Monday March 21 1960, when at least 69 Africans were killed by police during a demonstration in Sharpeville, not far from Johannesburg, against the hated pass laws, changed forever the perception of apartheid South Africa. There had been previous killings, but none had anywhere near the same impact, either inside the country or in the outside world.
The massacre happened only two months after Harold Macmillan told a hostile, whites-only parliament during a visit that a “wind of change is blowing through this continent”. In a number of countries, including Britain, anti-apartheid groups were gearing up for boycott campaigns and some Labour councils, including the one I was on, had already authorised such action.
Tom Lodge explains the circumstances and why it was that the Pan-Africanist Congress organised the town’s protest and demonstration on that day. In so doing, he provides the background and profiles the leading personalities of this breakaway from the main opposition, the African National Congress.
The PAC, or Africanists as they tended to be called, were wary of collaborating with whites, unlike the ANC, and put the emphasis on Africans alone bringing about the liberation of their country. In fact, as Lodge shows, the PAC were willing in practice to work with some whites but this tended to cause confusion among some of their members. The organisation had, from the start, a strong authoritarian style of leadership where dissent was not encouraged or particularly tolerated.
But, for the ANC itself, the massacre at Sharpeville was to lead to a major change of policy; it had pursued a policy of non-violence up to then, in common with its close ally, the Communist Party.
Chief Albert Luthuli, the president of the ANC and an active Christian, was opposed to the use of violence and, as the author explains, believed a change would occur as a result of moral appeals to the whites. The next generation of senior figures, such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, saw things differently and, after Sharpeville, won the argument for armed force to be used. However, the ANC and the broader alliances and front groups that were to emerge before 1990 always put politics to the fore, and civilian casualties and certainly indiscriminate terrorism were actively discouraged. As for the PAC, the author describes the disarray, and constant falling out, and even suspected rival killings in exile which occurred over time. Fortunately for South Africa, this did not happen to the ANC.
Would things have developed much the same without the police shooting unarmed demonstrators on that day more than half a century ago? This is what Lodge explores and he does so with an impressive understanding of that historical period for South Africa and, indeed, for the international community.
