The Sharpeville Crisis and the Defeat of Revolution

Abstract

On 21 March 1960 a crowd of some 10,000 Africans from the Sharpeville location (near Vereeniging, Transvaal) gathered in a noisy demonstration, organised by the PAC, against the South African pass laws. The local detachment of white police panicked and fired into the crowd. When their volleys ceased 67 Africans lay dead and 186 were injured. South Africa’s greatest crisis since the Rand revolt of 1922 had begun. The country was gripped by a spreading wave of African strikes, riots and demonstrations. There was more shooting, more deaths. Anyone who lived through the period will not forget the great crowds of stick-waving Africans billowing forth from the locations, like long swarms of angry hornets; the smoke spiralling up from the overturned and burning buses; the Saracen armoured cars rumbling menacingly towards the sound of tumult; the fear and the wild reports, the sheer anger and sheer confusion on all sides. Everyone — black or white — had their own ‘story’ of Sharpeville and the Emergency which followed.