South Africa today March 21 celebrates her human rights day. Human Rights Day, 21 March, is a national holiday celebrating the sacrifices ordinary South Africans made for their freedom. On this day in 1960, about 5 000 people gathered outside the police station in Sharpeville, a township.
The crowd was peaceful, but demanding to be arrested for disobeying the inhuman pass laws. Instead, police guns blazed - and 69 people died.
It forced the international community to start to put pressure on the National Party government. It also boosted South Africans' own struggle to free themselves from an illegitimate regime whose only response to the protests of working people was to gun them down.
On 21 March 2001, South Africa unveiled the Sharpeville human rights memorial on the site outside the police station where the 69 men, women and children were shot – most of them in the back. Their names are all displayed on the memorial plaque.
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