The Sharpeville massacre
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In March 1960, the South African police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people and injuring nearly 200 more. The massacre outraged black South Africans, leading to a radicalisation of anti-apartheid organisations such as the ANC and a ruthless crackdown on dissent by the whites-only government. Simon Watts hears the memories of Nyakane Tsolo, who organised the demonstration in Sharpeville, and Ian Berry, a photographer whose pictures of the killings caused an international outcry.
PHOTO: The crowd fleeing from the police at Sharpeville in 1960 (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service with me Simon Watts. |
| 0:41.0 | Today I'm using the BBC Archives to tell the story of the Sharpville Massacre in South Africa. |
| 0:47.7 | It was one of the most notorious incidents of the |
| 0:55.0 | name of an burns itself into the memory of mankind simply because of something that happened there. |
| 1:05.3 | Places like Gernica and Belson. |
| 1:09.1 | And today there may well be another. |
| 1:11.4 | Sharpville, near Johannesburg in South Africa. In March 1960 the |
| 1:16.6 | South African police opened fire on a black crowd during a civil rights |
| 1:21.5 | demonstration in the township of Sharpeville. |
| 1:24.0 | 69 people were killed and nearly 200 injured. |
| 1:29.0 | There was a rattle of machine gun and people started running you know for shelter and then I saw one lady |
| 1:36.4 | fallen on the ground. |
| 1:38.4 | They should not own this right lead and I can't feel it. |
| 1:42.0 | Children were screaming around the street crying for their mothers |
| 1:45.8 | and some other policemen were busy shooting at those children. The killings |
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