60 years ago, on 21st March 1960, the world changed forever. It was no longer possible to believe the avuncular Dr Verwoerd when he asserted that black people benefitted from apartheid, and that it was a policy of good neighbourliness. It was the day on which the world became aware of the evil that was apartheid. It was the day on which apartheid became an issue for the international community. It was the day on which the worldwide campaign against apartheid was born.
It was the day on which the women of Sharpeville decided to hold a demonstration against the extension of the pass laws to women. It was a demonstration called by the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) which had broken away from the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest liberation movement in Africa because it disagreed with the non-racialism of that organisation. Hundreds of people assembled in Sharpeville and marched to the police station in order to burn their passes. The police commandant panicked and ordered his men to open fire. They did. 68 people were killed and hundreds were wounded. One person died the following day. South Africa was plunged into crisis. Hundreds of people publicly burned their passes, including Chief Albert Luthuli, the President-General of the ANC, and Nelson Mandela. There was a huge demonstration in Cape Town, led by Philip Kgosana. He and the other leaders were persuaded to enter a building to negotiate with the apartheid authorities. They were arrested. The government announced the banning of the ANC, the PAC and many other organisations. There were mass arrests. The clampdown however did not achieve its purpose. Although some organisations, like the South African Liberal Party, dissolved themselves, the ANC and the PAC went underground.
The Sharpeville Massacre set off the long trail of events that led to the demise of apartheid – the launch of the armed struggle, the Rivonia Trial, the rise of Black Consciousness, the Soweto uprising, the township uprisings in the 1980s, the release of Mandela and eventually the 1994 election. It also set off the international campaign against apartheid. In 1962, South Africa left the Commonwealth rather than be expelled and declared itself a Republic. The United Nations imposed an arms embargo. The cultural and sporting boycotts were imposed, and were enforced by mass protests But, it did more than concentrate minds on the evils of apartheid. It was obvious that apartheid was wrong because racism was wrong This became even more obvious when Rhodesia issued its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and the Monday Club, the right wing of the Conservative Party, campaigned in support of the illegal Smith regime because they were “our kith and kin”. Racism was a defining feature of the Conservative right wing and groups even further to the right. It had to be challenged which it was in the UK through organisations like the Anti-Nazi League and Rock against Racism. Sharpeville was such a defining moment in international politics that the UN declared 21st March to be the International Day Against Racism.
Sharpeville became a byword for the cruelty and viciousness of the racist project. It was one of the defining moments in the history of the later part of the C20th, like the Bridge at Selma or the picture of the naked girl, covered in napalm, running away. The Sharpeville Massacre was what convinced thousands and thousands of people in my generation to “take up the spear” against apartheid and to stick with the campaign, through thick and thin, until on 10th May 1994 we saw Nelson Mandela, the first democratically-elected President of South Africa, take the oath of office.
That however was not the end of the struggle. The ANC had been elected on the basis that it would implement the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). It was a programme that sought to distribute some resources to the poorest in society. It was not that radical, but it still attracted the ire of international capital and the world financial institutions.
Many things have been achieved. Children, other than the whites, are now inoculated against typhoid, diphtheria, tuberculosis, polio and other killer diseases. This was not the case under apartheid. The infant mortality rate has plummeted. There are street lights and pavements in many of the townships. We, in the West, are so used to them that we forget that they make our surroundings safe. People have access to electricity. There are many complaints about power-shedding but that is because people have got used to having it, when they didn’t under apartheid. This is not to defend power-shedding because people should be able to have access to electricity 24 hours of the day. Power-shedding did not happen under apartheid because most of the population had no electricity. These kinds of things may sound unimportant, but they are transforming lives.
The odious debt, that is debt incurred by any government to oppress its own people, inherited by the new governments of Namibia and South Africa was not revoked as it should have been under international law. As has been shown in the recent ACTSA report, The Money Drain (https://actsa.org/campaigns/the-money-drain/), the banks continued to extract money from southern Africa by illegal, immoral and unjust methods.
The mining companies had to be taken to court, by ACTSA and others, to secure compensation for miners who had contracted asbestosis, mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis and silicosis because apartheid laws did not require them to be supplied with basic safety equipment. Cape PLC declared itself bankrupt in an attempt not to pay such compensation. It did not work. This has been a long struggle to secure a victory, and ACTSA has been in the lead.
Let us be clear. There are many things that are wrong in South Africa. The creaming off of resources into the pockets of private individuals has to be stopped. The belief that “It is my turn to eat” justifies the outright theft of money from the state coffers is quite simply criminal. It means that money that could have been spent on infrastructure, on health and education, has been stolen. The greatest danger to stability and peace in South Africa is, in my view, the latent, if not blatant, racism of those who refuse that they did anything wrong – that apartheid was not a crime against humanity. It was.
If we are to honour the women and men who were murdered at Sharpeville, most of them shot in the back as they were running away from the police, then we need to help build the Rainbow Nation. Now is not the time to turn our backs on our friends and say “You are on your own”. We have put our hand to the plough, and much of the field has still to be tilled.
Let us complete the task.
David Kenvyn
(Vice-chair of the Trustees of ACTSA. The views expressed are my own)
davidkenvyn 
