Today marks the 49th anniversary
of the Sharpeville Massacre. Never forget!!
March 21, 1960: A large crowd of Black South Africans assembled in front of the
Sharpeville police station to protest the pass laws imposed by apartheid. The
pass laws were statutes requiring all black men and women of South Africa to
carry a reference book with them when they travelled outside of their homes.
The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe, together with Nelson
Mandela's African National Congress (ANC), organized the protest for the
nation's blacks to join together to demonstrate peacefully against apartheid.
Rarely in South Africa before 1960 had so many black people demonstrated their
defiance of the laws in any way. The police were highly apprehensive, not
knowing what to expect. Suddenly, tensions were released: the police attacked,
the crowd pelted the policemen with stones, and the policemen retaliated with
gunfire.
In the end, sixty-nine protesters were killed and one hundred and eighty were
wounded (some shot while trying to flee) in what came to be known as The
Sharpeville Massacre.
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