EFF OBSERVES SHARPEVILLE DAY

Monday, 21 March 2022

The EFF observes the 62nd Anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre, which happened in 1960 and was perpetuated by the racist Apartheid Regime.

It was on this day, that thousands of Sharpeville residents, led by Pan-Africanist Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, demonstrated against the racist pass laws, which segregated Africans from European settlers and determined where Africans can be and at what time.

Men, women and children defiantly destroyed what was then known as the Dompass, a document designed to regulate the movement of Africans and restrict them to labour reserves, which they could leave only to perform menial labour in white-suburbs and industrial areas.

It is an objective fact of history that 69 people died when the merciless Apartheid government shot innocent and unarmed people, and hundreds were maimed and injured and scarred for life.

These brave individuals died so we could live to see a future where Africans can move freely in their land, and they did so with conviction and determination, against a highly volatile and armed Apartheid state.

The ANC-government, which is filled with jealousy and seeks to monopolise the liberation history of South Africa has incorrectly and deliberately named this day of defiance as Human Rights Day. They do so because it is a stain in their history that they publicly disassociated themselves with the 1960 Defiance Campaign, and as a result do not form part of this momentous occasion in history.

This government distorts the content and meaning of Sharpeville Day, because they failed to be part of a moment in the struggle against Apartheid which changed the tide of the liberation struggle and elevated it onto the international stage.

The naming of the 21st of March as Human Rights Day is the highest form of revisionism, which must be rejected with the contempt that it deserves.

Accordingly, the EFF recognises today as Sharpeville Day, in honour of those who were slain by the Apartheid government for refusing to have their movement controlled and dictated to them in their own land.

We salute the brave Pan-Africanists who led from the front, and were willing to fill the jails of the regime of terror, in defence of African people.

In order to give real meaning to the memory of those who died fighting for our freedom, the EFF calls for the immediate release of all political prisoners, who continue to languish in prison for fighting white-supremacy.

It is a tragedy of history that brave heroes of our liberation, particularly from the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), are in prison, while racists who presided over our collective suffering have been honoured with Nobel Peace Prizes and statues in a democratic society.

We reiterate call for the removal of all colonial and Apartheid statues, street names and memorabilia that celebrates genocidal racists. These symbols of conquest have no right to be in sites of public significance, and must be relegated to a Apartheid and Colonial Museum where they can be observed with dishonour and contempt.

The placing of Die Stem in the national anthem is a spit in the face of those who died fighting against Apartheid, and we call on all South Africans to refuse to sing the song which was sung while liberation heroes were tortured in Vlakplaas.