Resistance Movements
Resistance : Sharpeville race riots of 1960
In spite of people’s attempt to resist peacefully to the apartheid system, a massacre took place
in the township of Sharpeville south of Johannesberg following a protest organized by a
number of young South Africans who resisted the segregational policy of the country which
obliged Black people to hold pass books to be able to travel and or move from a given area of
the country to another. Notwithstanding that aggression against nonwhites was legalized,
police opened fire on protesters killing 69 people. Therefore this event stands as turning point
in the history of apartheid.
1976 Soweto Uprising
The establishment of the South African Student Organization and the Black South African
Movement raised political consciousness raised the political consciousness of many students.
When Afrikaans was introduced as a compulsory medium of expression alongside English in
1974, Black students started mobilizing themselves. A peaceful demonstration was organized
against the government’s dictates. The protest against the inscription of Afrikaan as an official
language gradually turned into becoming an uprising against the government’s reaction was
brutal and the movement spread across the country. Images of South Africans killed and
injured in the hands of White police led to an international lobbying and revulsion against the
South African government. The result was that 451 people died in the hands of the police. The
death toll had stood at 575 people. Hector Pieterson, 12 years old, was one of the first
students killed in this uprising. The uprising served in terms of paving the ground for the end
of apartheid as it trespassed the national boarders and expressed people’s disenchantment with
the corrupted political system.
Soweto Uprising: The Story Behind Sam Nzima's Photograph
