Akashma Online News

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Akashma Online News
Martin Meredith works of South Africa’s Apartheid era, as he put it in his book “In the Name of the Apartheid,” published in 1988. His bibliography is comprised of more than 250 references that he used to compile his book. But he gives special mention in the Bibliography section to the Anglo-Boer war, Pakenham, On the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism, Adam and Giliomee, de Klehompson, van Benson, Biko, Karis, and Carter, Lodge, Mandela, Walshe; on Platzky and Walker, Surplus People Project; on economic change, Lipton. Several personal accounts also stand out. They include Bernstein, Carson, Finnegan, First, Joseph, Lelyweld, Winnie Mandela, Modisane, Mphahlele, and Woords.

I mention his special list because you might want to go on a historical quest and read for yourself the works of the people who were involved in the research and compilation of events of that era outside of the Official Story.

“As the tentacles of apartheid penetrated every level of African society, African protests against the government steadily mounted. In rural areas, opposition to apartheid measures like the Bantu Authorities Act flared into open revolt.”

There was prolonged violence in the Hurutshe Reserve in the western Transvaal, in Sekhukhuneland, and Pondoland. Chiefs and Councillors resisting government authority were deposed and deported. Armored units and aircraft had to be deployed to crush the Pondoland revolt.

When the government decided to compel African women to carry reference books from 1956, there were protest marches in almost every major town.”
In 1948, Afrikaner Nationalists came to power bringing their version of racial rule known as Apartheid, and proceeded to construct the most elaborated racial edifice the world had ever seen.
In the name of apartheid, millions of people were uprooted from their homes; millions more were denied basic rights. In their attempts to resist apartheid, blacks tried public protests, petitions, passive resistance, boycotts, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and urban insurrection. At every event, they were met with repression, oppression, incarceration, deportation, and death.
To get to the Sharpeville Massacre we need to understand what was the goal of the protests of March 21, 1960.

The pass law of South Africa was an old tactic used by black slave owners to control the movements of their slaves.
The first time Pass documents were used to restrict the movement of non-European South Africans was in the early 1800’s. However, slaves at the Cape had been forced to carry Passes since 1709. Farmers at the Cape ran short of labor during the first British occupation of the southern tip of Africa in 1795, with its subsequent abolition of slavery in 1808. Until that time Dutch farmers employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) supplied fresh food to passing ships using slave labor to stock up the refreshment station. They could still sell slaves within the colony but were prohibited from importing new slaves. The settlers and government turned to the indigenous Khoikhoi people to fill the labor gap. Pass Laws in South Africa.

Sharperville was a town built as a black suburb for the steel manufacturing center of Vereeniging, fifty miles south of Johannesburg. In the times of apartheid, towns of this kind were built to house the workers of white businesses. Usually, they will be only workers, no families. But eventually, they outgrew the original plan and they became full towns, when getting too close to the white towns, they were forcefully out-rooted and relocated to faraway lands.

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….
Then without warning the police opened fire.
In the aftermath, 69 peaceful protesters were killed, and 180 were injured mostly in the back.
https://humanrights.ca/story/sharpeville-massacre