60th ANNIVERSARY OF THE SHARPEVILLE MASSACRE
THE PAC REMEMBERS.
The December 1959 conference resolution to launch the Positive Action Campaign against the pass laws and to demand a minimum wage of £35 a month or a national tools down.
The Positive Action Campaign was described by the PAC as the ‘decisive and final mass action’ that will unfold to bring down settler-colonialism and apartheid. The PAC said then, that ‘in 1960 we take our first step, in 1963 our last.’ This was in line with the resolutions of African liberation movements taken in 1958 at the All African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana, for continental freedom by 1963.
The announcement by the president of the PAC, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, that on 21 March 1960, all the branch leaders will march peacefully to local police stations and submit themselves for arrest because they did not carry their passbooks on them. The PAC after arrest will take the standpoint of ‘No Bail, No Defense, No Fine’ to clog up the prisons and let the country have no supply of cheap labour in order to cripple the economy.
The struggle would be based on non-collaboration and non-cooperation with oppression and exploitative authorities until final victory.
THE VERWOED REGIME REPLIED.
With mowing down defenceless women, men and children with bullets and shooting people in their backs as they ran away. More than 69 African people were murdered in Sharpeville and more than a hundred and forty were maimed. In Langa, near Cape Town, 20 000 African people peacefully marched to parliament but their leaders were arrested under the false pretext of being called to negotiations. The PAC was banned and declared a prohibited organisation after existing legally for only eleven months.
The PAC leadership was jailed for up to three years hard labour. The Emergency Law of 90 Days Detention without trial was implemented. Sobukwe was declared persona non grata ‘until this side of eternity.’
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY OF NATIONS.
Began to see and understand the Apartheid authorities as racist, exploitative and oppressive. The Sharpeville Massacre exposed the killing innocent African people to the world. The United Nations organisation and the Organization of African Unity officially recognised the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania as an official representative of the Azanian masses. Apartheid was officially declared a heresy (a sin) and a crime against humanity.
ON 21 MARCH 2020 THE PAC CALLS FOR
A Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Sharpeville and Langa Massacre