Many South Africans celebrated Human Rights Day with mixed emotions on Tuesday at Sharpeville township.
The ANC, Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), uMkhonto we Sizwe, Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and ActionSA were among those who marched to commemorate the 69 people mowed down outside Sharpeville police station by the apartheid police in 1960 during a PAC march.
The march was a peaceful protest after the PAC had broken away from the ANC a year earlier. It was to protest against the pass system and marchers planned to allow themselves to be arrested for defying the pass law. Following the brutal killings, a state of emergency was declared in the country.
PAC secretary for political and Pan-African affairs Mohloai Ntsie said the aspirations of people who lost their lives in the massacre were betrayed after 1994.
“Fundamentally there is no change. The democracy that we understand, as the PAC, is regaining the land and African people benefiting from the resources of the land. This has not happened,” Ntsie said.
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said that after 29 years of democracy, South Africans were still living in hell and that the only way to evade it would be to get rid of the ANC.
“We need to remove this cancer called the ANC. They continued with the exploitation and suffering of our people,” he said.
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The only good thing that had taken place between that fateful day and now, according to Mashaba, was that South Africans no longer needed to carry passes.
A Sharpeville resident, Phamela Qoza, continued with her chores while politicians gathered to commemorate the day. Speaking to The Citizen, she raised concern about their living conditions.
“I am hungry, unemployed. These people come here with cameras every year but how does that benefit us?” she asked.
National chair of Azapo Simphiwe Hashe said he believed those who were part of the peaceful negotiations and settlement between the National Party government and the ANC sold out the vision of those who died on 21 March, 1960.
“Azapo was chased away from the negotiations and as a result the settlement was a sellout package that guaranteed property rights for white people,” he said.
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