Speaker, hon members, I quote:
The commission finds that the police deliberately opened fire on an unarmed crowd that had gathered peacefully at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960 to protest against the pass laws.
The commission finds further that the South African Police failed to give the crowd an order to disperse before they began firing and that they continued to fire upon the fleeing crowd, resulting in hundreds of people being shot in the back. As a result of the excessive force used, 69 people were killed and more than 300 injured.
The commission finds further that the police failed to facilitate access to medical and/or other assistance to those who were wounded immediately after the march.
The commission finds that many of the participants in the march were apolitical, women and unarmed, and had attended the march because they were opposed to the pass laws. The commission finds, therefore, that many of the people fired upon and injured in the march were not politicised members of any political party, but merely persons opposed to carrying a pass.
The commission finds that many of those injured in the march were placed under police guard in hospital as if they were convicted criminals and, upon release from hospital, were detained for long periods in prison before being formally charged. In the majority of instances when persons so detained appeared in court, the charges were withdrawn.
The commission finds the former state and the Minister of Police directly responsible for the commission of gross human rights violations in that excessive force was unnecessarily used to stop a gathering of unarmed people. Police failed to give an order to disperse and/or adequate time to disperse, relied on live ammunition rather than alternative methods of crowd dispersal, and fired in a sustained manner into the back of the crowd, resulting in the death of 69 people and the injury of more than 300.
These were the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission regarding the Sharpeville massacre 50 years ago on 21 March 1960.
Today we commemorate this day as Human Rights Day. The world commemorates this day, by decision of the United Nations General Assembly, as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Sharpeville in many ways represents a painful reminder of where we come from, what we have achieved, but also how much yet remains to be done. Many lines of our history, both painful as well as hopeful, intersect at Sharpeville.
We are told that Sharpeville was named after John Lillie Sharpe who came to South Africa from Glasgow, Scotland, as secretary of Stewarts and Lloyds. Sharpe was elected to the Vereeniging Town Council in 1932 and held the position of mayor from 1934 to 1937.
The main reason for the establishment of Sharpeville was the relocation of people from "Top Location" to an area away from Vereeniging, because it was felt black people were too close to Vereeniging for comfort. Unfortunately, because the project was only intended to relocate residents of "Top Location", and not to house additional people, it did not alleviate the housing shortage. What was planned as a five-year resettlement project, beginning in 1935, in fact took 20 years. In 1941, 16 000 people lived in "Top Location". The building of houses only started in 1942.
A subeconomic housing scheme was used for Sharpeville. Water was free but 14 houses shared one tap and there were two bathing complexes in the township. By 1946 some of the houses had their own taps and bathrooms. The township was first called "Sharpe Native Township" but it changed to "Sharpeville" in the 1950s.
With the implementation of the apartheid government's Group Areas Act, it was estimated that over 3,5 million South Africans were forcibly removed between 1960 and 1982. Of the "Top Location" residents, blacks were removed to Sharpeville, coloureds to Rust-ter-Vaal and Indians to Roshnee. Indians were the last ethnic group to leave "Top Location", the last residents being removed to Roshnee in 1974.
In 2004, the people of "Top Location" were compensated for the loss of their properties and land, and an amount of R60 000 per house was paid to all former residents or dependants.
The other line of our history that runs through Sharpeville is the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging, commonly referred to as the Peace of Vereeniging, on 31 May 1902. This peace treaty ended the South African War between the Boer Republics and the British Empire. This treaty laid the foundation for the Union of South Africa, created on 31 May 1910. This is another milestone in our history, the centenary of which we mark this year.
I mention this because the creation of the Union of South Africa represented the legal constitutional basis for colonialism of a special type, or internal colonialism. It was the act of union that united and included whites as citizens and excluded Africans.
Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has remarked that, and I quote:
The Union Act of 1910 establishing the Union of South Africa finally disenfranchised our people from ever claiming a right to land or participation in the affairs of the government. Thus the birth of the ANC on 8 January 1912 was a direct reaction to these countless grievances and complaints. Pixley ka Isaka Seme summed it up this way: "We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today."
He continued to state that, "The white people of this country have formed what is known as the Union of South Africa, a union in which we have no voice in the making of laws and no part in their administration." This was a call to unity of a new type on African soil. This was an anticolonial unity. This was the birth, not only of the ANC but of a new nation deep in the womb of a colonial setup. Right from the beginning the ANC was assigned to lead the creation of a new loyalty under changed conditions of struggle.
It is this struggle that we don't need to be confused about because the facts of history are stubborn things. There is no doublethink; there is no doublespeak in the national democratic struggle. [Applause.] There is no contradiction in national democratic struggle; rather, national democratic struggle is meant to solve the contradictions of our painful history. [Applause.]
An open-opportunity society, on the other hand, if one looks at it, studies it, interrogates it carefully and looks at its application in the Western Cape, is designed to perpetuate those contradictions. [Applause.]
The commitment of the ANC to nonracialism has been written in the blood of our struggle. In 1960, when Sharpeville happened, the ANC did not turn around and call for indiscriminate violence and attacks against any national group. Neither did it do so in 1976, when our country was on fire. Neither did it do so in the mid-1980s, when we lived under a virtually continuous state of emergency and thousands of people were detained and killed. [Applause.] Neither did it do so in the early 90s, when untold state-sponsored violence was unleashed against our people. [Applause.] Never at one moment in that long and proud history of struggle did the ANC ever waver from its commitment to that principle. That principle has been ... [Interjections.] Others, who today ... [Interjections.]