SOUTH AFRICA 21 Mar 2010 South Africans mark 50th anniversary of Sharpeville killings 

Apartheid police gunned down unarmed protesters in the Transvaal township of Sharpeville on 21 Mar in 1960, killing 69 and injuring 180 others. The event popularly known as the Sharpeville Massacre is regarded as a watershed in the country's liberation struggle. The Pan Africanist Congress and African National Congress, both of which are in the news as houses divided, are likely to be leading the observances at Sharpeville and elsewhere on the 50th anniversary.

The anniversary is observed as Human Rights Day, formerly Sharpeville Day, in South Africa, and is a public holiday.

The 1952 Urban Areas Act tightened laws restricting black people from urban areas and making it a criminal offence to be without the pass. The protesters were refusing to carry the hated indentity passes. Former president Nelson Mandela was among the leaders who publicly burned his pass.

The Encyclopedia Britannica account notes that PAN, a splinter group of the ANC created in 1959, organized a countrywide demonstration for March 21, 1960, for the abolition of the pass laws. Participants were instructed to surrender their passes and invite arrest. Some 20,000 blacks gathered near a police station at Sharpeville, located about 30 miles south of Johannesburg. After the demonstrators began stoning police and their armored cars, the police opened fire on them with submachine guns. A state of emergency was declared in South Africa, more than 11,000 people were detained, and the PAC and ANC were outlawed.

An outraged international community turned against the Nationalist Party government, leading to the eventual end to apartheid and the country’s democratic elections on 27 Apr 1994. Following the dismantling of apartheid, South African President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which, on 10 Dec 1996, he signed the country’s new constitution into law.

The ANC has been in power since the 1994 election. It is not in the best of health. Internal disputes and now-ANC president Jacob Zuma's troubles with the law, first for an alleged rape and then on corruption charges, have soiled the reputation of the party. A leadership contest between supporters of former president Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's successor, and Zuma spawned a splinter party in 2008, the Congress Of the People. PAC also splintered in 2008 with the formation of the Pan Africanist Movement.

RELATED READING:

Sharpeville massacre (Encyclopedia Britannica)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1005023/Sharpeville-massacre