Saturday, 21 March, marks 66 years since 69 people were killed and close to 200 others injured when police opened fire on marchers in Sharpeville on this date in 1960.
All things considered, the majority black government has, since 1994, failed the spirit of the martyrs who lost their lives in that historic march against pass laws.
By now, their sacrifice would have been a sacrosanct feature of the new democratic dispensation that rose after apartheid, marked by not just hollow promises but tangible deliverables.
The Sharpeville Massacre, as the bloodletting ordeal has come to be known, was a watershed moment in the lives of our people, standing up to be counted, demanding to be heard, claiming their rights as equal citizens in the land of their birth.
You’d be forgiven to think the former liberation movement, conscious of the tribulations of exile, would return especially mindful of the sacrifices paid by those felled by apartheid bullets in March 1960.
But, alas, this wish remains just that, a pipedream.
The demands of Sharpeville 1960 could be encapsulated in one word: dignity. But what the returning exiles have visited upon the masses of our people is the opposite — indignity.
Some 50 women and a number of children died or were injured on that day. It is a travesty that today, women and children continue to shed numbers as victims of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).
In November 2025 President Cyril Ramaphosa declared GBVF a national disaster. How women and children wish the decree could translate into their safety against the scourge of violence meted out mostly by men known to them, ostensibly their loved ones.
We take an educated guess that among the marchers in Sharpeville were youth around the ages of 15 to 34, who took up cudgels on behalf of those who’d come after them. Today, a hefty 46. 1% of this cohort are unemployed.
One thing you will not take away from the Big Men at Luthuli House is their wry sense of humour. It was in Sharpeville on 10 December 1996 that Nelson Mandela signed the final Constitution into law, reportedly as a commemorative gesture to honour the victims of the Sharpeville Massacre.
Those who died in 1960 must be turning in their graves knowing that their appeal for dignity remains unheard, unacknowledged.
The least those who took over from Mandela could have done — and there’s time to make amends — was feign familiarity with the Constitution, especially Section 26 which declares: “There shall be houses, security and comfort.”
The 69 of Sharpeville deserve a more decent commemoration, not a litany of woes.
Saturday, 21 March, marks 66 years since 69 people were killed and close to 200 others injured when police opened fire on marchers in Sharpeville on this date in 1960. All things considered, the majority black government has, since 1994, failed the spirit of the martyrs who lost their lives in that historic march against