Remembrance & Memorials : The Sharpeville Massacre remembered

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Remembrance & Memorials : The Sharpeville Massacre remembered

4WardEverUK • 14 March 2025

source: 4WardEverUK Writers

published: 13 March 2025

Image Credit: YouTube

From all of our hundreds of Remembrance Calendar entries, we particularly feature certain cases that were of notable historical significance.

The Sharpeville Massacre

On 21 March 1960, 69 black Africans were killed and hundreds more were injured when police opened fire on peaceful protestors in the South African township of Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg.

Around 5,000 people had gathered at Sharpeville police station to protest against pass laws, which were designed by an apartheid government to restrict and control the movement of black Africans and force the segregation of South Africa along racial lines.

March 21, is marked as the International Day for the Elimination of Racism. We remember victims of the 1960, Sharpeville, Massacre, in South Africa. We hear the voices of survivors - of the peaceful protests, who stood up against racism.

Pass laws required all black men and women to carry identity documents with

them at all times; containing an employer’s signature to be renewed each

month, authorisation to be within particular white areas and certification of tax

payments. The law stated that anyone found in a public place without their

book would be arrested and detained for up to 30 days and those without an

employer’s signature could be herded off to “native reservations.”

The resistance against the carrying of the pass became an issue around which

the liberation movements mounted their campaigns.The African National

Congress(ANC) and a breakaway group from the ANC, the Pan Africanist

Congress (PAC), were both greatly motivated to end pass laws. They both

embarked on a feverish drive to prepare their members and the wider black

community for nationwide campaigns.