The Trial of the Sharpeville Accused

Abstract

His head smashed, his body burnt. Jacob Dlamini’s was a cruel death — no more cruel than the many other killings which have disfigured our land, but no less cruel for that. His death might have been anyone’s; in that sense it was an accident, a man brushed aside by the forces of history he disdained. Yet there was nothing accidental about the violence which engulfed him. However invisible to the outsider, however repressed in our hearts, violence has brooded over the Vaal; since 1960, since the massacre of our innocents, the sky however clear it seemed has always given anger a place to hide and wait.