The sources disagree because they have different provenances. Sources H and I are both official sources from the government. The government tried to play down what happened at Sharpeville and told the outside world that it was self defence. This view is reflected in both these sources when Colonel Pienaar and Dr Verwoerd talk about ‘hordes’ of ’20,000 people’. However, Source F is from a completely different provenance. Ambrose Reeves was the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg and gathered the evidence for his statement by interviewing witnesses, many of whom had been shot at. Therefore, they would not support the view of self defence as they had been in the crowd and knew they weren’t violent. These witnesses saw first hand what happened which is why they disagree with the ‘polished’ view of events which the government gave out in Sources H and I.
Another reason why the sources disagree is because the people who wrote them have different attitudes to apartheid. The Nationalist Party government had brought apartheid to South Africa and so supported it. The protestors were defying apartheid laws by burning their pass books. The government would not like this so support the view of the police in their sources. However, Anglican Churches in South Africa were against apartheid and so was Ambrose Reeves. Therefore, he would support the demonstrators for protesting against the apartheid laws, and comes from a religious, Christian stance. This comes across in Source F as he believes the police were wrong in shooting so many people, especially in the back.
The sources also disagree because the aims of the people who wrote these sources are very different. The government were using Sources H and I to send a message to the outside world that what happened at Sharpeville was self defence. However, Ambrose Reeves was using the church’s high international profile to bring publicity to apartheid in South Africa and to show the world why it should be stopped. Therefore, Reeves made his statement support the view of a massacre.
In conclusion, the main reason why Source H and I disagree with Source F is because they come from completely different provenances, one which supports apartheid and one which is against it. Sources H and I are from the government who supported apartheid and believed that blacks were inferior to whites. They thought that blacks were incapable of holding peaceful protests and felt they should not have been demonstrating at all. This view comes across in these two sources, but not in Source F. Reeves thought that all races were equal, so did not let black inferiority cloud his judgement and the statement that he made.