Sharpeville
Sharpeville is one of the oldest of six townships in the Vaal Triangle.
It is named after John Lillie Sharpe who came to South Africa from Glasgow, Scotland, as secretary of Stewarts & Lloyds. Sharpe was elected to the Vereeniging Town Council in 1932 and held the position of mayor from 1934 to 1937.
The main reason for establishing Sharpeville was to relocate people from ‘Top location” to an area away from Vereeniging because it was felt black people were too close to Vereeniging for comfort. Unfortunately, because the project was only intended to relocate residents of “Top location”, and not to house additional people it did not ease the housing shortage. What was planned as a five-year resettlement project beginning in 1935, in fact, took 20 years. In 1941, 16 000 people lived in “Top Location”. The building of the houses only started in 1942.
A sub-economic housing scheme was used for Sharpeville. Water was free but 14 houses shared one tap and there were two bathing complexes in the township. By 1946 some of the houses had their own taps and bathrooms.
The township was first called “Sharpe Native Township” but it changed to Sharpeville in the 1950’s.
In a protest organised by the PAC on March 21, a group of between 5000 and 7000 people converged on the local police station, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books. During the ensuing confrontation 69 people were killed, and over 180 injured. It is debated whether the police attack was provoked.
Most of those killed and injured were women and children; the photographs taken at various places in Sharpeville at the time of the massacre show no sign of any weapon which might have caused the police to open fire on the protestors. The statements of Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar showed that the mere gathering of blacks was taken as a provocation: “The Native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence.”
On the other hand, the Times article describing the Sharpeville massacre stated that there was a desultory shooting in the morning of the day on which the massacre happened and that this later prompted crowds to stone the police vehicles, at which point the police fired on them.
The Times article also added that the young police officers, shocked by the carnage they had created, rushed to help casualties into the ambulances.
It might be concluded that the cause of the Sharpeville massacre was not only that the government was oppressive, but also because of the inexperience of the police officers present which caused them to lose control of the situation and start firing on the crowd.
Had the South African government taken the line that it was just a tragic accident that could have been avoided by putting properly trained police officers on the front line, it is quite possible that the international fallout from the incident would have been negligible.
Symbolically, Nelson Mandela signed the South African Constitution in Sharpeville on the 10th of December, 1996. He also opened “The Sharpeville Memorial” to honour the victims of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960.
On March 21 1960, Sharpeville saw the horrific deaths of 69 people who were shot during what was intended to be a peaceful anti-passbook demonstration. March 21 is now celebrated as Human Rights Day.