The ANC decided to protest against this in march 1960, but the PAC acted first. They wanted all the blacks to leave their PassBooks at home and admit to the local authority that they had broken the law. The prisons were not big enough for every one; they wouldn’t have space for all the law- breakers.
There was no violence intended for the protest, planned on the 21st March 1960, which was located at the Black town of Sharpeville. It was a quiet place, 35 miles from the city of Johannesburg.
There are several versions of the Events of that day which is why it has never gone to court and nobody has been prosecuted.
What is known is that, at dawn local leaders went from door-to-door, handing out leaflets requesting of the people not to go to work that day.
Some say this was not done peacefully and that the blacks were all to blame. The protest got bigger and they went off to the police station to protest. Several sources say that it was a happy crowd and that no illegal weapons of any kind were carried, and that it was the government’s fault. For example, a Sharpeville resident called Mahabane claimed that when he was standing at his door, two white police men came and asked him for water, when he returned with the water they said to him that the shooting was going to start at 2 o’clock. But others such as Humphrey Tyler, a reporter for the Drum magazine wrote that the police said they ‘were in desperate danger because the crowd was stoning them.’ They were also armed with ‘ferocious weapons.’ Although Tyler does go on to say that he studied the photos carefully and that there was no evidence of them doing this. Also another source also tells us that the Africans began stoning police vehicles and described them as a mob. (The Times British Newspaper, March 22nd 1960) This, however may be propaganda, because it does not say how or where they got this information from.
When they got to the police station the police were already at the door, says the source in the textbook. Then it goes on to say that without any warning the police opened fire at the Blacks. Then the protesters quickly turned and fled the scene, but many of them were shot down, and some were on the floor, when police ‘rifle-butted and kicked and booted many women who were trying to retrieve bodies’ says source I in the text book.
However, there is photo evidence of the people running away, (source) so this may mean that the Black’s really didn’t have any weapons, otherwise they may have stayed and fought.
We cannot be sure what exactly happened on that day because there are so many different sources that give such contrasting ways of events. Most of them are also unreliable. They are nearly all stories passed on by word of mouth. There are no actual witnesses or physical evidence to prove it.
I think that the most reliable sources are that of the pictures. You can clearly see n source B that the Black’s are very scared and that they are running away. This must mean that they are the ones in danger.
I think that there is crucial physical evidence missing from this because there was no actual witness’s form both sides who agree on what happened. The two sides spent all their time trying to pin the blame on each other, rather than trying to come to some sort of agreement and to try and compromise with each other.
I think that the police must have heard from a source that they were coming, they saw his as a perfect opportunity to show that the white people really were ‘superior’ to the Black’s. The police were trying to make an example of the Black’s who did wrong and didn’t follow by their rules. They were trying to prevent change.
But I do not think that we can pass judgement on what actually happened that day simply because there is no physical evidence, even photos can be unreliable, the people in source B could have simply been acting. Had there been actual physical evidence such as filming, we could have caught the Apartheid system red-handed and put a stop to the awful treatment which the Black native’s of their own land received.
