The people of Sharpeville need to learn that the 21st day of March in SA is a national day. In simple terms, its historic meaning, significance and purpose belong to all the people of this country.
Yes, for decades it was called Sharpeville Day. Perhaps we need to not only ask how it came to be known as such, but whether the people of this country, including Sharpeville residents, were consulted in giving it that name.
Probably it was the presumptuous media people who redefined it as Sharpeville Day when the organisers of the march regarded it as an Anti-Pass Day. It never was about a sense of place. It was about a state of mind to resist and defy oppression to promote universal human rights.
There are many instances where African events, places and occasions have been defined by outsiders. Sharpeville is one such place. It would be interesting to know what the people themselves called the place.
It is not without reason that the people of the area want to claim Sharpeville Day as their own. The tragic events that happened there were a crime not just against the 69 murdered but against humanity. The brutality of the apartheid regime was degrading and dehumanising not only to the Sharpeville people but to the African majority throughout the country.
We need to remind ourselves that Sharpeville was only one of the locations where Africans engaged in resistance for their human rights. Yes, for their human rights and not just in Sharpeville.
The same anti-pass marches happened in Soweto, Langa in Cape Town and perhaps other townships that were not under the glare of the media.
Significantly, on the day of the march, the courageous, confident, defiant, self-defining and visionary leader of the PAC, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, woke up in Mofolo, Soweto, where he lived.
He was the epitome of self-sacrifice and futuristic visionary who conceptualised the anti-pass march and formulated the strategies to confront the most brutal regime in human history.
In fact, it was in Soweto that Sobukwe led a group of Africans to hand themselves over for arrest. What do the people of Sharpeville mean when they say the government cannot move the commemoration of what happened in Sharpeville to Soweto?
Sobukwe must be turning in his grave that his continent-wide struggle and vision is now confined to a small location and his descendants do not know their own history.
If the people of Sharpeville understood their history, perhaps they would understand that Sharpeville is not a geographic location. It is a day that is rooted in the human rights struggle.
The ultimate vision was to create a non-racial SA that would be a home to all people who pledged allegiance to the continent and the interests of her people. It is not about any little township or party politics.
We accept that it was the people of Sharpeville whose blood watered the tree of liberty. They were part of a transcendental pan-Africanist philosophical movement whose aim was to not only inculcate self-determination but pursue a peaceful civil disobedience.
It is important to note that all Africans identified with the struggle to abolish the dompas. Soweto and Langa, for instance, were also tense and explosive.
It is a miracle that there was no tragedy. It was in Sharpeville that the people were violently mowed down like flies.
It is not compulsory to host all anti-pass-related commemorations in Sharpeville. Failure to understand and accept that is a partisan and myopic view of history. To promote the idea that Sharpeville belongs to a particular geographic is to completely miss the point about the meaning and significance of a national day.
Today in conditions of freedom and democracy there is absolutely nothing that prevents the people of Sharpeville from commemorating the day in any manner they consider fit and proper.
But there is a presumption that not only must the commemorations take place in Sharpeville but the meaning of the day belongs to a particular political party or ideological orientation.
Also, it has been alleged that the ANC wants to claim the day as its own.
The repetition of this lie is a deliberate distortion of history to distance the ANC from not only the anti-pass protests but the struggle for human rights. Any sane person cannot imagine a liberation movement of the ANC’s calibre that would not support the human rights struggle. We need to be politically mature and open-minded enough to accept that participation in the protest march on March 21, 1960, was not only a choice but a matter of tactics and timing.
Different parties had different approaches. But after more than 50 years, it should not matter much who was shot in the back first. The objective to achieve human rights and democracy has been realised.
Finally, it is a waste of energy and time to wage political fights to contest conceptualisation or ownership of Human Rights Day.
All Africans – irrespective of party political affiliation – were equally oppressed and aggrieved by having to carry the dompas.
Thus it can safely be assumed that all African political parties – especially the PAC and ANC – were in principle opposed to the dompas and committed to its eradication. No doubt, they followed different strategies.
The dompas system was defeated. All Africans now have freedom of movement and to do as they wish on how they desire to commemorate any national day.
The people’s government is right – depending on your political maturity – to take the commemoration of this day to any part of the country.
And the people of Sharpeville will be absolutely correct to organise their own event to commemorate their fallen heroes in any way they see fit and proper.
Working together to create a better life for all Africans is better than fighting over interpretation of history.
Africans have to find a way not only to encourage freedom of choice for the government and all other people, but to appreciate that Sharpeville is not about a geographic place.
When Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville to launch the constitution, he bestowed the highest honour to the place and its people for their role in the human rights struggle. Nobody said he was an ANC president or Sobukwe’s political rival. What has happened to that political maturity and African unity?
March 21 is a national day to commemorate the tragic events of that day; it has become a symbol of the human rights struggle.
The media may have called June 16 “Soweto Day”, but just like Sharpeville it is a day that belongs to all the people of SA and those who owe allegiance to improving the quality of life of all African people.
Let us stop quibbling over petty issues and conduct ourselves in a manner that promotes unity in diversity. Better still, let us study our own African history.
- Memela is a public servant. He writes in his personal capacity.