South Africa Bitter Reminders of Sharpeville

By Pico Iyer

History seemed to be repeating itself, and more bleak ironies were piled high on a country already burdened with too many. Last Thursday marked the 25th anniversary of the massacre at Sharpeville, when police killed 69 blacks in the township 40 miles south of Johannesburg. That watershed conflict was still a vivid memory to many blacks in Langa, another township 25 miles from the southeast coastal city of Port Elizabeth. There, crowds defied a government ban on public gatherings to hold a procession in honor of three blacks who had been killed in clashes with police the previous weekend.

Before long the procession became a protest march, and the protest a confrontation. As up to 4,000 demonstrators strode along the highway between Langa and the white town of Uitenhage, their path was blocked by 19 policemen. Through a loudspeaker, the young lieutenant in charge of the patrol, Johannes Fourie, told the protesters to go home. They continued to push forward. A policeman fired a warning shot at the feet of the group's leaders. Still they advanced. With that, Fourie ordered the police to open fire on the marchers. At least 19 blacks were killed.

The Sharpeville massacre of 1960 had moved a defensive government to crack down with a vengeance, outlawing black protest movements, arresting black leaders, and so giving rise to a newly militant opposition. Today, after a quarter-century of struggle and despite recent promises of reform by President P.W. Botha, violence still holds sway in the divided land. The killings outside Uitenhage represented the bloodiest single episode since a wave of unrest began sweeping across the country last year. They also triggered more rioting at week's end in nearby townships, where angry mobs killed at least seven blacks they accused of being accomplices of the minority white government. In addition, they set fire to the homes of several black policemen. Five weeks ago, 18 blacks were killed in a confrontation with police at the Crossroads squatters' camp near Cape Town. In all, some 240 South Africans have perished in the turbulence of the past 13 months; at least 60 of them have died in the Sharpeville area.

Last week's cycle of events began in the vicinity of Port Elizabeth, where blacks protested crippling local unemployment by staging a weekend boycott of shops, buses and factories. The boycott resulted in five blacks being killed in clashes with the police. Anger at those deaths sparked the march at Langa. That conflict, in turn, set off further rioting.

"The system of apartheid is totally repugnant to me," said U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in Washington, responding to questions about the Uitenhage tragedy. "The pattern of violence has underlined how evil and unacceptable that system is." Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Chester Crocker, who was in Cape Town for talks with South African officials, declared that "the cycle of violence must come to an end now." But President Reagan, speaking at his news conference on the day of the killings, suggested that "rioting" marchers were at least partly to blame for the clash and pointed out that "some of those enforcing the law and using the guns were also black." He added that his Administration had no thoughts of amending its policy of "constructive engagement," under which it uses diplomatic pressure rather than outright ostracism to nudge South Africa toward reform. Professing themselves "outraged and disgusted" by Reagan's comments, members of the United Democratic Front, an alliance of nonwhite organizations, refused to meet with Crocker.

In Parliament, South African Minister of Law and Order Louis LeGrange issued a special statement regretting "the most unfortunate incident." But he also defended the police action. The ill-fated procession had been led, he charged, by a man dressed in black and brandishing a brick, and the police had fired in self-defense only after they had been "surrounded and pelted with stones, sticks and other missiles, including petrol bombs." Eyewitnesses, however, maintained that the police had begun shooting without provocation and had summoned a fire engine to hose away the blood. President Botha appointed a judicial commission to investigate the shootings.

The catalyst for the mounting national frustration is an economic recession that has hit blacks particularly hard. Unofficial estimates place black unemployment at up to 2 million, equivalent to as much as 20% in some areas. Inflation is expected to reach 20% by the end of the year, and last week the government increased the general sales tax from 10% to 12%, double the level of a year ago. Days later, at Vaal Reefs, the world's largest gold mine, black workers struck for higher pay, in defiance of the mine's management, who insisted that the walkout was illegal. As unrest continued in several black townships, Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned Black Leader Nelson Mandela, said in a television interview that she foresaw nothing but more bloodshed: "I am afraid one can only visualize very tragic times ahead of us if the government is not prepared to dismantle apartheid."

The marking of the Sharpeville anniversary bore out her words. Magistrates in many urban areas banned all outdoor meetings. Riot police watched warily over church services commemorating the massacre. Blacks in Sharpeville itself flung stones at passing cars and buses. Altogether, the killings of 25 years ago seemed much too familiar.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg