Sharpeville Day – a meditation on human rights

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By tonymac04

Introduction - the story of the "pass" system

It is the end of another Sharpeville Day – now known in South Africa as Human Rights Day – and my thoughts are full of
issues around human rights.
For those who maybe don't know about this day and its significance in South Africa a short history lesson will follow.
To understand Sharpeville and what happened there 49 years ago to the day (21 March 1960), one needs to understand the
so-called “pass” system which existed in various forms for more than 200 years in South Africa. Under this system any
Black male (until 1959, when the provisions of the so-called “pass laws” were extended to women also) had to carry a
“pass” which was like an internal passport. This pass was originally supposed to prevent “vagrants” from “invading” white
areas, but by the time of Union in 1910, when the four colonies of the Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal and the Cape
Province were united, these laws were directed more at simply keeping all blacks out of so-called “white areas.”
This purpose was clearly stated by the Transvaal Local Government Commission in 1921: “the native (i.e. Black person)
should only be allowed to enter the urban areas, which are essentially the white man's creation, when he is willing to enter
and to minister to the needs of the white man and should depart therefrom when he ceases so to minister.” I kid you not –
those are the very words of the report!
The 1937 Native Laws Amendment Act ratified this kind of mentality and was designed to ensure that there were no
“surplus natives” in the urban areas by restricting the inward flow of Blacks and promoting an outward flow of Blacks back
to their supposed “homelands.”
These provisions were further tightened by the Nationalist Party government after the 1948 elections, specifically in the
Urban Areas Act of 1952 which restricted the rights of Blacks to be in urban areas and made not carrying the pass a criminal
offence. Blacks had to carry the pass with them at all times and the time and efforts of the police were largely devoted to
checking that the passes were being carried.
Among Blacks the pass (or as it would later be called, “reference book”) was known as then “dompas” or literally “stupid
pass”, though I think the word might also have come from the polices' frequent, shouted question: “Waars jou verdomde
pas? (where's your damned pass?)”
There were many stories about the utter stupidity of these laws and their application. My father used to tell of a Black
minister of religion in East London who had hung his jacket, with his “dompas” in its pocket, on his garden fence while
digging a flower bed just outside the fence. The police arrived and demanded his pass. He told them it was in his jacket and
if they would give him a moment he would fetch it. They refused to let him fetch, threw him in their paddy-wagon, took him
downtown and booked him for not carrying his pass.
As Black demands for a more equitable place in South African society the pass laws became a focus of resistance, and this
trend took on increased momentum after the victory of the Nationalist Party and their policy of apartheid in 1948.
By the end of the 50s pass law infringements had reached levels of hundreds of thousands annually, at great cost in human
dignity.

See all 6
 photos
Policemen examine passes

Sharpeville - what happened Photos of the massacre

In early 1960 the democratic formations of the African National Congress
(ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) began, in alliance with a number
of other organisations, a mass campaign against the pass laws. People were
encouraged to burn their passes and court arrest. Thousands of passes were
burnt and thousands arrested. Tensions in the country began to mount.
From his home in Groutville, kwaZulu-Natal, the president of the ANC Albert
Lutuli warned that Black resentment was very high.
Nevertheless the leaders of the campaign insisted on non-violence, and were
largely successful in keeping the campaign non-violent.
On the morning of 21 March people in the model township of Sharpeville began
gathering outside the police station. By early afternoon the 75 policemen inside
the police station felt threatened by the unarmed crowd and fired some 700
rounds into the crowd, killing 69 of them and wounding another almost 200.
Most of the dead were shot in the back.
Sharpeville instantly became a symbol of the cruelty, the inhumanness of the
apartheid regime. And of the denial of human rights implicit in the pass laws
and indeed the whole apparatus of apartheid.
No wonder that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, when he was the first President of
the newly democratic South Africa, signed the country's new constitution into
law in Sharpeville. Mandela had been one of the leaders who had publicly
burned his pass back in 1960.
President Mandela signs into law the constitution of the new democratic South
Africa

Ironies and ambiguities of

Human Rights
It seems that human rights are fraught with ironies and ambiguities.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), to the drafting of which
former South African Prime Minister General Jan Smuts made a great
contribution, was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the
United Nations on 10 December 1948, the very year in which the Nationalist
Party took power in South Africa.
The Nationalist Party Government never signed the Declaration, which was
only signed by South Africa after the democratic elections of 1994.
The preamble to this great document states, inter alia, that “disregard and
contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have
outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human
beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and
want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.”
Yet in the years since 1948 the world has seen more barbarous acts, more
denials of freedom of speech and belief, and these continue to plague us all.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a
spirit of brotherhood.” - Article One of the UDHR.
It seems to me that we only take cognisance of this when there is some
massive infringement of these rights – in Rwanda, in Tibet, in China, in El
Salvador, in Serbia, in Burma, in so many other places.
Would it not be better for us all to take responsibility for protecting the rights of all – starting from the rights of our family
members, our neighbours, our countries?
These rights are what make a human life possible, a life of enjoyment, of peace and fulfilment, as against a life of
deprivation, and it will take a firm commitment from each of us to make them come alive and be what they were intended to
be – a way of life for all, a charter for every human being, in whatever circumstances they might be.
South Africa was for so long a place where human rights were disregarded and treated with contempt. We are struggling as
a nation to overcome that legacy and make human rights real. Its a long and difficult struggle, but is in the end the only
struggle worth pursuing.