Today, March 21, is Human Rights Day in South Africa, a
national holiday. The date is no coincidence. On 21 March 1960 Apartheid police
opened fire on a crowd gathered at Sharpeville (by the PAC) to protest apartheid
Pass Laws. 69 killed, scores wounded (although the generally agreed upon totals
are about 180 the reality is that since people knew that going to hospital
might result in their being identified as having been at Sharpeville, those who
could avoided any official institution, hospitals and clinics included) most of
those shot in the back and side, indicating that they were running away and
posed no danger whatsoever.
Sharpeville shocked the world and helped to accelerate
the nascent global anti-apartheid movement, even as the National Party
responded with draconian measures that ensured that any opposition to apartheid
whatsoever could land people in prison, in exile, or worse. Sharpeville was
almost inarguably the single most important event in bringing the realities of
apartheid to the world’s consciousness, and the country’s status as a polecat
of a nation was pretty well guaranteed from that date forward.
But that is not the only reason why 21 March is such an
important date in South African history. 25 years to the day after the events
of Sharpeville, 21 March 1981, another horrible atrocity happened the contours
of which are gruesomely familiar. On that day a funeral party was traveling
between townships of Uitenhage, an industrial city outside of Port Elizabeth
(some 130 or so km from where I sit in Grahamstown) known most for automobile
manufacturing (South Africa’s Detroit, in effect). Township funerals in the
1980s were most often political affairs and this one -- honoring the deaths of
young people killed in protests earlier in the month -- was no different. The
state had effectively made funeral processions of this sort illegal. Police
showed up on the scene, the funeral marchers -- defiant, but unarmed -- stood
their ground, and the police opened fire. Nearly a score lay dead, an
uncountable number wounded, shot, you guessed it, in the back and in the side.
It came to be known as the Langa Massacre.
There are active debates about the nature of “the human rights tradition” in South
Africa, and these are important arguments. But at the same time, if we recognize
that apartheid was itself a gross violation of civil rights and that the
anti-apartheid opposition was at least to some degree motivated by a desire for
human rights, broadly defined, it is perhaps easier to understand why this
date, 21 March, the anniversary of Sharpeville, the anniversary of Langa, is so
well chosen.
