Abstract
Those who have never seen a people angry will not easily understand what happened in Sharpeville on 3 September 1984. Phrases like ‘violent uprising’, ‘mindless anger’, ‘mob rule’, ‘a country exploding into flames’ convey with economy the events of that and succeeding days. No one can deny the truth in such descriptions, but like television pictures of burning shops, tear gas and corpses which light up an evening’s viewing, they mask more than they disclose. I have a particular interest in 3 September. It marks the day for which my brother was later to be taken from his wife and daughter, imprisoned, tried, sentenced to death, tortured and subsequently given clemency and a twenty-five-year gaol sentence. More than the death of my mother, 3 September brought the greatest rupture to my life.
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Notes
For the limited involvement of the UDF (the United Democratic Front, an ANC orientated umbrella grouping of anti-Apartheid organisations) in local issues and uprisings at this time see J. Seekings, ‘“Trailing Behind the Masses”: The United Democratic Front and Township Politics in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal Region, 1983–1984’, (1992) 18 JSAS 93–114.
E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope: A History of the Black Man’s Struggle for Freedom in South Africa, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964 91–2;
K. Luckhardt and B. Wall, Organize or Starve: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980 158–67.
R. Bethlehem, Economics in a Revolutionary Society: Sanctions and the Transformation of South Africa, Craighall, SA: Donker, 1988 118, based on National Manpower Commission data;
J. Seekings, Quiescence and the Transition to Confrontation: South African Townships, 1978–1984, Oxford University D.Phil, 1990 50, based on surveys of the University of South Africa’s Bureau of Market Research.
Star 8 December 1989, citing figures of the Human Rights Commission; W. Saffro, Special Report on Violence against Town Councillors and Policemen, Johannesburg: SAIRR, 1990 3.
M. Lipton, Apartheid and Capitalism, London: Wildwood House, 1986 120–1. The figures exclude the cost of transport to the mines and accommodation and food while there.
L. Thompson, The Unification of South Africa, 1902–1910, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960 118.
The proportion eventually rose to some 13 per cent; E. Roux, ‘Land and Agriculture in the Native Reserves’, in E. Hellmann (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1949 171–90, 172–7.
M. Murray, South Africa: Time of Agony, Time of Destiny, London: Verso, 1987 100.
For the early history of Sharpeville’s administration see M. Chaskalson, ‘The Road to Sharpeville’, in S. Clingman (ed.), Regions and Repertoires: Topics in South African Politics and Culture, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1991 116–46;
T. Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, London: Longman, 1983 206.
D. Mokonyane provides a unique oral history of South African bus boycotts in Lessons of Azikhwelwa: The Bus Boycott in South Africa, London: Nakong Ya Rena, 1979; T. Lodge, op cit 173.
Bishop A. Reeves, Shooting at Sharpeville: The Agony of South Africa, London: Gollancz, 1960 93. The advocate was Mr Sydney Kentridge.
The figures are those of Professor Natrass of Natal University, in J. Brewer, After Soweto: An Unfinished Journey, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986 21.
S. Gelb, ‘South Africa’s Economic Crisis: an overview’, in S. Gelb (ed.), South Africa’s Economic Crisis, Cape Town: David Philip, 1991 1–32, 1–6.
For the increasing of use of these phrases from the early 1970s see D. Posel, ‘The Language of Domination, 1978–1983’, in S. Marks and S. Trapido (eds), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South African, Harlow: Longman, 1987 419–43.
ss 32, 78(4–5) of the Republic of South African Constitution Act 110 of 1983, discussed by G. Carpenter, Introduction to South African Constitutional Law, Durban: Butterworths, 1987 343–4, 367–71.
J. Seekings, ‘Powerlessness and Politics: Quiescence and Protest in Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal Townships c.1973–1985’, (1990) 16 The Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries, London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies 84–98, 89; J. Seekings, op cit 87–90.
J. Seekings, ‘Political Mobilisation in the Black Townships of the Transvaal’, in P. Frankel, N. Pines and M. Swilling (eds), State, Resistance and Change in South Africa, London: Croom Helm, 1988 199–228, 207.
Some 800 000 workers and 400 000 students and schoolchildren in the Transvaal were estimated to have joined the stay-away. The strike brought together regional ANC aligned student and trade union leaders, but gained greatest support not where the ANC was strongest but where protest had already been most intense — the Vaal, East Rand and Atteridgeville. Labour Monitoring Group, ‘Report: The November Stay-away’, (1985) 10(6) SALB 74–100, 85–9; J. Seekings, Quiescence and the Transition to Confrontation: South African Townships, 1978–1984 281–2; RDM 6 November 1984.
Although approximately 84 per cent of Catholics in Azania were black, only one in four bishops and one in ten priests were African; K. Jubber, ‘Black and White Priests’, in A. Prior (ed.), Catholics in Apartheid Society, Cape Town: David Philip, 1982 124–40, 127.
Sebokeng was established in 1965. H. Mashabela, Townships of the PWV, Johannesburg: SAIRR, 1988 127.
D. Hansson, ‘Changes in counter-revolutionary state strategy in the decade 1979–1989’, in D. Hansson and D. Van Zyl Smit (eds), Towards Justice?: Crime and state control in South Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990 16–63, 40.
C. De Kock, ‘Revolutionary Violence in South Africa’, in D. Van Vuuren et al. (eds), South Africa: The Challenge of Reform, Pinetown: Owen Burgess Publishers, 1988 343–405, 343.
N. Chabani Manganyi and A. du Toit, ‘Editorial Introduction’, in N. Chabani Manganyi and A. du Toit (eds), Political Violence and the Struggle in South Africa, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990 1–28, 1.
Pinning down capital flight is notoriously difficult. These figures are taken from J. Leape, South Africa’s Foreign Debt And The Standstill, 1985–1990, London: LSE, 1991. For the preceding decade B. Kahn has estimated that some US$30 billion may have fled the country from 1970 and 1985, and that from 1974–84 a quarter of the country’s foreign debt went to finance capital flight.
B. Kahn, Capital Flight and Exchange Controls in South Africa, London: LSE, 1991. It has been estimated that the economy needs investment totalling R800bn by the year 2000 if it is to match population growth of 2.5 per cent a year.
J. Kane-Berman, Political Violence in South Africa, Johannesburg: SAIRR, 1993 43.
D. Posel, ‘A “Battlefield of Perceptions”: State Discourses on Political Violence, 1985–1988’, in J. Cock and L. Nathan (eds), War and Society: the Militarisation of South Africa, Cape Town: David Philip, 1989 262–74.
For details of this strategy during unrest in 1983 in the Natal townships of Lamontville and Chesterville see N. Steytler, ‘Policing Unrest: The Restoring of Authority’, 1989 AJ 234–61, and in the later 1980s J. Van Eck, Eyewitness to ‘Unrest’, Emmarentia: Taurus, 1989. On 19 March the senior deputy commissioner of police gave orders that those throwing petrol bombs ‘should be eliminated under all circumstances’. RDM 4 April 1985.
D. Foster, D. Davis, D. Sandler, Detention and Torture in South Africa, London: James Currey, 1987 83, 102;
the Human Rights Commission, ‘Violence in Detention’, in W. Hoffmann and B. McKendrick (eds), People and Violence in South Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990 405–35.
For example, Ciskei. N. Haysom, Mabangalala, Apartheid’s Private Army: The Rise of Right-wing Vigilantes in South Africa, London: CIIR, 1986 4.
J. Pauw, In The Heart of the Whore: The Story of Apartheid’s Death Squads, Johannesburg: Southern, 1991 118–20 provides details of hit squad evidence that mysteriously went missing while in police possession, of important witnesses the police did not interview, and of startling facts, such as the use of chemicals normally available only to the security forces, which they overlooked. After the elections in April 1994, some people were put on trial for death squad related activities. Police Colonel Eugene de Kock, for example, was convicted on six counts of murder (Reuters 27 August 1996).
Statistics are inevitably provisional, since death squads often presented their killings as the work of criminals. See also P. Laurence, Death Squads: Apartheid’s Secret Weapon, Johannesburg: Penguin, 1990;
Amnesty International, South Africa: State of Fear, London: Amnesty International, 1992.
Sunday Star 3 May 1987; D. Davis, ‘The Chief Justice and the Total Onslaught’, (1987) 3 SAJHR 229–33, 231.
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© 1998 Peter Parker and Joyce Mokhesi-Parker
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Parker, P., Mokhesi-Parker, J. (1998). White Rule and Black Resistance. In: In the Shadow of Sharpeville. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14617-8_2
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