The Sharpeville Massacre.
Inset: David Sheppard, a young Basil D’Oliveira and Charles Fortune
Arunabha Sengupta
(Some of the parts of this article are taken from Arunabha Sengupta’s forthcoming book Apartheid: A Point to Cover)
Sharpeville, a small township outside Vereeniging.
On 21 March 1960, there were between 5,000 and 10,000 people surrounding the police station fence. Unarmed and peaceful, they offered themselves for arrest for not carrying passbooks.
It was part of a planned economic boycott in protest against the Pass Laws. Triggered by the encouraging Winds of Change Speech by Harold Macmillan early that year. The Pan African Congress was in charge. Robert Sobukwe and 150 other activists had already gone to the Orlando police station without passes. In Cape Town, over 1,500 people did the same.
The sheer size of the crowd unnerved the policemen at Sharpeville. They later said stones were thrown when F-86 Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers flew low in an attempt to disperse the crowd. Supposedly three policemen were struck. The young, inexperienced officers, armed with Sten submachine guns and Lee-Enfield rifles, panicked. They opened fire, shooting randomly. Many among the crowd were shot in the backs as they turned and fled.
In all, 69 people were killed, including eight women and 10 children, while 180 were injured
In 1994, 21 March would be made The Human Rights Day in South Africa.
On 10 December 1996, President Nelson Mandela would choose Sharpeville as the place to sign the Constitution of South Africa into law.
Later, UNESCO would mark 21 March as the yearly International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
For the time being, in 1960, the United Nations Security Council condemned the South African government—Britain and France abstaining. The South African stock market crashed through the floor.
Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli burnt their passes in public.
The reactions of the South African Government were fast and predictable.
The following day, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd informed the Parliament that the Anti-Pass Resistance in Sharpeville had not been targeted at the Government. Perhaps by now he believed himself while mouthing statements as ridiculous as these. Absolute power often leads one to delusion..
On 23 March, Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, Albert Luthuli and 11 others were arrested for incitement of riots.
On 24 March, all public meetings of more than 12 people were banned.
On 28 March, Cape Town was shut down as they mourned the deaths.
On 30 March, a general strike paralysed Cape Town. With the police brutally attacking townships, 30,000 Black workers marched into the city, demanding that their leaders be released from the prison. Over 2,000 people were detained as the government declared a state of emergency.
In the midst of all this mayhem, on 29 March 1960, Basil D’Oliveira said farewell to wife Naomi and the other members of his family at the Cape Town International Airport and flew to London to seek a new life as a cricketer in England.
The embers of the disaster were yet simmering when the South African cricket team landed in London via Amsterdam on 17 April. The airport was besieged with protesters.
One placard said Apartheid isn’t Cricket. Another declared Sharpeville wasn’t Cricket. Yet another proclaimed Ban Racism in Sport. One was pretty damning: Sharpeville Was Murder. Chants and slogans were hurled at the cricketers as they made their way through the airport.
South African cricket writer Charles Fortune dismissed the protesters in his account as a “tattered and bleak little conglomeration of chilly looking adolescents.”
Fortune was not amused by the motley gathering. “For weeks before the South African team set off, our newspapers in the Union carried stories of the opposition rife in England to the visit of the Springboks. Priests and politicians, scholars and undergraduates had it seemed, gone on record and into action to stop the cricket tour.”
Now, seeing lukewarm dissent in the airport, he was scathing in his criticism of the protesters. MCC, he wrote, had rightly discerned that England en masse would have none of it. “These demonstrators were no more than the cats-paws of certain churchmen who had seized on the visit of the cricketers as an opportunity to gain for themselves some public notice.”
However, at Cambridge University, students and others handed out pamphlets at the entrance to Fenners.
At a press conference manager Dudley Nourse asserts that the team is there to play cricket and politics should not be linked to them in any way.
Fortune’s diatribe against the churchmen had its reasons. Rev Trevor Huddleston’s Naught for Your Comfort and his 1956 views of stopp.ing sporting contact with South Africa were well known. Rev Nicholas Stacey had refused to preach the traditional ‘Sportsmen’s Service’ before the Edgbaston Test.
Besides, there was David Sheppard.
The Duke of Norfolk had approached him, asking him whether he would captain his team in the opening match of the tour. By 1960, Sheppard was convinced that he would not turn out against an all-White South African side. He refused. However, he was still plagued by the question of whether he should make his refusal public.
Sheppard wrote to Joost de Blank, his former bishop. At the current moment, de Blank was the Archbishop of Cape Town. De Blank wrote back: “It would do a tremendous amount for our cause here.”
As a member of the MCC Committee, Sheppard informed MCC President Harry Altham about his decision. Altham asked him to reconsider. Sheppard says that he sat on the embankment, reading the Scripture, wondering what to do. Isaiah 58:1 convinced him. When Sheppard told Altham that his mind was made up, the MCC President arranged for him to disclose his intention of going public to the MCC Committee.
There was an immediate explosion from Lt Col RT Stanyforth, who protested the “political and religious statement.” However, Altham stood by Sheppard. The former England captain made a brief statement of his decision to BBC News.
Not everyone had Fortune’s capacity for casual dismissal of protests in the aftermath of Sharpeville.