Sharpeville and the turn to armed struggle
The Road to Sharpeville
By 1960, the African National Congress had spent almost half a century campaigning against racial laws through non-violent protest: petitions, strikes and civil disobedience. The Freedom Charter, adopted at Kliptown on 26 June 1955, set out a vision of a multiracial democratic South Africa. It remained the ANC's foundational document throughout the struggle.
In 1959 a breakaway group, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), formed under Robert Sobukwe. The PAC rejected white allies and called for an Africa-first approach, targeting the pass laws as the single most hated symbol of apartheid.
On 21 March 1960, South African police opened fire on a crowd of approximately 5,000 unarmed protesters at Sharpeville township near Vereeniging. Sixty-nine people were killed and around 180 wounded. Most of those killed were shot in the back as they fled. Research published in 2023 puts the real toll higher still — at least 91 dead and more than 238 wounded.
The Sharpeville Massacre
The PAC had organised a national campaign against pass laws on 21 March 1960, calling on Africans to leave their passes at home and present themselves at police stations for arrest. At Sharpeville, a crowd of around 5,000 gathered at the local police station. The exact sequence of events before the shooting is disputed; the police opened fire and continued shooting even as the crowd fled. Sixty-nine people died; the majority were shot in the back.
The images of the dead — widely circulated internationally — caused worldwide outrage. ANC president-general Albert Luthuli publicly burned his own pass card in protest. In response, the government declared a state of emergency and, on 8 April 1960, banned both the ANC and the PAC under the Unlawful Organisations Act.
Banned and driven underground, the ANC leadership debated its response to Sharpeville. A significant faction, including Nelson Mandela, concluded that half a century of peaceful protest had achieved nothing and that a new strategy was required. In December 1961, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, “Spear of the Nation”) was launched as the ANC’s military wing.
MK’s initial strategy was sabotage of infrastructure — power lines, government buildings and transport links — not attacks on people. Mandela and the ANC leadership made a deliberate decision to avoid killing civilians. This is important for historical accuracy: the apartheid government labelled MK as terrorists, but its founding strategy was deliberately aimed at property, not people. MK’s strategy would evolve over the following decades.
Poqo and the PAC’s Armed Response
Poqo (“Pure” or “Alone” in Xhosa) emerged as the PAC’s armed wing around 1961–62. Unlike MK’s sabotage focus, Poqo carried out attacks that included killing informers and, in some instances, white civilians. This distinction between MK’s initial strategy and Poqo’s approach is significant for understanding the range of responses within the anti-apartheid movement.
The immediate impact of Sharpeville: the government declared a state of emergency, banned the ANC and PAC (April 1960) and arrested thousands of activists. The long-term consequence was that both organisations were driven underground and turned to armed struggle.
Oliver Tambo slipped out of South Africa in 1960 before the banning orders took effect. He spent the next thirty years leading the ANC’s external mission from Lusaka, Zambia, building international support, running MK training camps in Angola and Tanzania, and lobbying foreign governments and the United Nations. Without Tambo’s work in exile, the ANC might have collapsed as an organisation during the “long silence” of the 1960s and 1970s.
The ANC and the Freedom Charter — Continued Relevance
Despite the banning of the ANC, the Freedom Charter continued to be circulated secretly and studied by activists. Its demand for a democratic, non-racial South Africa — with nationalisation of mines and banks, free education and equal rights regardless of race — defined the ANC’s programme. When the UDF was formed in 1983, it explicitly adopted the Freedom Charter as its guiding document, showing how the 1955 text remained alive through decades of repression.
The distinction between the ANC and the PAC remained significant throughout the 1960s and beyond. The PAC rejected working with white South Africans and focused exclusively on African leadership; the ANC maintained its multiracial approach, incorporating Coloured, Indian and white members within its alliance. Robert Sobukwe, the PAC’s founder, was imprisoned under a special “Sobukwe clause” that allowed his continued detention beyond his original sentence — a legal measure Parliament passed specifically to keep him imprisoned without trial.
The Pondoland Revolt 1960–1961
Sharpeville was the most famous episode of March 1960, but it was not the only uprising that year. The Pondoland revolt in the Transkei homeland saw rural Africans rise against hut tax increases, Bantustan control measures and forced cattle culling. The revolt was suppressed by the army and police, but it showed that apartheid was generating resistance in rural as well as urban areas. The Pondoland revolt is often overshadowed by Sharpeville in historical accounts but is significant as evidence of the breadth of opposition to apartheid.