicked and rash reaction, the officers opened fire on the crowd.  Other witnesses claimed there was no order to open fire, and the police did not fire a warning shot above the crowd.  As the protesters tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into the crowd.  Sixty-nine Africans were killed and 186 were wounded, with most shot in the back.

The Sharpeville Massacre awakened the international community to the horrors of apartheid.  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.  On March 30, the South African government declared a state of emergency which made any protest illegal.  The ban remained in effect until August 31, 1960.  During those five months roughly 25,000 people were arrested throughout the nation.  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 .

The South African government’s 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.  With the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1994, the apartheid system ended.  In 1994, Mandela signed the nation’s first post-apartheid constitution near the site of the 1960 massacre.

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Cite this entry in APA format:

Source of the author's information:.

Philip H. Frankel, An Ordinary Atrocity: Sharpeville and its Massacre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001);  Henry F. Jackson, From the Congo to Soweto: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Africa Since 1960 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1982);  Meredith Martin, T he History of Apartheid: The Story of the Colour War in South Africa (New York: London House & Maxwell, 1962).

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Sharpeville: An apartheid massacre and its consequences

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Arianna Lissoni, Sharpeville: An apartheid massacre and its consequences, African Affairs , Volume 111, Issue 445, October 2012, Pages 686–687, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ads045

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The year 2010 marked the fiftieth anniversary of one of apartheid South Africa's most infamous atrocities: the Sharpeville massacre. 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. Two PAC supporters were also killed by police fire in the African township of Langa, outside Cape Town. The event has since become inscribed in both the country's collective memory and its historiography as a watershed, a turning point which fundamentally altered the course of South Africa's history. Tom Lodge's new book, published fifty-one years after the massacre, revisits this dramatic historical moment. Using oral testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), interviews with local participants and key PAC leaders (including notes on Sobukwe and other Africanists by Benjamin Pogrund, and transcripts of interviews by Gail Gerhart), government-sponsored commissions of inquiry, trial records, and newspaper reports as well as a wide range of secondary sources, the book seeks to explain why the massacre happened when it did and where it did, and what changed afterwards (p. 27). It is thoroughly compiled, and provides a good overview of organized black politics over the past 50 years. However, it is a shame that in Chapters 1 and 5 the flow of writing is repeatedly interrupted by what appears to be a typesetting problem, with many words joined together rather than separated by a space.

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This Day In History : March 21

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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, killing 69 people and wounding 180 in a hail of submachine-gun fire. The demonstrators were protesting against the South African government’s restriction of nonwhite travel. In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, protests broke out in Cape Town, and more than 10,000 people were arrested before government troops restored order.

The incident convinced anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to abandon his nonviolent stance and organize paramilitary groups to fight South Africa’s system of institutionalized racial discrimination. In 1964, after some minor military action, Mandela was convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life in prison. He was released after 27 years and in 1994 was elected the first Black president of South Africa.

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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. Throughout the 1950s, South African blacks intensified their resistance against the oppressive apartheid system. Sharpeville, home to 26,000 blacks within the larger town of Vereeniging, located south of Johannesburg, seemed an unlikely setting for a watershed moment in the history of apartheid resistance. Before the massacre, white officials considered Sharpeville a small, insignificant, and even a “model” black township.  Among other apartheid policies, Sharpeville blacks and their national compatriots were particularly outraged by laws requiring non-whites to carry government-issued passes, an effort by the apartheid regime to exert further control over the mobility of the black population. Mobilized in part by the Pan-Africanist Congress, one of the national organizations formed to resist apartheid, the demonstrators swelled around the police station starting in the early morning, and by the afternoon police recognized that the protest would not subside without proactive efforts by authorities.

Sharpeville Massacre, 1960

Official figures counted 69 dead and about 50 wounded, though further analysis has raised the human toll to at least 200 wounded, “mowed down” by police who fired into a crowd of about 4,000 unarmed protesters.  Available evidence seems to discount theories that the shooting that began was premeditated, but the scale and manner of the killing was horrific nonetheless. Physicians who treated the fallen reported that at least 70 percent of patients were shot in the back, and many of the victims were women and children. In the wake of the massacre, the government met widespread outrage among South African blacks with further clamp-downs on the resistance movement, and the conflict entered a new, even more polarized era.

Poster by London Anti-

Apartheid Group to Boycott

South African Sports

 After the slayings perpetrated there, Sharpeville vaulted apartheid into international consciousness and galvanized protesters both within South Africa and abroad. Significantly, the international community could no longer ignore the encroachment of the apartheid regime on the freedoms of South Africa’s black population, sparking various anti-apartheid campaigns around the world. Boycott movements attempted to weaken the regime economically, a strategy that would become central to the divestment campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s.  The International Olympic Committee banned South Africa from the Olympics, beginning in 1964, and similar bans prohibited segregated South African teams from participating in international rugby and cricket competitions.  This 1960s-era poster demonstrates the vibrant anti-apartheid movement based in London and is one of the many international anti-apartheid images available in the Labadie Collection of social protest and radical political movements in Special Collections at the University of Michigan.

1978 Sharpeville Commemoration

Sponsored by UM and Ann Arbor

Anti-Apartheid Activists

In the United States, the events in Sharpeville made South African policy a priority for a short period. Crucially, the 1960 massacre fomented a connection between the developing civil rights movement in the U.S and the plight of black South Africans. Previously, many mainstream civil rights leaders tended to regard the struggle against segregation in the U.S. and the anti-apartheid campaign as separate issues, uncomfortable with addressing the complexities of nationalist liberation movements in Africa. Pressure from U.S. and international organizations helped influence a shift in U.S. policy toward Africa, which became more sympathetic toward liberation movements under President John F. Kennedy, but stopped short of meaningful support. However, South Africa was soon overshadowed by domestic issues such as the nonviolent direct action phase of the civil rights movement and the resistance against the Vietnam War, delaying much further agitation in the U.S. until events in the mid-1970s brought apartheid back into the spotlight.  This 1978 commemoration at the University of Michigan shows how the memory of the Sharpeville Massacre played a central role in the mass mobilization of the campus anti-apartheid movement nearly two decades later. 

Sources for this page :

Philip Frankel,  An Ordinary Atrocity: Sharpeville and its Massacre  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)

Francis Njubi Nesbitt,  Race for Sanctions: African Americans against Apartheid, 1946-1994  (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004)

The Globe and Mail , May 4, 1960

New York Times , March 22, 1960

The Chicago Defender , April 9, 1960

South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, "Sharpeville Massacre," <http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-E>

Have You Heard from Johannesburg?  (PBS, 2010), directed by Connie Field

Interview of Ansell Horn by Mario Goetz, April 26, 2015

Michigan in the World features exhibitions of research conducted by undergraduate students about the history of the University of Michigan and its relationships beyond its borders.

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How the Sharpeville massacre changed the course of human rights

It’s been 60 years since dozens of protesters were killed at a peaceful anti-apartheid rally in south africa. stephen wheatley explores how this tragedy paved the way for the modern united nations, article bookmarked.

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T he Sharpeville massacre, the name given to the murder of 69 unarmed civilians by armed South African police, took place on 21 March 1960. 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. In 1960, states had no binding international human rights obligations and there were no oversight mechanisms. All that changed following the world’s moral outrage at the killings.

Early on that March morning, demonstrations against the pass laws, which restricted the rights of apartheid South Africa’s majority black population, had begun in Sharpeville, a township in Transvaal. By lunchtime, the crowd outside the police station had grown to an estimated 20,000 people. All the evidence points to the gathering being peaceful and good humoured.

• Jennifer Davis: Exiled hero of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement

Just after 1pm, there was an altercation between the police officer in charge and the leaders of the demonstration. Amid confusion, two shots were fired into the air by somebody in the crowd. In response, a police officer shouted in Afrikaans skiet or n’skiet (exactly which is not clear), which translates either as “shot” or “shoot”. Another officer interpreted this as an order and opened fire, triggering a lethal fusillade as 168 police constables followed his example. By the end of the day, 69 people lay dead or dying, with hundreds more injured.

The power of an event

In my own research, I have 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 developed and evolved. One of the insights has been that international law does not change unless there is some trigger for countries to change their behaviour.

Significant reshaping of international law is often the result of momentous occurrences, most notably the two world wars. But change can also be prompted by seemingly minor events in global affairs, such as the Sharpeville massacre – the so-called butterfly effect.

The world should remember the contingency and fragility of the international human rights law system that we so easily take for granted today

The term “human rights” was first used in the UN Charter in 1945. In 1946, the UN established the Commission on Human Rights, whose first job was to draft a declaration on human rights. The commission completed this task, under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt, when it finalised the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

But attempts to transform this non-binding moral declaration into a binding legal code were immediately bogged down in Cold War disputes. The logjam was only broken after the Sharpeville massacre, as the UN decided to deal with the problem of apartheid South Africa.

Anti-Apartheid Movement: in pictures

Apartheid before the UN

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. But it was not until after Sharpeville that the UN made clear that the country’s system of racial segregation would no longer be tolerated.

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. It was adopted on 21 December 1965. 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 convention: Nazism and antisemitism were not included.

The adoption of the convention was quickly followed by two 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.

‘Gross and systematic’ violations

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 individual’s human rights.

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”. 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.

But in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, the UN adopted a more interventionist stance towards the apartheid state. 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.

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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 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.

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.

On the 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.

Stephen Wheatley is a professor of international law at Lancaster University. This article first appeared on The Conversation

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The Sharpeville Massacre, 1960: African Activism and the Press

• First Online: 30 January 2022

Cite this chapter

• Rosalind Coffey 5  

Part of the book series: Britain and the World ((BAW))

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This chapter examines British press treatment of the Sharpeville massacre. It emphasises the continued centrality of African activism to British newspapers’ interpretations of events in the south of the continent. In particular, it explores the nature of the relationship between the British press, South African English language papers, white liberals and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in the Cape. The chapter argues that these connections informed the press’s critique of apartheid and its support for political reform, but that they were unable to leverage British attitudes in pursuit of a change in policy owing to South Africa’s independent status. Concurrently, the coverage had some worrying impacts in South Africa, informing white settler cultures of retrenchment and blame.

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Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (Harlow, 1983), p. 210.

James Barber, South Africa in the Twentieth Century: A Political History – In Search of a Nation State (Oxford, 1999), p. 165.

Tom Lodge, Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences (Oxford, 2011), p. 71.

Ibid., pp. 61–62.

For a history of the Afrikaners, see: Hermann Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London, 2003).

Two very useful articles on this subject are: Paul Maylam, ‘The Rise and Decline of Urban Apartheid in South Africa’, African Affairs 89: 354 (1990), pp. 57–84; Terence Moll, ‘Did the Apartheid Economy Fail?’, Journal of Southern African Studies 17: 2 (1991), pp. 271–91.

For example: front-page of the Mirror , 22 March 1960.

Mail , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9); Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp; Herald , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7).

For example: Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp.

Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp; Herald , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9); News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2); Telegraph , 22 March 1960, fp.

Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp; Herald , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2).

Herald , 22 March 1960, p. 7 (begins fp).

Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp.

Herald , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9).

Herald , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail , 22 March 1960, fp and p. 9; News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2); Telegraph , 22 March 1960, fp.

Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp; Herald , p. 7 (begins fp).

Mirror , 22 March 1960, bp; Herald , 22 March 1960, p. 7 (begins fp); Mail , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9); News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2)

Herald , 22 March 1960, p. 7 (begins fp); Mail , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9); News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2); Telegraph , 22 March 1960, fp.

Herald , fp and p. 7.

News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2).

Mirror , 22 March 1960, p. 2.

News Chronicle , 22 March 1960, p. 8.

Times , 22 March 1960, p. 13.

Telegraph , 22 March 1960, p. 12.

See Lodge, Sharpeville , for a detailed account of how events unfolded on the 21st.

The photographs can be found in Ambrose Reeves, Shooting at Sharpeville: The Agony of South Africa (London, 1960).

Berry was accompanied by Humphrey Tyler, a Drum journalist. See: Humphrey Tyler, Life in the Time of Sharpeville – and Wayward Seeds of the New South Africa (Cape Town, 1995).

Benjamin Pogrund, War of Words: Memoir of a South African Journalist (London, 2000), p. 83. Pogrund had been there for the Rand Daily Mail .

Ibid., pp. 82–83.

Tom Hopkinson, In the Fiery Continent (London, 1962), p. 263.

Correspondence with Peter Younghusband, May 2013.

Hopkinson, Fiery , p. 9.

See Chap. 3 for more information about Legum.

Lewis, David Astor , p. 186.

In addition to the aforementioned works, for discussion of media treatment of the massacre, see: Smith, ‘Apartheid, Sharpeville and “Impartiality”’; James Sanders, South Africa and the International Media: 1972–1979: A Struggle for Representation (London, 2000); Ronald Hyam and Peter Henshaw, The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa Since the Boer War (Cambridge, 2003); Thörn, Anti-Apartheid ; Rob Skinner, The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid: Liberal Humanitarians and Transnational Activists in Britain and the United States, c. 1919–64 (Basingstoke, 2010). There is also a large section on media treatment of Sharpeville in Lodge, Sharpeville , pp. 228–38.

Herald , 23 March 1960, fp.

HC Deb 22 March 1960, vol. 620, col 240.

Pogrund, War of Words , p. 79.

Macmillan, Pointing , p. 167.

News Chronicle , 23 March 1960, p. 6.

Herald , 24 March 1960, fp.

Telegraph , 24 March 1960, p. 12.

For example: Mirror , 23 March 1960, p. 5.

Times , 23 March 1960, p. 13.

For example: Telegraph , 25 March 1960, fp. ‘Vereeniging’ here refers to Sharpeville. Sharpeville is a township near the city of Vereeniging.

For Sharpeville and the growth of the anti-apartheid movement, see: Roger Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid: A History of the Movement in Britain – A Study in Pressure Group Politics (London, 2005); Gurney, ‘A Great Cause’.

Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid , p. 20.

Hyam, Declining Empire , pp. 318–9.

Mirror , 25 March 1960, p. 4; Mail , 25 March 1960, p. 13.

News Chronicle , 26 March 1960, fp.

Pogrund, War of Words , p. 83.

Observer , 27 March 1960, p. 4.

News Chronicle , 23 March 1960, p. 5; Observer , 27 March 1960, p. 16. The Observer ’s article was written by Mary Benson, a South African who was on the Executive of the Africa Bureau.

Herald , 26 March 1960, p. 4.

Reeves, Shooting , pp. 72–73.

Philip Ata Kgosana, Lest We Forget: An Autobiography (Braamfontein, South Africa, 1988), p. 27.

Randolph Vigne, Liberals Against Apartheid: A History of the Liberal Party of South Africa, 1953–68 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 120.

For Duncan’s role, and particularly his relationship with Kgosana, see: C. J. Driver, Patrick Duncan: South African and Pan-African (Oxford, 2000).

Myrna Blumberg, White Madam (London, 1962), p. 106.

Interview with T.T. Letlaka, Z.B. Molete, A.B. Ngcobo and Peter Raboroko, Dar-es-Salaam, 9 September 1968, A2422/4, Section A: Interviews, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents. 1945–1972 (A2422), Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand (hereafter Wits).

Interview with J.D. Nyaose, Nairobi, 4 December 1969, A2422/19, Section A: Interviews, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits.

Vigne, Liberals , p. 119.

Hopkinson, Fiery , p. 268.

The Cape Times was also an English-language paper.

News Chronicle , 23 March 1960, fp.

‘Staff correspondents of United Kingdom newspapers and the B.B.C in Commonwealth countries’, 26 May 1960, fol. 11, DO 194/29.

Telegraph , 23 March 1960, fp (continued bp).

News Chronicle , 26 March 1960, p. 2.

Lodge, Sharpeville , pp. 140–3.

Ibid., p. 143.

Observer , 27 March 1960, fp (continued p. 6); Mail , 28 March 1960, fp and p. 9; Herald , 28 March 1960, fp and p. 7; News Chronicle , 28 March 1960, fp and p. 4; Telegraph , 28 March 1960, fp and p. 12; Mirror , 28 March 1960, p. 4.

News Chronicle , 28 March 1960, fp.

Telegraph , 28 March 1960, p. 12.

Mail , 28 March 1960, fp.

Hopkinson, Fiery , pp. 263–4.

For the ANC’s attitude to the ‘white press’ (recall Ghana), see: Albert Luthuli, Let My People Go: An Autobiography (London, 1962).

Ibid., p. 265.

Norman Phillips, The Tragedy of Apartheid: A Journalist’s Experiences in the South African Riots (London, 1961), p. 32.

Mirror , 29 March 1960, p. 3; Telegraph , 29 March 1960, fp; News Chronicle , 29 March 1960, fp; Herald , 29 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail , 29 March 1960, fp.

Vigne, Liberals , p. 121.

‘Diary kept by an African member of the Liberal Party, Cape Town, March/April 1960 (Mr. August)’, piece 389, Section B: Documents, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits.

Mail , 29 March 1960, fp.

Mail , 29 March 1960, p. 11.

Mirror , 29 March 1960, p. 3.

Hopkinson, Fiery , p. 266.

Mail , 31 March 1960, fp; Express , 31 March 1960, fp; Mirror , 31 March 1960, fp; News Chronicle , 31 March 1960, fp; Telegraph , 31 March 1960, fp; Herald , 1 April 1960, fp.

See: Vigne, Liberals , p. 125; Kgosana, Lest we Forget , p. 33; and Lodge, Sharpeville , p. 150.

Kgosana, Lest we Forget , p. 33.

Mail , 31 March 1960, fp.

Mail , 31 March 1960, fp; Blumberg, White Madam , p. 27. Blumberg said she arrived later than her husband: see White Madam , p. 27 and p. 32.

Benjamin Pogrund, How Can Man Die Better: Sobukwe and Apartheid (London, 1990), p. 145.

Kgosana, Lest we Forget , p. 32.

Ibid., p. 34.

Mail , 31 March 1960, fp. The Mirror referred to a ‘tide of anger’. The Express headline was ‘Terror on the march’. Both fp articles on the 31st.

These were on pages 8, fp, 4 and 12, respectively.

Herald , 31 March 1960, fp.

HC Deb 28 March 1960, vol. 620, cols 954–5.

HC Deb 30 March 1960, vol. 620, col 1329.

Ibid., cols 1329–30.

News Chronicle , 31 March 1960, p. 4.

Telegraph , 31 March 1960, p. 12.

News Chronicle , 7 April 1960, fp.

For example: Lodge, Sharpeville , p. 237.

On pages fp and p. 3, respectively.

HC Deb 06 April 1960, vol. 621, col 376.

DO 35/10730-1; PREM 11/3163; PREM 11/3109.

Stephen Swingler. HC Deb 06 April 1960, vol. 621, col 376.

Sir G. Nicholson. Ibid., cols 377–8.

For example: Herald , 31 March 1960, fp (continued p. 8); Telegraph , 31 March 1960, fp.

For example: Observer , 3 April 1960, bp.

For example: Mail , 31 March 1960, fp.

For example: Telegraph , 1 April 1960, fp.

For example: Herald , 2 April 1960, fp.

Mirror , 5 April 1960, p. 3; Mail , 5 April 1960, fp; News Chronicle , 5 April 1960, fp; Telegraph , 5 April 1960, fp.

Telegraph , 5 April 1960, fp.

Mail , 5 April 1960, fp; Herald , 5 April 1960, p. 9. Blumberg, White Madam , p. 33.

News Chronicle , 5 April 1960, fp.

HC Deb 05 April 1960, vol. 621, cols 191–2.

Ibid., col 192.

For example: News Chronicle , 6 April 1960, p. 5.

HC Deb 05 April 1960, vol. 621, cols 192–3.

Mail , 6 April 1960, p. 10.

Correspondence with Younghusband, May 2013.

News Chronicle , 6 April 1960, p. 6.

Telegraph , 6 April 1960, p. 12.

Telegraph , 8 April 1960, p. 12.

Times , 6 April 1960, p. 13.

‘Impi’ means regiment.

News Chronicle , 9 April 1960, p. 7.

For the text of the resolution see end of the debate in: HC Deb 08 April 1960, vol. 621, col 843.

Ibid., col 781.

Telegraph , 9 April 1960, fp.

Express , 31 March 1960, p. 9.

Herald , 31 March 1960, p. 8 (article begins on fp).

For example: News Chronicle , 31 March 1960, fp.

Pogrund, War of Words , p. 42.

Ibid., p. 89.

Ibid., p. 92.

Ibid., pp. 89–91.

Ibid., p. 90.

Observer , 17 April 1960, p. 8.

For example: Mirror , 1 April 1960, fp; Mail , 1 April, fp.

Phillips, Tragedy , p. 187.

Blumberg, White Madam , p. 35.

‘Assembly Debates, 30 March 1960’, piece 384, Section B: Documents, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits. Reference is on p. 4428 of the original book, which Gerhart has photocopied.

See ‘Assembly Debates’ for the whole period discussed here: Section B: Documents, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits.

Phillips, Tragedy , pp. 187–9.

Ibid., p. 186.

Ibid., p. 187.

His report on Nyanga was subsequently published in the Telegraph , but as the first page had been confiscated, this version also had to be ‘reconstructed…from memory to the best of his ability’. Telegraph , 16 April 1960, fp. When in Africa, he had apparently phoned the Star ’s Cape Town correspondent for information with which to write his article.

As, for instance, in BTS 35/4/1 (‘Summaries of press comments on South African affairs by the Ambassador, London’), National Archives of South Africa (hereafter NASA).

As in BTS 35/4/1; and BTS 35/6 vol. 8, NASA.

‘British Press Comment: April 2–8, 1960’, BTS 35/4/1 vol. 8, NASA.

Observer , 10 April 1960, fp.

Phillips, Tragedy , p. 128.

Hopkinson, Fiery , p. 284.

Blumberg, White Madam , p. 17.

Express , 11 April 1960, fp.

Blumberg, White Madam , pp. 37–48.

Ibid., p. 140.

Ibid., pp. 140–1.

Ibid., p. 141.

Sampson, Anatomist , p. 43. For Sampson’s account of his life-changing experiences at Drum , see: Anthony Sampson, Drum: An African Adventure – and Afterwards (London, 1956).

Sampson, Anatomist , pp. 17–42.

Ibid., pp. 40–43.

Ibid., p. 248.

Ibid., p. 35.

Peter Younghusband, Every Meal a Banquet, Every Night a Honeymoon: Unforgettable African Experiences (Jeppestown, 2003), p. 136. Parenthesis and its contents added.

Mail , 14 April 1960, p. 13.

Herald , 21 April 1960, p. 5.

Observer , 24 April 1960, p. 7.

Ibid. Also see: Sampson, Anatomist , p. 98.

Munnion, Banana Sunday , pp. 441–2.

Ibid., p. 442.

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Coffey, R. (2022). The Sharpeville Massacre, 1960: African Activism and the Press. In: The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_5

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Women’s resistance in the 1960s - Sharpeville and its aftermath

As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s the  African National Congress (ANC)  and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)  both announced plans to tackle the pass laws for blacks (both men and women) with massive protests, civil disobedience and pass burnings. There was a sense of rivalry between the two organisations to get their campaigns off the ground first.

Suddenly the country was rocked by the events of 21 March in Sharpeville where people had gathered to show the police that they did not have their passes – and thus to invite arrest. In the general confusion and escalating tension of the situation, police shot and killed 69 people. World headlines condemned this callous example of unwarranted police repression against unarmed Africans. Predictably, and almost immediately, there was a government crackdown of all black opposition. In a single stroke the national liberation movement was stopped (temporarily, at least) in its tracks and the Congress Alliance was plunged into disarray. The government declared a state of emergency, hundreds of arrests were made and in April 1960 the ANC and newly-formed PAC were banned as lawful political parties. Both organisations were driven underground. By mid-1961 Congress leaders had come to the realisation that non-violent methods of resistance had failed and would have to be abandoned; the ANC and PAC both established military wings - Umkhonto we Sizwe and Poqo respectively. The new strategy was to turn to violence, to try to harm the economy and to gain publicity for the fact that the ANC was still a viable organisation despite being banned.

The decline of the Federation of South African Women

The banning of the ANC in 1960 threw the Federation of South African Women  (FSAW)  into a hopeless position. It had been conceived on the 1950s model of resistance and it was doomed to flounder in the 1960s. It had not been banned but its ally, the ANC, had been driven underground. The immediate goal was to try to regroup. Its most prominent female leaders, Ngoyi and Joseph , had been detained. Some went into exile and worked for the ANC, such as Ruth Mompati , for example, who became secretary of the African National Congress Women's League  (ANCWL)  in Tanzania in 1962. Similarly, Hilda Bernstein escaped to London and became a member of the External Mission and the ANCWL. Those who remained in South Africa, however, were hamstrung because their FSAW structures were no longer in place.

In early 1961 it was decided that regional organisers should try to manage resistance at the ground level. Certain regional organisations such as the Federation of Transvaal Women (FEDTRAW) , Natal Organisation of Women (NOW) and the United Women's Congress (UWCO) in the Western Cape, were formed to circumvent the difficulty and try to move ahead. Women like Dorothy Nyembe, who became President of the Natal Rural Areas Committee still played a role at local level. In 1962 she organised anti-government demonstrations among rural women during the Natal Women's Revolt.

By September 1961 the FSAW had made enough ground to hold a reasonably well-attended national conference in Port Elizabeth and Lilian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph were re-elected. Ngoyi was upbeat in her report and her reminder that freedom was not easily won. Nevertheless, bad times were near at hand. In October Ngoyi was banned and confined to Orlando for 5 years. Florence Matomela of the Eastern Cape section suffered a similar fate, and in early 1962 there was worse to come. Helen Joseph's banning order expired but she was served another within a few months, becoming the first person to be confined to house arrest. With the loss of its three main leaders there was no chance of revival.

In 1963 the Congress of Democrats (COD) was banned which was another blow for many politically active women. In the next few years more of the leading women were removed from office in the organisation by government orders and arrests. The list included, among others, Albertina Sisulu, Mary Moodley, Amina Cachalia , Liz Abrahams and Bertha Mashaba . In 1965 Ray Alexander went into exile in Zambia. By the mid-1960s the FSAW had declined into obscurity. However, the spirit of women's resistance had not been destroyed. As Walker puts it ‘After a period of apparent dormancy in the late 1960s – the result of the massive crackdown of the previous years – women began to regroup in the 1970s' (Walker 1991:275).

New resistance stirs: Student activism and Black Consciousness in the 1960s

In the vacuum caused by the banning of the ANC and PAC, the late 1960s saw the early rise of a new source of resistance – the Black Consciousness Movement . It was black students who took the initiative. They were angered by a snub from the white student body and formed their own organisation, the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) led by Steve Biko , through which they planned to formulate their own political ideas and strategies.

The Black Consciousness ideology is not the issue here, so suffice to say that its adherents rejected white partnership and sought to emphasise and promote black self-esteem and assertiveness. The movement came to prominence in the 1970s, but the first significant group to identify with Black Consciousness principles was SASO, and it held its first conference in 1969. These black students were studying under very difficult circumstances in university campuses and it is unlikely, although not impossible, that there were many women students among them. Certainly Mamphela Ramphele began her medical studies at the University of Natal in 1967 (where Steve Biko began his in 1966) and it was here that she met and fell in love with Biko, who became the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. She too was a member of SASO and shared his political convictions. In the 1970s a women's organisation inspired by the Black Consciousness Movement, the Black Women's Federation , was formed in 1975.

Indian women and resistance in the 1960s

In the early 1960s the government set up the Indian National Council (NIC) supposedly to act as a link between the minister of Indian Affairs and the Asian community and to make recommendations to the minister. However, the council was seen by the Indians as a stooge of the government and few respected members of the community would accept nomination on what they scathingly called an ‘apartheid body'. In the late 1950s and the 1960s many Indian families had suffered great hardship under the Group Areas Act . Indians were forcibly made to move from their homes to make way for white development in Natal. Appeals to the authorities met with stubborn indifference. In an effort to show their resistance to these two discriminatory measures Indian women activists staged a march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria in October 1963. Zainab Asvat , who had been so prominent in the Indian passive resistance campaign of 1946, was the main organiser of the march. Most of the women were from Johannesburg and Pretoria. Unlike the previous marches to the Union Buildings, on this march the women were subjected to violence. The police turned dogs on them and baton charged them. Soon after this, Zainab was banned for five years. After her banning expired, she and her husband Dr Kazi, who had also been banned, took exit permits and went to live in London.

Zainab Asvat was by no means the only Indian woman who had a high political profile at the time. The following year (1964) another prominent Indian women, Amina Cachalia, was banned for five years for her role in the FSAW. Later on, in 1966,  Phyllis Naidoo was banned and detained for ten days for breaking her banning order. Soon afterwards she left South Africa for Lesotho, where she subsequently became the victim of a parcel bomb.

There is a great deal of information on women’s internal political activities or protests against racial discrimination and unjust laws in South Africa, but not much has been written on the history of women activists in exile. This section deals with both high and low profile women in exile during the struggle. It is imperative to note that the banning and the consequences of banning political organisations such as the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) - who both had taken up anti-pass campaigns in 1960 - and the South African Communist Party (SACP) in the same year were momentous. One of the most significant impacts of the bannings was the subsequent decline of the liberation movement after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. In an effort to resuscitate the war effort, thousands of people, of which a large number were women, (i.e. women activists and spouses of male activists) left the country for various destinations in Africa and Europe. Ever since that date, support for the ANC began to grow from strength to strength. In the ensuing decade the explosion of student unrest and the crackdown by the government in 1976 further drove thousands of students into exile, among them young girls. After Soweto, many young men and women who went into exile joined guerrilla armies (i.e. Umkhonto we Sizwe/MK). A relatively smaller group followed other professions. The former category was housed in ANC bases in Zambia, Tanzania, Angola and other African countries. In these bases, female youths, just like their male counterparts, carried out various activities under very trying conditions. 

Activities of women in exile

In exile, women were involved in multi-tasks. For example, most women exiles had to find work and they worked alongside men in anti-apartheid structures. They were mainly split into four diverse groups. On the one hand, there was a wiser category of women who went out as nurses, teachers and musicians (i.e. Letta Mbulu and Miriam Makeba ). The latter was based in London and often depicted or symbolised women’s role in the arts. Makeba, who in 1959 had starred in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back Africa , showed her dedication to the struggle when in 1963 she made an impassioned testimony before the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid. Consequently, her records were banned at the same time as the South African government revoked her citizenship and right of return. In the face of this development, she stayed in the United States (US) and married Stokely Carmichael, a Black Panther leader. Thus her exile from her South African homeland started. Undeterred in her pursuit of political activism, three years down the line, she received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba - an album leased in 1966, which dealt with the political plight of Black South Africans under apartheid. She stayed in exile in countries such as Guinea and Belgium before the former president of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela , persuaded her to return to the country in 1990. On the other hand, there was the unknown number of women (e.g. those without qualifications or specialised skills). These worked at all levels of the MK movement. There were also women like Agnes Msimang, Sabi Foreman, Sherley Gunn and Ruth Carneson, who performed big and responsible roles as the liberation struggle progressed. Still others, based in front line states, acted as couriers.

Young women were exposed to some level of academic education in centres like Morogoro in Tanzania and many others. However, women activists in exile were mostly motivated by the quest for dignity, self-respect and equality, regardless of ethnicity or level of education, pan-ethnic solidarity and other aspects of national consciousness. According to Ruth Mompati (an MK cadre), it was “very difficult in exile to be completely a Xhosa group, or a Tswana group, even if you were in (ethnic/tribal-based) groups. People who lived together had gone through difficulties and demanding situations together.”

As already indicated, women in exile included students and professionals such as teachers and nurses. Most of these women played an important role in women’s groups which were formed since the 1960s. For instance, by 1965, the ANC had established a Women’s Section Bureau in Tanzania, with office-bearers including Ruth Mompati, Mary Ngalo, Edna Mgabaza and Florence Mophosho . Members of the Women’s Section had suffered enormous hardships, many having to choose between motherhood and political duty. A number were forced to leave babies behind when they went out of the country. Their loyalty to the movement, their strength and commitment to the national struggle led the ANC to review the role of women in exile. Although the organisation officially commemorated Women’s Day on 9 August, it acknowledged that it had not made full use of the leadership capabilities of women. The author of one official document reflected, “It sometimes seems that the ANC has not forgotten that the woman’s place is in the kitchen, and very often unconsciously places her there.” To address this issue, the organisation made sure that women became equal partners in the External Mission and were used “in direct political work as full members in all spheres and phases.” The ANC leadership created conditions for women in exile to take the initiative in contributing to the broader liberation struggle . The first task of the Women’s Section Bureau was to establish contact with all women in exile, wherever they had settled, as well as those who remained in South Africa. The London office was especially useful in this regard, and the effort was designed to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement from home.

Welfare work was at the core of the Women’s Section Bureau’s responsibilities from the outset. Many families in South Africa had been left without breadwinners because of imprisonment, execution or exile. The Bureau assisted by establishing links with organisations, including anti-apartheid non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that could offer material help to such families.

In June 1965, the Bureau was represented at the second Afro-Asian Women’s Conference in Cairo and two years later participated in the international Voice of the Women conference in Montreal (Canada). Conference themes included independence and security for all countries, the crisis in Vietnam, national liberation, disarmament, non-violence and education for peace. Clearly, the Women’s Bureau was not only concerned with apartheid but also with the Vietnam War and discrimination in general. In 1968, Mary Ngalo was appointed to the Women’s Bureau of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO) after her husband was transferred to Egypt by the ANC. She played an active role in the activities of this organisation until her sudden death in Cairo on 16 March 1973. In October 1970 Mompati, a trained MK cadre, and Gusta Hildgard, also a member of MK, attended the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) Council and Bureau meeting in Budapest, from where Hildgard went on to East Berlin for a two-week course in military affairs arranged by the WIDF for its affiliates.

The ANC Women’s Bureau worked diligently to establish and maintain ties with local women’s organisations in Tanzania and other parts of Africa, as Mompati recalled:

O ne of the other things that we did was to attend women’s conferences. We were invited by women all over the world. I attended conferences in Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, West Africa, Guinea Bissau and then Guinea Conakry. It was very difficult to travel sometimes in Africa, particularly to Kenya. We had no passports. We used papers that we got from Zambia and Tanzania; we used to call them Freedom Charters .

Nevertheless, although women filled various roles during the struggle, their story cannot be complete without documenting their trials and tribulations in the camps particularly at the hands of some unscrupulous officers.

The plight of female cadres in exile

Women activists in camps and organisations faced a multiplex of problems. For example, they were subjected to serious forms of harassment (mostly sexual harassment) and discrimination. Due to sexual harassment and other forms of impermanent relationships children were produced, thereby forcing the liberation movements to set up schools for the children born in exile. Mompati and Gertrude Shope recalled that the Women’s Section made concerted efforts to provide a measure of support and counselling for abused female cadres and teenagers confronted with unwanted pregnancies. These escalated with the arrival of the 1976 generation. According to Mompati, issues involving sexual relationships were always an area of concern.

There were very few women actually at the camp. In fact, in the beginning there were hardly any women. So when young women came, I remember four that came together. ”¦ Daphne (MK name), Jacqueline (MK name), one [who] is now a medical doctor, and ”¦Nomsa (also an MK name). They were just four, and they were young. I couldn’t understand how these young women did this. And then afterwards more came, some from Natal, some from elsewhere ”¦ it became even more necessary to visit the camp and when possible to see these women. The problem was with the men: they all had to be related to these women. This was the problem right through, even later on when we were no longer at Kongwa, when we were in Angola. You had to be there to talk to the women ”¦ We definitely had problems, men were the problem. Not that all our men were really problematic, but this was life and everybody wanted a girlfriend and there were only so many females.. .

Recently, Teddy Williams, also known as Wellington Sejake (a Soviet-trained MK commander), in giving evidence to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Umtata in June 1996, testified that sexual abuse of young female recruits and the wives of soldiers was widespread at the ANC’s Quibaxe camp in Angola. In 1978 he witnessed officers “helping themselves” to women recruits at this camp. “These young girls were abused by the officers, mostly the administrators. They used to call them to administration and then do what they [officers] wanted. Some of the trainees came with their girlfriends and wives. Even those wives were abused.”

Williams’ account has been corroborated by the former Umkhonto we Sizwe commander - now Defence Minister - Joe Modise, who in his testimony to the same Commission in Cape Town in 1997 also admitted that sexual harassment of women in ANC exile camps was “a very serious problem.” He, however, hastened to point out that when the ANC leadership became aware of the problem they took immediate corrective steps, sending senior MK officials to the camps to ensure the practice was stamped out. Nevertheless, in spite of this intervention, he admitted that: “Unfortunately this kind of problem is a very difficult one. It is a kind of problem that manifests itself in places such as camps that are very far from home and isolated in hostile areas.” He said it was difficult for young men to go into nearby towns to look for young ladies because they risked being ambushed by UNITA troops. Hence, according to Modise, “The confinement of men and women resulted in these abuses.” Modise told the TRC panel chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu that it was true that some camp commanders took advantage of their positions of authority to ask “sexual favours of women in the camps.”

Although it has been stated that commanders implicated in such practices were removed from their posts, these problems existed. ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) member Gertrude Shope said the ANC Women’s League had taken action when these abuses were brought to its attention. For example, a delegation had visited the various camps in Angola to meet the women and discuss their problems. Similarly, former MK intelligence chief, Ronnie Kasrils , now deputy defence minister, stressed that the MK had great respect for women. He said, “Any abuse of women that took place was not part and parcel of everyday occurrence. This is something that would have been hidden. When it was brought to our attention that certain abuses were taking place behind the scenes we took action.” In spite of these sentiments, however, abuse was quite commonplace.

As a result of such problems, the ANC’s regional political committee in East Africa published an undated memorandum about unacceptable social behaviour. The document identified three rampant problems – alcohol abuse, smoking marijuana and sexual relationships. The authors of the document believed that these were political rather than moral issues, arising from specific social conditions and holding definite political implications, both for the immediate phase of the struggle and for the future of a liberated South Africa. For the ANC this behaviour was not compatible with the task of winning freedom “for our people.” In the main, the document analysed the persistent issue of sexual relationships in three categories: exploitative, irresponsible and promiscuous. While acknowledging the complexity of the issue, the authors argued that there were definite negative trends that were incompatible with the liberation struggle. For example, exploitative sexual relationships conducted by those who abused their positions of power, were censured as “one of the very worst forms of exploitation and hypocrisy.” Equally, the document called for the eradication of the use of threat or force to secure sexual favours, because “this kind of behaviour destroys comradely respect and trust and undermines the organisation.” Despite the stout efforts made by the Women’s Section Bureau, however, such problems and other internal dynamics continued to undermine the ANC throughout the exile period.

It is clear that South African women in exile suffered insurmountable hardships in their quest to bring freedom to the country. Indeed, exile meant that homes were broken up when women joined the struggle; children were left helpless and uncared for; mothers were separated from their babies when they joined the struggle; women and young girls were exposed to humiliation and degradation at the hands of army commanders, instructors and administrators who frequently sexually molested them. The forthcoming holiday which marks the 53rd anniversary of Women’s Day should ponder over some of these atrocities in addition to commemorating the women’s famous protest march that ended at the Union Buildings , Pretoria on 9 August 1956 against the imposition of pass laws .

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The Sharpeville massacre.

The Sharpeville Massacre

History Essay 2

Christina Whitfield 11AST

Why has the event known as the Sharpeville Massacre produced such different interpretations?

In February of 1960 the English Prime Minister went to South Africa to make what is now a famous speech, saying that his government did not approve of the Apartheid and said that they could no longer ignore the demands of the black people. (Apartheid= no rights for blacks, this was what the Nationalists wanted, these people were mostly Afrikaans)  The Nationalist party did not approve of this speech, as they thought that change did not need to come, black people, in their eyes, were beneath them. Most of the Nationalists were white settlers, and they thought that they were superior to black natives. The Apartheid system was enough to satisfy them.  

But the Blacks thought very differently. For example, if you didn’t have your passbook you could suffer from a month’s imprisonment or face a hefty fine. This system was a very unfair way of life for the Blacks.

The ANC decided to protest against this in march 1960, but the PAC acted first. They wanted all the blacks to leave their PassBooks at home and admit to the local authority that they had broken the law. The prisons were not big enough for every one; they wouldn’t have space for all the law- breakers.

There was no violence intended for the protest, planned on the 21 st  March 1960, which was located at the Black town of Sharpeville. It was a quiet place, 35 miles from the city of Johannesburg.

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There are several versions of the Events of that day which is why it has never gone to court and nobody has been prosecuted.

What is known is that, at dawn local leaders went from door-to-door, handing out leaflets requesting of the people not to go to work that day.

Some say this was not done peacefully and that the blacks were all to blame.  The protest got bigger and they went off to the police station to protest. Several sources say that it was a happy crowd and that no illegal weapons of any kind were carried, and that it was the government’s fault. For example, a Sharpeville resident called Mahabane claimed that when he was standing at his door, two white police men came and asked him for water, when he returned with the water they said to him that the shooting was going to start at 2 o’clock. But others such as Humphrey Tyler, a reporter for the Drum magazine wrote that the police said they ‘were in desperate danger because the crowd was stoning them.’  They were also armed with ‘ferocious weapons.’ Although Tyler does go on to say that he studied the photos carefully and that there was no evidence of them doing this. Also another source also tells us that the Africans began stoning police vehicles and described them as a mob. (The Times British Newspaper, March 22 nd  1960)  This, however may be propaganda, because it does not say how or where they got this information from.

When they got to the police station the police were already at the door, says the source in the textbook. Then it goes on to say that without any warning the police opened fire at the Blacks. Then the protesters quickly turned and fled the scene, but many of them were shot down, and some were on the floor, when police ‘rifle-butted and kicked and booted many women who were trying to retrieve bodies’ says source I in the text book.

However, there is photo evidence of the people running away, (source) so this may mean that the Black’s really didn’t have any weapons, otherwise they may have stayed and fought.  

We cannot be sure what exactly happened on that day because there are so many different sources that give such contrasting ways of events.  Most of them are also unreliable. They are nearly all stories passed on by word of mouth. There are no actual witnesses or physical evidence to prove it.

I think that the most reliable sources are that of the pictures. You can clearly see n source B that the Black’s are very scared and that they are running away. This must mean that they are the ones in danger.

I think that there is crucial physical evidence missing from this because there was no actual witness’s form both sides who agree on what happened.  The two sides spent all their time trying to pin the blame on each other, rather than trying to come to some sort of agreement and to try and compromise with each other.

I think that the police must have heard from a source that they were coming, they saw his as a perfect opportunity to show that the white people really were ‘superior’ to the Black’s. The police were trying to make an example of the Black’s who did wrong and didn’t follow by their rules. They were trying to prevent change.  

But I do not think that we can pass judgement on what actually happened that day simply because there is no physical evidence, even photos can be unreliable, the people in source B could have simply been acting. Had there been actual physical evidence such as filming, we could have caught the Apartheid system red-handed and put a stop to the awful treatment which the Black native’s of their own land received.

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