From Br. Pheko of PAC- Azania

[RWalker]

Please circulate
DISTORTION OF SHARPEVILLE DAY IS INSULT TO AFRICAN MARTYRS

Dr. Motsoko Pheko

“Human Rights Day,� can there be such an unmitigated distortion of the history of the Sharpeville Uprising? It is a shame and insult to the martyrs of Sharpeville, Langa and others that in a country that boasts of observing human rights; that even on what they call human rights day. The Sharpeville Uprising on 21st March 196O is distorted. The conspiracy of silence on how this day came about and who were the creators of this history and why this day is significant; seems to be intended to hide this history from the people of this country so that they remain ignorant about March 21st.

What happened at Sharpeville on March 21st 1960?

It is obligatory to inform posterity about this PAC legacy in the liberation of this country. In March 196O, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) through its then President, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe issued a press statement. It read:

“In accordance with a resolution adopted by our Congress held in Orlando on 19th and 2Oth December 1959, I have called on the African people to go into positive action campaign against the Pass Laws. We launch our campaign on Monday, the 21st March – and circulars to that effect are already in the streets….

I need not list the arguments against the Pass Laws. Their effects are well known. All the evidence of broken homes…gangsterism, the regimentation, oppression and degradation of the Africans, together with the straight-jacket of industry, lead to one conclusion…the Pass Laws must go. We cannot remain foreigners in our own land.�

The PAC leader concluded, “Finally, I wish to offer all those non-African individuals and groups who have expressed themselves as bitterly opposed to the Pass Laws, an opportunity to participate in this noble campaign which is aimed at obtaining for the African people those things that the whole civilised world accepts unquestionably as the right of every individual…. Be involved in this historic task….breaking asunder the chains that bind your fellow men.�

To the Commissioner of Police, Major-General Rademeyer, the PAC President wrote, “My organisation, the Pan Africanist Congress, will be starting a sustained disciplined non-violent campaign against the pass laws on Monday, the 21st March….I am now writing to you to ask you to instruct the police to refrain from actions that might lead to violence….The usual mumbling by a police officer on an order requiring the people to disperse within three minutes, and almost immediately ordering a baton charge deceives nobody and shows the police up as sadistic bullies….

If told to disperse, we will. But we cannot be expected to run helter-skelter because a trigger-happy’ African hating young white police has given hundreds of thousands of people, three minutes within which to remove their bodies from his immediate environment….�

Reaction from White Journalists on Sharpeville Day

A white journalist, Patrick Duncan who was then the editor of CONTACT publication wrote later, “The ANC leaders derided the PAC call. The white press largely ignored the PAC, after all, the last stay – at-home organised by the ANC in 1958 had been a flop.�

Another white journalist who wrote before the PAC campaign against the colonial Pass Laws took place; “It is impossible what hope of success the PAC campaign has…. It is possible that with large numbers of PAC members offering themselves for arrest, other Africans will follow suit….This could catapult the Pan Africanist Congress into national prominence almost overnight….If, on the other hand, the Africanists fail to rally a substantial number of people to their campaign call, the result will be total eclipse….At the moment there are no ready answers….They will come when the campaign begins, until then, no one knows.�

Bernard Leeman of the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, in his book has written “In the aftermath of Sharpeville…Whites flocked to the Canadian and Australian High Commissions in Pretoria. They enquired about emigration. Many whites bought guns. The steel-meted troops patrolled the streets. In a single day the Pan Africanist Congress had changed South Africa forever.�

When the apartheid magistrate delivered his prison sentence on the PAC leaders, he said, “Not only was it your object to fill jails, but you intended to paralyse trade, industry and the economy of the country, in order to force the Government to change laws….�

Today the whole world knows that this PAC campaign was a success. That is why the apartheid colonial police panicked. They killed 89 Africans and wounded 365 at Sharpeville, Vanderbijl Park, Langa, Mkhumbane and other places in the country. It was to intimidate the African people.

Reaction of the International Community

For the first time, as a result of the Sharpeville Uprising, the highest organ of the United Nations, the Security Council discussed the South African situation. This was at its 85th Meeting on 1st April 196O. It condemned the South African regime in the strongest terms ever.



Frantz Fanon, author of THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH and a highly respected revolutionary has written, “Sharpeville shook public opinion for months. In newspapers, over the wave-lengths, and in private conversations….It was through that that men and women in the world became acquainted with the problem of apartheid in South Africa.�

Fanon further noted, “The seven days that shook South Africa and the entire world from March 21st this year have forced an irrevocable turn on the history of the country…the Pan Africanist Congress and the urban proletariat actively intervened in their affairs and ushered in a new period rich in historical perspectives and pregnant with great possibilities for the democratic movement.�

Through the Sharpeville episode the PAC exposed the vile system of apartheid colonialism internationally. The United Nations declared March 21st to be commemorated each year as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The PAC has the honour of having contributed a day to the whole world for the elimination of racial discrimination.

It was also as a result of this PAC action that the United Nations established the Special Committee against Apartheid and the Commission against Apartheid in Sport, and declared apartheid a crime against humanity through the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

Impact of PAC campaign on the Economy

The PAC campaign against the apartheid Pass Laws also damaged the apartheid economy enormously. The Chamber of Commerce and Industries handed a memorandum to the apartheid regime. It read:

“The immediate cost has been loss of life, loss of production, general unrest, and diversion of part of our manpower to military service. Far more serious is loss of confidence among investors in South Africa abroad, resulting in the withdrawal of capital and cancellation of business projects that were under favourable consideration; the potential loss of people through emigration and immigration, and the damage that the economy sustains as a result of mounting international disapproval of the policies being followed in South Africa which are widely believed to have caused the present crisis.�

Damage inflicted on the South African apartheid economy by the Pan Africanist Congress action beginning on 21st March 196O is witnessed by the fact that during the first quarter of 196O alone capitalisation value of shares quoted on the stock exchange dropped by six hundred million pounds. In one day alone on 3Oh March, the total market capitalisation value was slashed down by seventy million pounds. In Rands today this damage would be more than R7,2OO, OOOOOO and R84O, OOO, OOO respectively.

This damaged economy by the PAC positive action campaign against the pass laws sank the South African Bank Reserves to their lowest level ever. Had it not been for American intervention, the PAC would have liberated this country in 196O. American banks revived the devastated economy of apartheid colonial South Africa. They provided aid to the tune of one hundred million pounds (R1,2OO, OOO, OOO) to rescue the apartheid colonial economy from the blows of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.

Some of these banks were Chase Manhattan, First National City Bank of New York, First National Bank of Chicago and Bankers Trust Company, Irving Trust Company, Morgan Guaranty Trust Bank of America, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Continental Illinois National Bank. These banks ignored the blood and sacrifices of the African martyrs and the courageous step taken by the PAC to defeat the regime which was believed to be invincible. The PAC had shown the regime to be a paper tiger when seriously challenged.

The Distorters of the Sharpeville Uprising

It is shameful that the ANC leaders and other elements in South Africa should act so falsely about March 21st and are so manipulative of the political history of this country. Their aim is to hide that March 21st which they call “Human Rights Day� is the creation of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.

It is disturbing that even a man of Nelson Mandela’s calibre has tried to play down the PAC role in the creation of March 21st. In 1996 he signed the constitution of the “New South Africa� in Sharpeville. He never during that time or at any other time mentioned the Pan Africanist Congress, nor its leaders such as Sobukwe, Leballo, Masemola and Ngendane or Pokela. Nor did he invite any of PAC leaders to neither witness the signing nor explain why he signed the constitution there.

This falsified history of the liberation struggle in this country has continued over the years. It has also been promoted by the South African media which is largely Eurocentric and owned by former colonial defenders. The commemoration of Sharpeville anniversary was worse in 2OO7. The event has been projected as if it is an ANC thing, yet in 196O when the PAC leadership wrote to the ANC leaders asking them to join this historic campaign; their Secretary-General, Duma Nokwe released the ANC media statement to the Sunday Times of 2Oth March 196O. It read:

“We must avoid sensational actions which might not succeed, because we realise that it is treacherous to the liberation movement to embark on a campaign that has no reasonable prospects of success.�

But once the PAC positive action campaign against the colonial pass laws had been demonstrated to be the most devastating campaign against the apartheid regime which even suspended the pass laws; false stories were manufactured.

Ben Turok wrote that the ANC had planned an anti-pass campaign for the 31st March 196O, “However, the Pan African Congress anticipated a series of demonstrations� (See Strategic Problems on South Africa’s Liberation, Critical Analysis by Ben Turok page 7).

This, of course, is false. On the 12th December 1959, Chief Albert Luthuli, the then President of the ANC had himself sent a message to the ANC Annual Conference of that year warning against suicidal “action which might play into the hands of the Government� (CONTACT 26 December 1959).

At any rate Tom Lodge an academic who has written extensively on the PAC and ANC and is known supporter of the ANC has written that, “The plans were different. The ANC proposed a series of demonstrations on days of symbolic importance….The PAC plans were specific. On an appointed day, all African men should stay away from work and soon there would be a complete paralysis of the administration.�

This must lay to rest distortions on the political history of the liberation struggle in this country. The ANC had no symbolic day during March 196O. It has none now. The only ANC day was 26th June 1955 where this organisation erroneously proclaimed that this African country belongs equally to the colonisers as to the colonised, to the dispossessors as to the dispossessed. This has resulted in more land and riches of this country being in minority hands and Africans living in shacks and poverty. A nation that does control its land and economy is no nation. Its political power is void.

The Day History is written with Truth is Near

One day history shall have its say. No liberation struggle shall be distorted for political propaganda and to serve the interests of neo-colonialism. That history shall honour all the freedom fighters of this country and their struggles regardless of their political affiliation. This will be a history full of national glory and human dignity. March 21st shall be declared a Heroes’ Day. Proper monuments shall be erected to the fallen in Sharpeville, Langa, and Soweto and to many others and to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe and his colleagues who were also the first to be the first to serve life prison sentences on Robben Island before Nelson Mandela.

Never again shall the sons and daughters of this sacred soil clean the statues of their former colonisers while their own martyrs and freedom fighters are shown no respect during so-called “Human Rights Day� And their history of sacrifice for the liberation of this country distorted beyond recognition. END