South Africa will pause Tuesday to mark the anniversary of a massacre that highlighted the horror of apartheid and led the republic to enshrine human rights.
Human Rights Day, a public holiday, commemorates the events of March 21, 1960, when the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a political party that had formed a year earlier as a breakaway from the African National Congress (ANC), called on members to leave at home the passbooks the apartheid government used to control the movement of black, Indian and coloured people in urban areas, and offer themselves for arrest in an act of mass resistance.
In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela, the ANC leader whom the government imprisoned for 27 years and who later became South Africa’s first democratically elected president, describes the demonstration in Sharpeville, a township located about 35 miles south of Johannesburg.
“In the early afternoon, a crowd of several thousand surrounded the police station. The demonstrators were controlled and unarmed. The police force of seventy-five was greatly outnumbered and panicky. No one heard warning shots or an order to shoot, but suddenly, the police opened fire on the crowed and continued to shoot as the demonstrators turned and ran in fear. When the area had cleared, sixty-nine Africans lay dead, most of them shot in the back as they were fleeing. All told, more than seven hundred shorts had been fired into the crowd, wounding more than four hundred people, including dozens of women and children. It was a massacre, and the next day press photos displayed the savagery on front pages around the world.”
The atrocity led the United Nations Security Council, for the first time, to urge the government of South Africa to promote racial equality, and began an exodus of capital from the country. The killings also hardened the resolve of Mandela and other leaders, who went on to advocate for action aimed at disrupting the apartheid state.
After Mandela became president, the country officially declared the day a public holiday and adopted a bill of rights that guarantees equality and human dignity.
President Jacob Zuma is expected to travel on Tuesday to the Eastern Cape province, where he will honor Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid leader who died 40 years ago, at the age of 30, in a Pretoria prison after being tortured by white officers of the government’s security service.
The highlight of the 2017 Human Rights Day commemoration will be honouring of Black Consciousness leader Mr Bantu Steve Biko
— South African Government (@GovernmentZA) March 20, 2017
The PAC will host a march to commemorate the massacre at Sharpeville. “This is the most important day of our time as we commemorate the lives of [the] Sharpeville 69 and the fight against pass laws,” Tshego Mosala, the group’s spokesperson, told the Citizen newspaper.