Sharpeville Massacre and the 1976 Soweto Uprising marked shifts, either minute and latent or immediate and overt, in foreign policy towards the Pretoria regime. Also, they were exploited off from their land. However, little of the literature focuses on background explanations as to how developments within Sharpeville led to the confrontation between police and anti-pass demonstrators on that fateful day. It was named after John Lillie Sharpe who came to South Africa from Glasgow, Scotland, as secretary of Stewarts & Lloyds. It was one of the first and most violent demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa. Thousands of workers then went on strike, and in Cape…, …against apartheid took place in Sharpeville on March 21, 1960; the police response to the protesters’ actions was to open fire, killing about 69 Black Africans and wounding many more. • Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Some white…. A state of emergency was declared in South Africa, more than 11,000 people were detained, and the PAC and ANC were outlawed. She is pushing for the township to be recognised as a national heritage site, for an apology from the state for what happened here and, as in many other poor areas in South Africa, for delivery of better infrastructure … Related Documents. Effects Of Discrimination In South Africa. Official figures counted 69 dead and about 50 wounded, though further analysis has raised the human toll to at least 200 wounded, “mowed down” by police who fired into a crowd of about 4,000 unarmed protesters. The Sharpeville Massacre. Following the Sharpeville massacre, a number of black political movements were banned by the Nationalist government, but the resistance movement continued to operate underground. This proved to be the first of many international political steps to end apartheid, thus cementing the massacre’s place as a . It can be considered the beginning of the international struggle to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa. Godfrey Rubens via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The power of an event. Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. After some demonstrators, according to police, began stoning police officers and their armoured cars, the officers opened fire on them with submachine guns. After a day of demonstrations against pass laws, a crowd of about 7,000 protesters went to the police station. They did not hesitate to burn their reference books, and police eventually open fired on the crowd. Your IP: 162.243.194.98 What Caused a Student Uprising in Soweto in 1976? 66, THE 24TH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, pp. Omissions? In 1960 it was the site of one of the earliest and most violent demonstrations against apartheid . Email Address Sign … Reports of the incident helped focus international criticism on South Africa’s apartheid policy. Project made by Allison Hickman. In my own research on international human rights law, I looked to complexity theory, a theory developed in the natural sciences to make sense of the ways that patterns of behaviour emerge and change, to understand the way that international human rights law had developed and evolved. … Cold War politics, the American Civil Rights Movement, UN pressure, and armed resistance in South Africa contributed to how apartheid and US governments interacted with one another. After a day of... South … During the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 a number of blacks came together outside a police station to protest the Pass Law. Soon after the ANC was outlawed, and this event signalled the end of non-violence movements. Following the dismantling of apartheid, South African President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which, on December 10, 1996, he signed into law the country’s new constitution. “As the massacre that happened at Sharpeville in 1960 happened in response to a call from PAC President Mr Robert Sobukwe that had broken away from the ANC it is thought that the lack of attention to the graves may be a symptom of the ANC’s discrimination against anyone who is not considered ANC. Addressing the UN four years after the Sharpeville massacre, Argentinean-born Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara said: “We speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. By Imran Garda. It also came to symbolize that struggle. In total 67 demonstrators were killed. Sharpeville massacre, (March 21, 1960), incident in the Black township of Sharpeville, near Vereeniging, South Africa, in which police fired on a crowd of Black people, killing or wounding some 250 of them. People protesting racial segregation fell victim to the violence. Sharpeville is a township near Vereeniging, in the Gauteng province of South Africa . Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Learn Something New Every Day. It was one of the first and most violent demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa. Some of the events, laws and Government issues that caused the uprising in Sharpeville. One of the insights was that international law does not change, unless there is some trigger for countries to change their behaviour. The Sharpeville Massacre took place in a South Africa that denied even basic democratic rights and freedoms to those considered as "non-white" under an apartheid (racial segregation and discrimination) system. The Sharpeville Massacre, which occurred on March 21, 1960, in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa, was the incident that to that point resulted in the deaths of the largest number of South Africans in a protest against apartheid.