Call it ‘Sharpeville Day’ to reflect correct history – Analyst
South Africa needs to be honest and call Human Rights Day what it is – Sharpeville Day – so as to reflect what really happened on that day and correct history.
This is the view of political analyst, Prof Lesiba Teffo, who added that calling the day the right way would help the youth understand what really happened on 21 March, 1960.
On the day, apartheid police shot and killed 69 people who were protesting against the pass laws in a demonstration organised by the Pan Africanist Congress led by its founder, Robert Sobukwe.
The police surprised the crowd, estimated at 20 000, when they opened fire without warning after one officer panicked and fired a hail of bullets.
Scores were injured, including children, as people ran for cover in the midst of the shooting. Many people were shot in the back as they were fleeing from the guns. The massacre received universal condemnation internationally and sparked diplomatic and economic sanctions by the United Nations.
Teffo said the role played by Sobukwe and others needed to be acknowledged in the process of retelling history.
“Not mentioning Sobukwe is distorting history, it is to lie to nobody but ourselves,” he said.
He said deliberately distorting history was about political expediency. Such a move often misled students to shout slogans without understanding their meaning because they did not know what the relationship between Sharpeville Day and Human Rights Day was.
Teffo, who is known for constructive criticism of the current policies, suggested that presently there was not a conscious alignment of the events that occurred in Sharpeville in the Vaal Triangle and Human Rights Day as proclaimed by the ANC government after 1994 because the story had not been told properly.
“As scholars we have a duty to tell the truth to our students and the state has a responsibility to reflect the true history of our country,” Teffo said.
He added that more needed to be done to unite and build the nation. President Cyril Ramaphosa must craft a uniting language for the nation instead of the country being still divided into “ethnic nations” such as the Zulu nation, the Xhosa nation, the abaThembu nation and so on.
He added that reconciliation, social cohesion and nation-building remained mere rhetoric despite being the values underpinning the country’s Constitution.
“As long as you use alienating language during the celebration of national holidays, there is no reason for some to come to those events again,” he said.
Racism would never be eliminated but it could be contended with to a certain extent, Teffo added. He said that the policies of black economic empowerment and affirmative action undermined social cohesion, nation-building and the process 0f reconciliation.
Affirmative action was meant to be temporary so as to address the current material conditions of the poor and not become a permanent feature of social organisation.
He said that as a result of affirmative action, many whites, Indians and coloureds did not bother to apply for certain positions because they were automatically excluded by the policy.
ericn@citizen.co.za