Week 6: So, What's the Real Story?

After watching Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, there's still many questions I had left unanswered. A movie - even a two and a half hour one -  cannot comprehensively convey decades of history. Luckily, the Internet exists and we all have the privilege of access to open information.

An Umkhonto poster calling women to rise up against the anti-apartheid regime.

One lingering thought I had watching the film was about Mandela's approach to the anti-apartheid movement. The movie, which focused heavily on Mandela's time in prison, didn't give much context about his activities beforehand and starkly contrasted Mandela's "peaceful" nature compared to his then-wife's violent approach. But Mandela was actually labeled a "terrorist" in the past by the West, although no one dares call him that nowadays. I was surprised to find this Washington Post article  that talked about the misconception that Mandela was a peaceful revolutionary, like India's Gandhi. On the contrary, the article states that Mandela advocated violent resistance against the apartheid government when peaceful efforts had failed (he specifically stated "only then did we decide to answer violence with violence" at his 1964 trial). After the massacre in the Sharpeville township in 1960, Mandela co-founded the paramilitary arm of the African National Congress, called Umkhonto we Size or "Spear of the Nation," which sabotaged economic and political institutions (i.e. state buildings and infrastructure).

With so much mention of the Sharpeville massacre as a critical turning point in the fight against apartheid in my research, I wanted to know the specific details of what occurred that day to understand the context of its effects. 

What happened?

Source from ANC archives, unknown photographer, 21st March 1960

A crowd of 5,000 to 7,000 black South Africans assembled in front of a police station in the township of Sharpeville to protest against the Pass laws (internal passport system designed to enforce segregation and limit/control the movement of black South Africans). Police shot into the crowd, killing 69 people and injuring about 180 (children, men and women). 

What came of it?

The significance of the massacre was massive. Internally, anti-apartheid groups such as the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress grew militant and demonstrations, riots and marches abounded in the following weeks. International criticism of the apartheid regime grew, including UN condemnation.

Many of the protestors were gunned down while running away from the police officers, with their backs turned. Photo: Bailey's African History Archives

And now we arrive to the now.

When Mr. David Gilmour spoke to our class, he told us that all South Africans are friendly people but he wished that they would interact with one another more. That isn't to say that people of different races are UNfriendly, more that they occupy different spaces. I wanted to look more into race relations in today's South Africa, and found an NPR article that painted a country that still has a lot of work to do but is moving in the right direction. From it, I learned that young black South Africans born after the fall of apartheid in 1994 are known as "Born Frees" and that they are "colorblind, focusing not so much on the once-divisive issues of race and color, but on economic opportunities and development." I'm going to take the word "colorblind" with a grain of salt, because the legacy of apartheid and race divisions in the nation are inevitably intertwined with current socioeconomic realities. Additionally, the article only represents a handful of testimonies from black South Africans. But it is good to see that the younger generation seems hopeful for the future.