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About Human Rights Day in South Africa
Civil Rights , South Africa
Africa
Ends: Mar 21, 2025
DESCRIPTION:
HUMAN RIGHTS DAY
The Struggle Against Apartheid in South Africa Begins
Human Rights Day is a national holiday in South Africa marking the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. It is considered the beginning of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
On March 21, 1960, residents of Sharpeville, a township south of Johannesburg, gathered to protest the country's restrictive pass laws, which required Black South Africans to carry passbooks at all times. Organized primarily by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the demonstration was intended to be peaceful. Like civil rights protests occurring around the world, they were peaceful. Their first stop included local police stations where protesters presented themselves without their passes, effectively challenging the authorities to make arrests.
Incensed by the assertion that Blacks shouldn't need to carry passes, the Afrikaner police escalated the situation to violence, opening fire on the unarmed crowd. At the end of the day, at least 69 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded. Photographs of the massacre elicited international condemnation and fueled global calls for change.
The Sharpeville massacre galvanized a broader resistance to racist policies. It set the stage for increased global pressure on the apartheid government. South African authorities responded by banning the African National Congress (ANC) and the PAC, sending many anti-apartheid leaders into exile or underground.
Decades later, following the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa's democratic government designated March 21 as Human Rights Day to honor the lives lost in Sharpeville and elsewhere. It is a reminder of the sacrifices made for human dignity, equality, and freedom and a continued call for the eradication of apartheid everywhere, which, as of 2025, unfortunately still exists—most brutally in Israel and, to a lesser extent, in Burma.
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