Sharpeville
An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
On 21 March 1960 several hundred black Africans were injured and 69 killed when South African police opened fire on demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, protesting against the Apartheid regime's racist 'pass' laws. The Sharpeville Massacre, as the event has become known, signalled the start of armed resistance in South Africa, and prompted worldwide condemnation of South Africa's Apartheid policies. The events at Sharpeville deeply affected the attitudes of both black and white in South Africa and provided a major stimulus to the development of an international 'Anti-Apartheid' movement.
In Sharpeville, Tom Lodge explains how and why the Massacre occurred, looking at the social and political background to the events of March 1960, as well as the sequence of events that prompted the shootings themselves. He then broadens his focus to explain the long-term consequences of Sharpeville, explaining how it affected South African politics over the following decades, both domestically and also in the country's relationship with the rest of the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lodge's study of the Sharpeville massacre is a meticulous but overstuffed history of the 1960 clash between black protestors and white policemen in the South African township of Sharpeville, which left 67 protestors dead and nearly 200 wounded, most shot in the back while running away. Lodge (Mandela) offers a detailed account of the causes and consequences of the massacre, credited for drawing global condemnation of apartheid, but his book also presents an expansive history of the South African liberation movement. Drawing on the papers of Robert Sobukwe, the first president of the Pan Africanist Congress, whose nonviolent protest preceded the Sharpeville massacre, Lodge creates a nuanced portrait of the less well-known revolutionary group within the context of more familiar players like the African National Congress, the international antiapartheid movement, and the South African state. The book is especially compelling when it focuses on the local history and politics of Sharpeville, and overall, Lodge's research strikes an impressive balance between documenting the historical facts of the clash and tracing the narratives and political momentum that ramified in its wake.
