Date: February 15, 2008 10:30:13 PM HST
Thursday, February 7, 2008 – Sharpeville Township
Before I came to South Africa, I tended to equate the term “apartheid” with segregation, but now I realize that like everything in this country, it’s a lot more complex than I originally thought. Made official in 1948, apartheid refers to a series of laws intended not only to separate the races, but to ensure white domination of South Africa through a series of legislative acts. Legislation classified South Africans as either white, Indian, colored (mixed), or black. Interracial sex and marriage became illegal, and under the Separate Amenities Act, separate schools, hospitals, buses, and beaches were established. The Group Areas Act reserved the most desirable land for whites and forced other groups which had previously occupied those lands to move to townships, most of which were indescribably crowded and squalid, and often lacked even the most basic if services. The most famous of the townships was Soweto, located outside Johannesburg, but Sharpeville, also outside Jo’berg, became almost as famous as the result of the massacre that occurred there in 1960.
The last legal vestiges of apartheid ended in 1991, but driving through the Sharpeville, one would never know it. The squalid picture is one of appalling poverty and overcrowding. The better dwellings are tiny, closely spaced cinderblock or cement houses; the worst are tinier, even more closely spaced scrap wood and tin shanties. Most stores look abandoned; one has to look twice to discover that they are in fact open for business. And the township remains virtually one hundred per cent black; I didn’t see another white face anywhere we went, including the site of the Sharpeville Massacre, which today contains a small museum (which was closed when we arrived), a community library, and a memorial garden containing sixty-nine markers, one for each person killed (178 were wounded). The absence of whites didn’t surprise me, because honestly, Sharpeville isn’t the kind of place that one would come for a stroll. Yunus, while not afraid, did suggest that we lock the car doors and roll up the windows as we drove slowly through the streets. And although the “Lonely Planet” guide, supposedly written for the more adventurous traveler, does mention the Sharpeville Massacre, it omits the site from its recommended destinations (“…there’s nothing specific for visitors to do…”).
I felt at ease in the library, where students from elementary through high school age studied or chatted quietly with each other. Those who looked up and saw me smiled. An alcove contains eight or nine panels describing the events leading up to the Massacre and the Massacre itself. Residents of the township gathered outside the police station on March 21, 1960 to protest the hated Pass Laws. These laws required blacks and coloreds to carry state-issued identity papers, and further prohibited them from visiting or staying in towns without permission. Couples could not live or even visit each other in a town if only one of them worked there.
According to the information on the panels (which is confirmed by other accounts I have read), the crowd grew rowdy but was unthreatening. I realize that the white policemen might have interpreted the situation differently, but whatever the interpretation, not only did the police open fire, there were no shots returned and most of the dead were shot in the back as they fled.
The Massacre received international attention, and it led to demonstrations, work boycotts, tighter restrictions, and more protests and arrests – basically, it upped the ante in the struggle (not long after, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment). When Nelson Mandela signed the constitution in 1996, the ceremony took place in George Thabe Stadium, not far from the site of the Massacre.
By the time I exited the library, the guards were getting ready to close the memorial garden, but they allowed me to spend ten minutes there. The modest garden site contains sixty-nine chest-high cement cones, each topped with a small metal disc etched with the name and age of a slain victim (the youngest was twelve). Two small, bubbling, ground-level fountains, connected by a thin stream of water, bisect the garden.
The most meaningful – and the most touching – part of the visit came in a conversation I had with one of the two young guards after I left the garden.
While Yunus talked with one, another told me of his desire to become a lawyer. He appreciated the logic of the law, he said, and felt that he could successfully do the coursework. But he had no money to pursue an education, and though he didn’t say it outright, he implied that he felt fortunate to even have the low-paying job he currently held. Had he been a needy Punahou student (a contradiction in terms?), I would have encouraged him to try to live frugally in order to save money for school, but I knew how hollow and unrealistic this advice would sound, so I gave him no false encouragement. We parted with smiles, handshakes and hugs, and photos.
My time in Sharpeville was not finished – I needed to top it off by getting arrested.
Across the street from the memorial sits the fenced-in police compound, a modest few buildings. No one prevented our entry or questioned us, so we proceeded to stroll through the grounds. We came to two windowless jail cells, with heavy white doors, and Yunus informed me that these were the same cells which held black prisoners during the days of apartheid (the other, newer cells, had windows). I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo of the old cells.
Almost immediately, a young police officer approached me and said, “No photos allowed. You are under arrest.” I looked for a smile or a laugh to indicate that she was joking, but though her tone was not threatening, neither did she punctuate those words with a smile or a laugh. I was not afraid – I honestly didn’t expect to spend the night in one of those two windowless cells (I later found out that they were already occupied). But I quickly realized that I had committed a faux pas; I should have asked for permission before I took any photos, and the officer was simply trying to make the point that no photos were allowed. The captain approached to reprimand me, and I apologized and offered to delete the photo (an offer he never took me up on).
Yunus used the incident as an opportunity to start a conversation with the captain, which lasted for about twenty minutes. How many officers do you have? What is the size of the area of your jurisdiction? What are your major problems? Within a few minutes, his sympathetic ear and occasional genuine compliments had erased the discomfort I had caused, and we learned a lot about the problems of police work in Sharpeville.
As with education, the problems stem mainly from a lack of money. Three police stations serve the township of more than a million people. His station has only four police cars to patrol an area the size of Kailua, yet this isn’t his biggest problem, as he doesn’t have enough police officers to keep even four cars on the roads twenty-four hours a day. Drugs are a problem, but desperation born of poverty is more of a problem, as the captain expressed sympathy and understanding for the man with nothing who robs to feed his family. Among the most desperate are the large number of recent immigrants from neighboring Lesotho, who live in squatter camps with no electricity and water. They manage without electric power, but they take water from the pumps in the neighborhoods of the permanent settlers, who resent the fact that the water they pay for is stolen by the newcomers.