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Salient. Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 41 No. 4. March 20 1978

Sharpeville Commemorative Article

page 12

Sharpeville [unclear: Commemorative] Article

18 years ago, 69 Black demonstrators were shot dead by trigger happy police outside Sharpville. The demonstrators were all unarmed, and involved in a nonviolent protest against the pass laws. This marked the end of non-violent protest in South Africa. After Sharpeville, it was decided that change could only be achieved through the violent overthrow of the minority white regime.

Tomorrow, Tuesday March 21, is the anniversary of these shootings. It must bring our attention to the ever worsening situation in South Africa and also remind us of the tragic sequel to Sharpeville. This was the uprising in Soweto, in June 1976, when 176 blacks (many of them children) were killed by the South African police.

The riots and consequent killings in Soweto were the natural consequence of apartheid. The school students killed in Soweto had been born around the time of Sharpeville and were the first products of post-Sharpeville apartheid, the first generation of black South Africans to be educated wholly under the Bantu Education Act.

When the Soweto riots broke out, they were initially in protest at the Bantu Education Act. This Act was designed to perpetuate Black subservience, as put by Dr. Verwoerd in 1954:

"The Bantu must be guided to serve his own community in all respects. There is no place for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. . . Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of European society in which he was not allowed to graze."

The focus of the demonstrations quickly spread from protests at the Act to general opposition to the oppressive system of apartheid. Over the six to eight months after Soweto in which protests continued, more than 500 people were killed, more than 6000 were arrested and of those at least 500 are still being held without trial.

Today, 18 years after Sharpeville and nearly two years after Soweto, the Black people of South Africa are still oppressed and persecuted—they are also still fighting.

Last year, the world was shocked at the death in detention of Steve Biko, a leader of the South African Black Consciousness movement. In South Africa mass meetings were held to protest his death, despite a ban by the S.A. Government.

At memorial services in Soweto a 15 year old boy was shot and killed and a teenage girl wounded. Shortly after Steve Biko's death, the South African Government called a snap election to be held Nov. 30. They followed this call with a crackdown on political dissenters. On October 19 seventeen black organisations, two black newspapers, one white organisation, one newspaper editor and six whites were banned. The editor of a banned newspaper, Donald Woods, was detained and arrested along with seventy blacks.

This made it quite clear that in calling the elections. Vorster's government was seeking a mandate from the country's white electorate (the blacks, of course, don't have a vote) to intensify the repression. They won the election with an increased majority.

Since then, the S.A. Government has kept its word and the apartheid regime has become increasingly repressive. Hundreds of detainees are still being held without trial; four people have died in detention since the death of Steve Biko, three of them under 20 years old; political prisoners, many of them with life sentences, have lost the right to study; the school boycotts begun at Soweto have continued with 77,000 students boycotting end of year exams; 626 people were arrested on Nov. 10th in the township of Atteridgeville outside Pretoria; clashes between black students and police are still regular, likewise shootings; the list goes on.

In maintaining a policy of separate development, seeking a mandate from its white electorate through elections and banning all the major open organisations of the black people, the South African Government has further cut itself off from any chance of a 'peaceful solution' and made no concessions to international pressure.

Many New Zealanders say that the problems of the Blacks in South Africa should be left for them to sort out themselves. In the words of Donald Woods, "I had gone along with the belief that South African politics should be left for South Africa to sort out. But I am now convinced that these outrages are the responsibility of people everywhere."

Lamorna Rogers