The Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960, when police opened fire on a crowd of people who had assembled outside the police station in the township of Sharpeville in the then Transvaal Province of the then Union of South Africa to protest against the pass laws. A crowd of approximately 5,000 people gathered in Sharpeville that day in response to the call made by the Pan-Africanist Congress to leave their pass-books at home and to demand that the police arrest them for contravening the pass laws. The protestors were told that they would be addressed by a government official and they waited outside the police station as more police officers arrived, including senior members of the notorious Security Branch. At 1.30pm, without issuing a warning, the police fired 1,344 rounds into the crowd. For more than fifty years the number of people killed and injured has been based on the police record, which included 249 victims in total, including 29 children, with 69 people killed and 180 injured. More recent research has shown that at least 91 people were killed at Sharpeville and at least 238 people were wounded. Many people were shot in the back as they fled from the police.
Sharpeville is a township situated between two large industrial cities, Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging, in southern Gauteng, South Africa. Sharpeville is one of the oldest of six townships in the Vaal Triangle. It was named after John Lillie Sharpe who came to South Africa from Glasgow, Scotland, as secretary of Stewarts & Lloyds. Sharpe was elected to the Vereeniging City Council in 1932 and held the position of mayor from 1934 to 1937.
Victoria Nonyamezelo Mxenge was a South African anti-apartheid activist; she was trained as a nurse and midwife, and later began practising law.
Uitenhage, officially renamed Kariega, is a South African town in the Eastern Cape Province. It is well known for the Volkswagen factory located there, which is the biggest car factory on the African continent. Along with the city of Port Elizabeth and the small town of Despatch, it forms the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.
The following lists events that happened during 1985 in South Africa.
The Soweto uprising, also known as the Soweto riots, was a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa during apartheid that began on the morning of 16 June 1976.
Langa is a township in Cape Town, South Africa. Its name in Xhosa means "sun". The township was initially built in phases before being formally opened in 1927. It was developed as a result of South Africa's 1923 Urban Areas Act, which was designed to force Africans to move from their homes into segregated locations. Similar to Nyanga, Langa is one of the many areas in South Africa that were designated for Black Africans before the apartheid era. It is the oldest of such suburbs in Cape Town and was the location of much resistance to apartheid.
Gugulethu is a township in Western Cape, South Africa and is around 20km from Cape Town. Its name is a contraction of igugu lethu, which is Xhosa for our pride / our hope. The township was established along with Nyanga in the 1960s.
Molly Bellhouse Blackburn OLS was a South African anti-apartheid activist, political activist, civil rights campaigner, and politician.
Frank Kennan Dutton SCOB was a South African police officer. The dominant theme in his career was the investigation and prosecution of people guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during South Africa's apartheid era. Dutton's work took place in South Africa as well as abroad. In South Africa, he helped expose the apartheid military's destabilization machinery, and later headed the Scorpions, the country's elite police force. He also worked with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa originated from several independent sectors of South African society and took forms ranging from social movements and passive resistance to guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling National Party (NP) government, coupled with South Africa's growing international isolation and economic sanctions, were instrumental in leading to negotiations to end apartheid, which began formally in 1990 and ended with South Africa's first multiracial elections under a universal franchise in 1994.
This article covers the history of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, once a South African liberation movement and now a minor political party.
Duncan Village is a township in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The township is located about five kilometres away from the East London central business district (CBD). Duncan Village is divided into six wards, with each headed by a ward councillor. There are no clear divisions between the informal and formal parts of the township since most shacks are planted on the open spaces within formal houses.
Dr. Maitshwe Nchuape Aubrey Mokoape was a South African anti-apartheid activist and a leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress and Black Consciousness Movement. He was first arrested and detained at the age of 15. He studied and worked alongside political anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. In post-apartheid South Africa, Mokoape became a physician.
The Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) was a political lobby group formed in 1954. At FEDSAW's inaugural conference, a Women's Charter was adopted. Its founding was spear-headed by Lillian Ngoyi.
KwaNobuhle is the largest township on the outskirts of Uitenhage (Kariega) in the Eastern Cape province of the Republic of South Africa. It was formed during the time of Forced Removals, officially opened in 1967.
On 18 July 1983, Mdantsane and East London communities embarked on a bus boycott to protest an unannounced five cent increase in bus fares. The residents abandoned the partly Ciskei government-owned Ciskei Transport Corporation (CTC) buses for taxis and trains. On 4 August 1983, the Ciskei police tried to prevent residents from taking the train at Egerton train station in Mdantsane. After hesitating, the crowd advanced a few paces. However, as the police drew their guns, the people stopped. Without warning, the police fired into the crowd killing 11 and injuring 36 commuters, leading to what is now known as the Egerton railway station bus boycott massacre, the Mdantsane bus boycott massacre, the Egerton massacre, and similar terms.
The Cradock Four were a group of four anti-Apartheid activists who were abducted and murdered by South African security police in June 1985, named as such as all four were from the town of Cradock, Eastern Cape. The South African apartheid government denied that they had ordered the killings, but a document leaked to the press years later resulted in the removal of several police officers. At the second inquest, a judge ruled that the "security forces" were responsible, but named no one individual.
On 17 November 1985, 2000 residents from Mlungisi township in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, gathered in Nonzwakazi Methodist Church to hear back from the Local Residents Association, who, in early November, had met with the Department of Education and Training, the Queenstown municipality, the Eastern Cape Development Board, and the Queenstown Chamber of Commerce to discuss the end of the consumer boycott. The meeting was short-lived as members of the Queenstown branch of the South African Police stormed into the meeting and opened fire on the residents. In the ensuing conflict between police and residents, 14 people were shot dead and 22 were injured. This incident is known as the 1985 Queenstown Massacre.
The Vaal uprising was a period of popular revolt in black townships in apartheid South Africa, beginning in the Vaal Triangle on 3 September 1984. Sometimes known as the township revolt and driven both by local grievances and by opposition to apartheid, the uprising lasted two years and affected most regions of the country. The government of P. W. Botha did not succeed in curbing the violence until after it imposed a national state of emergency in June 1986.
