March 21, 1960
| South African Police Kill 69
Black Protesters in
Sharpeville Massacre
By THE LEARNING NETWORK
KeystoneBodies of protesters lay on the ground in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre.
On March 21, 1960, South African police officers opened fire on a crowd of black protesters who had surrounded a police station in Sharpeville, killing 69 people.
The Sharpeville protests began over South Africa’s pass laws, which required black South Africans to carry passbooks with them any time they traveled out of their designated home areas. The African National Congress, the leading antiapartheid organization of the era, planned for an antipass campaign to begin March 31, 1960. The Pan Africanist Congress, a more militant offshoot of the A.N.C., organized a campaign that would begin 10 days before the A.N.C.’s.
On March 21, Pan Africanist leaders in Sharpeville assembled a demonstration of 5,000 to 7,000 people, in part through intimidating locals to join. In the morning, they led the protest to the Sharpeville police station, where they demanded to be arrested for not carrying passes. Police reinforcements arrived during the incident. The March 22 New York Times reported: “South African Air Force planes flew over the trouble spot in a show of force. But the Africans ignored all orders to disperse.”
In the afternoon, small scuffles broke out and some demonstrators began throwing rocks at the police. As the crowd moved forward toward one scuffle, the police began firing into the crowd.
The April 3 New York Times published an account by Humphrey Tyler, an assistant editor at Drum magazine who was white, who described the demonstration as peaceful and little threat to the officers’ safety. He wrote: “We heard the chatter of a machine gun, then another, then another. Bodies were falling. Hundreds of children were running. Some of the children were shot, too. Still the shooting went on.”
The shootings sparked protests and riots among black South Africans throughout the country. On March 30, the government declared a state of emergency; it arrested thousands of blacks and outlawed the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress.
The Sharpeville massacre represents a turning point in the history of apartheid. The banning of the two protest groups forced antiapartheid leaders underground and convinced them to end their campaigns of passive, nonviolent resistance in favor of armed struggle.
The Sharpeville massacre also brought international condemnation on South Africa, including a United Nations resolution. An editorial in the
March 22 New York Times asked, “Do the South Africans really think that the rest of the world will ignore such a massacre? Perhaps it takes a horror like the slaughter at Sharpeville to bring home to the white South Africans themselves the evil that the policy of apartheid represents.”
Connect to Today
“A hellhole with a claim on history,” Bill Keller wrote in a http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/27/weekinreview/the-world-politicking-in-sharp...">March 1994 New York Times article describing Sharpeville, just before South Africa’s first elections with universal suffrage. In 2010, on the 50th anniversary of the massacre and 16 years after the end of apartheid, Sharpeville residents organized demonstrations to call attention to their continued economic struggles.
The Associated Press reported, “Survivors of the massacre are tired of telling their stories: They are wondering when the change they thought they were fighting for 50 years ago will come to Sharpeville.” Today, though South Africa recognizes March 21 as Human Rights Day and apartheid ended nearly two decades ago, many Sharpeville residents feel neglected by the government they helped vote into power. Why do you think political freedom hasn’t delivered economic freedom for many black South Africans? What do you think it will take for Sharpeville, a symbol of South African struggle, and other poor cities to break out of poverty and despair?
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How one photograph changed the world
The black-and-white photo illustrates the brutality of the apartheid regime: young Hector Pieterson carried by a fellow schoolboy after being gunned down by police on June 16 1976 in Soweto.
Thirty years on, photographer Sam Nzima remembers the day that was to change the destiny of South Africa, and end his career as a photojournalist.
“They were all happy. They were carrying placards, not guns,” recounted Nzima, now 71, who lives in the village of Lillydale near the Kruger National Park in north-east South Africa.
Assigned by his newspaper The World to cover the protests, Nzima showed up early in the morning and was in the middle of the students when police opened fire.
“The shooting was just at random,” he said.
Hector Pieterson was struck down by a bullet to the head. A friend picked him up to take him to the hospital.
Nzima snapped six shots from behind the 50mm lense of his Pentax SL. The third shot turned out to be the best.
It showed the lifeless body of Pieterson carried by Mbuyisa Makhubu, his face torn by pain. Pieterson’s sister Antoinette dressed in her school uniform can be seen running alongside.
After taking the pictures, Nzima removed the film from his camera and hid it in his sock. A few hours later, it was splashed on the front page of The World and the next day in British newspapers. The world had discovered the bloody repression of the student uprising. And Nzima discovered police harassment and fear.
Accused of portraying South Africa in a bad light, he was hunted down by police and forced to leave Soweto where he lived with his wife and four children.
He moved to his hometown of Lillydale and opened a bottle store. His photograph was soon after censured and The World shut down, but Nzima was still the target of police harassment.
He was advised against pursuing any subversive activities in the village.
Over time, the police stopped paying attention to Nzima but he never again picked up his camera.
“There were no newspapers here. Take pictures for what ?” he said.
The picture has brought Nzima some fame—he has met former United States president Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela—but little money.
At the end of a long battle, he recovered the rights to the photograph in 1998 but it has been difficult to enforce them.
He is proud of his work and bitter about the lack of recognition from the government.
Nzima has kept his Pentax SL and may one day sell it off in an auction to raise funds for a museum that he hopes to open behind his house. - AFP
>via: http://mg.co.za/article/2006-06-15-how-one-photograph-changed-the-world