The annual smartening up of Sharpeville is under way as politicians get ready to host Human Rights Day on Monday.
This year is the same as any other. On Monday, teams picked up litter around the massacre memorial in Seeiso Street, while the forest of grass as one enters the area in Mareka Street is finally being tackled.
This site in Vereeniging is where 69 people were murdered and 180 injured after 300 apartheid-era police officers opened fire on thousands of people peacefully protesting against the dompas on March 21 1960.
We commemorate the day annually, but often forget December 10 1996, when Nelson Mandela signed the final draft of the constitution into law at Sharpeville stadium and, with it, our bill of rights.
Despite Sharpeville being at the centre of the commencement of these rights, the township in southern Gauteng does not always see its citizens enjoying them.
Nicho Ntema, 52, is the manager at Kitso Information Development Centre, an NGO at the old police station where the massacre occurred.
Ntema grew up listening to his mother and grandmother’s accounts of the day. They witnessed it.
“The massacre affected everyone and there still hasn’t been quantifiable healing for people suffering from PTSD.
“But the most painful thing is how Sharpeville is remembered each year, then five hours after the event everything goes back to ‘normal’. The day has no socioeconomic impact on the community and does not challenge issues of joblessness, drugs and unemployment.
“It is dark tourism, but great things have happened here which are not commemorated — this is a heritage site.”
Kitso offers artisanal classes in which members of the community can learn leather and beadwork, sewing, electrics, vertical urban farming and other skills they can use to earn money.
Ntema said though there were 11 schools in the area, they were built by apartheid architects and therefore “do not have assembly halls and the bucket system was used — bathrooms are outside the buildings [and some are inadequate]”.
“But the worst suffering relates to sewage [as the Vaal has broken sewerage works, sewage often leaks into the area] and roads that are 60 to 80 years old.
“We have issues with drugs ravaging our communities, causing dropouts and very young children are getting caught up in it.”
Palesa Liwani, 29, and friend Lebohang Sefatsa, 31, said the children involved with drugs are from middle-class homes, with parents often at work during the day.
The pair were sitting outside the Sharpeville Exhibition Centre with other youths on Tuesday, taking advantage of free wifi.
They said the main drugs used are crystal meth, nyope and lean (a mix of codeine-based cough syrup and cooldrink).
“Drug use is escalating and we see a lot more housebreakings and petty theft,” Liwani said.
The bill of rights was drafted by Kader Asmal and Albie Sachs in 1988.
It was first contained in Chapter 3 of the Transitional Constitution of 1993, which was included in the negotiations to end apartheid.
At the first democratic election on April 27 1994, the bill came into force, but emphasised political rights.
The final constitution, which hosts the bill of rights, was signed into law by then president Nelson Mandela in Sharpeville on December 10 1996.
It came into being on February 4 1997.
— Bill of Rights:
The women don’t believe many young people know about the massacre and what it meant for the country as it happened a long time ago.
Her mother’s uncle was shot dead metres from where she was sitting and as she spoke about him she began to cry.
“Maybe it wasn’t that long ago because it still hurts.”
Sefatsa’s uncle, Reginald Sefatsa, was one of the Sharpeville Six. They were convicted of murdering deputy mayor of Sharpeville Kuzwayo Jacob Dlamini and sentenced to death.
According to SA History Online, a resource hub which covers the social and political history of SA, their only crime was being present when Dlamini was killed by an angry mob.
The six were 15 hours from death when they were granted an indefinite stay of execution.
Their sentences were reverted after an international clemency campaign, according to a report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which granted them amnesty.
However, according to SA History, they were never compensated for their prison ordeal.
According to testimony at the TRC, Reginald, who was tortured while awaiting trial, was a street vendor when the killing happened.
Said Sefatsa: “Uncle Reginald said he doesn’t even know how he wasn’t hanged. He said he was told the time and place for his hanging.”
Moses Tsolo’s grandfather, Nyakane Tsolo, organised the gathering at the Sharpeville police station and tried to negotiate with the police. However, he was arrested before they opened fire.
He was detained at the Old Fort, now the Constitutional Precinct in Johannesburg, where he was tortured before his trial a year later.
On bail, he fled to Lesotho and eventually lived in Rotterdam as a PAC representative. He returned to SA in 2001 and died of a stroke a year later.
Nyakane’s leadership during the event is often forgotten, but Tsolo, 43, commemorates him in his art, which is on sale at Kitso.
On Tuesday he showed Sunday Times Daily a massive sculpture of a FV603 Saracen. The six-wheeled armoured army vehicle was often used to move between crowds and six of them were stationed in Sharpeville during the massacre.
The piece incorporates people and chains to symbolise the event.
Tsolo says he was commissioned by local government to make the art work, but was never paid and after a few years retrieved the sculpture. It now rests in storage where no one can see it.
Traditional beader Mohau Kutoane, 45, and shoe-maker Zodwa Mthethwa, 49, were optimistic about the township’s future, but tired of the politicking which takes place every year.
Kutoane said it felt as if politicians were opening old wounds.
“By Wednesday next week we’ll all be traumatised again.
“They take the elderly [who witnessed the event] to the graveyard [where the victims were buried]. They give them T-shirts they must wear. Sometimes they have a gala dinner and then they leave.”
1. Equality
2. Human dignity
3. Life
4. Freedom and security
5. Freedom from slavery, servitude or forced labour
6. Privacy
7. Freedom of religion, belief and opinion
8. Freedom of expression
9. Assembly, demonstrations, pickets and petitions
10. Freedom of association
11. Political rights
12. Citizenship
13. Freedom of movement and resistance
14. Freedom of trade, occupation and profession
15. Labour relations
16. Environment
17. Property
18. Housing
19. Health, food, water and social security
20. Children
21. Education
22. Language and culture
23. Cultural, religious and linguistic communities
24. Access to information
25. Just administrative action
26. Access to courts
27. Arrested, detained and accused persons
— SA has 27 fundamental human rights:
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