Erin Shafer and Sadie Musick

The Sharpeville Massacre• The Sharpeville Massacre started when a large number of blacks offered

themselves up for arrest for not having passbooks at the police stations in Sharpeville and other cities. This event took place on March 21, 1960.

The Sharpeville Massacre• The shooting started when the protesters got rowdy and started to throw rocks at

the police officers and their cars.

The Sharpeville Massacre• 69 people were killed and over 180 injured, including a large number of women

and children.

…is Sharpeville? Sharpeville is a township located outside of Soweto and close to Johannesburg.

The ANC is the African National Congress. They emerged as a anti-racism group in 1912 and were behind a lot of protests and sabotages. The PAC is the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, a break off group of the ANC. In March, 1960 they were responsible for the large number of people offering themselves up for arrest in Sharpeville and other cities.

The PAC gave out pamphlets encouraging people to skip work and present themselves, passbook-less, for arrest at the Sharpeville Police Station. They were also accused of cutting telephone lines and stopping bus drivers from taking people to work. So is the PAC to blame for the awful massacre? Or would it have happened anyway? That is yet to be discovered.

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PASS Laws were laws to make sure that blacks carried identification with them all the time in the form of passbooks. It also kept them an inferior race because they couldn’t enter any cities without having their identity checked. Like we are experiencing at school, you are thrown in jail if you don’t have your passbook. The Sharpeville Massacre was one of the many protests made against PASS laws.

Thirty one years later, Apartheid was abolished and March 21, the day of the Sharpeville Massacre became Human Rights Day. In this, it was marked as a significant part of the fall of Apartheid. May the lives that perished on March 21,1960 know they did not die in vain.

Information From:• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre• http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa-SharpevilleMassacre-b.htm

Pictures From:• blog.newsok.com• http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Pan-Africanist-Congress• http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/

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