When SA celebrates Human Rights Day, I don’t think about the Sharpeville Massacre that took place on March 21 1960. I think about Andries Tatane.
This is something that disconcerts me, that makes me stop and take a second look at myself.
That’s because the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 was one of the defining events of my childhood.
Every year in the 1980s, when I was becoming conscious as a child, the apartheid and Bophuthatswana Bantustan government would deploy troops where I lived to ensure there would be no commemorations of that day.
They knew how powerful that day was.
More than 5,000 people had gathered to support the PAC in its protest against the inhumane, pernicious pass laws of the apartheid government.
The PAC had been running a campaign: leave your pass book at home, let the police arrest you.
On that day, these brave souls, knowing how brutal the government of the day was, still turned up in Sharpeville and declared they were not carrying the hated pass books.
Without issuing a warning, the police fired 1,344 rounds of ammunition into the crowd.
The police said 69 people were killed and 180 injured.
Researchers have subsequently said the number was much higher.
One fact is indisputable: most of the victims were shot in the back. They were fleeing.
There is nothing more cowardly in the world than an armed person, a police officer, shooting a defenceless, unarmed, fleeing citizen in the back.
This event was, for someone like me growing up under apartheid, emblematic of the brutality, the heartlessness, the immorality, the depravity of the apartheid system and its leaders.
Sharpeville made people like me realise that if that regime could do what it did in 1960, then it could kill hundreds of students in Soweto in June 1976 and it could murder Steve Biko in cold blood in 1977.
We knew what the apartheid government was: a cold and immoral killer.
That continues to be the reason I find those who today glorify that regime, who talk of “the good old days”, so debased, disgusting and immoral.
Nothing about those days was good. It was a hellscape we must always condemn and vow never to return to.
And yet it was that on Friday, on Human Rights Day, it was not the powerful memory of Sharpeville that I thought about.
It was Andries Tatane, a maths teacher, publisher of a community newspaper and an activist that I thought about.
I hope some of you, dear readers, remember Andries Tatane. Poor Andries Tatane. Tragic Andries Tatane. Heroic Andries Tatane.
Tatane was a community leader in Ficksburg, Free State.
He experienced love before he was murdered on April 13 2011 — he was married to Rose. He was so young, so very young: just 33 years old.
He was killed in broad daylight, his brutal murder bravely shown in full by the SABC that day.
His murder marked, for me, democratic SA’s loss of innocence.
That so many of us have forgotten him and his murder is an indictment to our leaders’ words that we stand for human rights.
This is what we know happened that day: More than 4,000 residents of the area marched alongside Tatane and other leaders to the municipal offices in Ficksburg.
Their demands were simple. They wanted better service delivery — reliable running water, electricity, no potholes and an end to corruption.
It is ironic that these demands have not been met 14 years later.
Ficksburg and the surrounding communities are worse off today than they were back then.
The protesters were met by police who unleashed water cannons on them.
In the melee, Tatane argued with the police and tried to block a water cannon vehicle.
Trying to block police from unleashing water jets on protesters may not be legal, but it is not putting anyone’s life in danger.
Yet, in this case, police grabbed Tatane and started beating him up with batons.
Several more officers piled in with their baton, brutally beating the community activist.
They dragged him away and continued to kick and beat him with their batons.
As if that wasn’t enough, they pointed guns at his chest and then shot him twice, at close range, with rubber bullets.
He died 20 minutes later.
As you read this, please know that the seven police officers accused of his murder and assault were acquitted in the Ficksburg Regional Court in March 2013.
Tonight, they will have dinner with their children, and they will lie in bed with their partners.
Meanwhile, Rose Tatane’s brave husband is dead.
This government must do better. South Africans must do better.
Since Tatane’s death in 2011, we have had too many Marikana Massacres and too many Stilfontein-type “we will smoke them out” moments.
To right the wrong that we did to Tatane, SA must do better.
The Herald
Tatane murder marked democratic SA’s loss of innocence
Columnist
Image: City Press/Leon Sadiki
When SA celebrates Human Rights Day, I don’t think about the Sharpeville Massacre that took place on March 21 1960. I think about Andries Tatane.
This is something that disconcerts me, that makes me stop and take a second look at myself.
That’s because the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 was one of the defining events of my childhood.
Every year in the 1980s, when I was becoming conscious as a child, the apartheid and Bophuthatswana Bantustan government would deploy troops where I lived to ensure there would be no commemorations of that day.
They knew how powerful that day was.
More than 5,000 people had gathered to support the PAC in its protest against the inhumane, pernicious pass laws of the apartheid government.
The PAC had been running a campaign: leave your pass book at home, let the police arrest you.
On that day, these brave souls, knowing how brutal the government of the day was, still turned up in Sharpeville and declared they were not carrying the hated pass books.
Without issuing a warning, the police fired 1,344 rounds of ammunition into the crowd.
The police said 69 people were killed and 180 injured.
Researchers have subsequently said the number was much higher.
One fact is indisputable: most of the victims were shot in the back. They were fleeing.
There is nothing more cowardly in the world than an armed person, a police officer, shooting a defenceless, unarmed, fleeing citizen in the back.
This event was, for someone like me growing up under apartheid, emblematic of the brutality, the heartlessness, the immorality, the depravity of the apartheid system and its leaders.
Sharpeville made people like me realise that if that regime could do what it did in 1960, then it could kill hundreds of students in Soweto in June 1976 and it could murder Steve Biko in cold blood in 1977.
We knew what the apartheid government was: a cold and immoral killer.
That continues to be the reason I find those who today glorify that regime, who talk of “the good old days”, so debased, disgusting and immoral.
Nothing about those days was good. It was a hellscape we must always condemn and vow never to return to.
And yet it was that on Friday, on Human Rights Day, it was not the powerful memory of Sharpeville that I thought about.
It was Andries Tatane, a maths teacher, publisher of a community newspaper and an activist that I thought about.
I hope some of you, dear readers, remember Andries Tatane. Poor Andries Tatane. Tragic Andries Tatane. Heroic Andries Tatane.
Tatane was a community leader in Ficksburg, Free State.
He experienced love before he was murdered on April 13 2011 — he was married to Rose. He was so young, so very young: just 33 years old.
He was killed in broad daylight, his brutal murder bravely shown in full by the SABC that day.
His murder marked, for me, democratic SA’s loss of innocence.
That so many of us have forgotten him and his murder is an indictment to our leaders’ words that we stand for human rights.
This is what we know happened that day: More than 4,000 residents of the area marched alongside Tatane and other leaders to the municipal offices in Ficksburg.
Their demands were simple. They wanted better service delivery — reliable running water, electricity, no potholes and an end to corruption.
It is ironic that these demands have not been met 14 years later.
Ficksburg and the surrounding communities are worse off today than they were back then.
The protesters were met by police who unleashed water cannons on them.
In the melee, Tatane argued with the police and tried to block a water cannon vehicle.
Trying to block police from unleashing water jets on protesters may not be legal, but it is not putting anyone’s life in danger.
Yet, in this case, police grabbed Tatane and started beating him up with batons.
Several more officers piled in with their baton, brutally beating the community activist.
They dragged him away and continued to kick and beat him with their batons.
As if that wasn’t enough, they pointed guns at his chest and then shot him twice, at close range, with rubber bullets.
He died 20 minutes later.
As you read this, please know that the seven police officers accused of his murder and assault were acquitted in the Ficksburg Regional Court in March 2013.
Tonight, they will have dinner with their children, and they will lie in bed with their partners.
Meanwhile, Rose Tatane’s brave husband is dead.
This government must do better. South Africans must do better.
Since Tatane’s death in 2011, we have had too many Marikana Massacres and too many Stilfontein-type “we will smoke them out” moments.
To right the wrong that we did to Tatane, SA must do better.
The Herald
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