Sharpeville fifty years on

I couldn't really let today pass without a mention of Sharpeville in South Africa.
Half-a-century ago and a world away in apartheid South Africa, every black person had to carry passbooks.
This physical everyday shackle of oppression listed the person's name, birthplace, and "tribal" affiliation, contained their picture and serial number, showed whether they had paid their taxes or been arrested, and unless it was signed monthly by their employer, the African could be herded with the other unemployed into a "native reservation".
All Africans had to carry them about their person at all times, and they could (and were) checked at any time by the notoriously unforgiving police, and heaven help you if you didn't have it or there was something amiss.
You could be hauled off to jail, without a word of warning to your family, and fined or imprisoned.

For more than a century blacks had endured this vile system and then following the Gandhian precepts of non-violent action, a mass campaign of non-compliance was started where people were urged to turn up at police stations without their passbooks and demand to be arrested.

At Sharpeville police station, a determined crowd of more than 20,000 Africans gathered demanding to be arrested. The twenty police officers present barricaded themselves inside and sent for reinforcements, hundreds of whom duly arrived, supported by armoured cars, and aircraft buzzing the crowd to try and scatter it.

When that failed, the police began firing with revolvers, rifles, and Sten guns. In two awful minutes, hundreds of blacks lay dead or wounded, many shot in the back.

It is fair to say that the events of that day hastened South Africa's march to pariah state in the world community shunned by almost everyone. And although there were many setbacks along the way, thirty years later and much bloodshed apartheid was defeated and the struggle for freedom by the black majority achieved.

Maatla ke a rona!