Material from:How To Publish A Childrens Book
On 21 March 1960 the South African police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters who were part of political campaign organized by the Pan African Congress (PAC) against pass laws. It is estimated that 69 people were killed on that day in the township of Sharpeville. This horrific event is commonly known as Sharpeville Massacre .
Sharpeville massacre was the turning point in the history of political resistance to Apartheid in South Africa. Since 1994, 21 March is Human Rights Day in South Africa. March 21 is also the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in memory of the massacre.
Every March 21st, Rethabile posts a poem to remember Sharpeville massacre. His Sharpeville poem for this year is posted on Black Looks:
the day king walked
from selma to montgomery,
the tops of trees shook
as in a forest, and shivered
for this man who had crossed a line
of centuries in the south, but
even more south, we worried for our lot,
resolved as we were to break you,
but you to put us with our ancestors.
of course there have never been questions:
why shoot them in the back? why shoot them?
why shoot? why? but our name got its shrine
where the children now gather,
for sixty-nine of us lay on the street
on that day in march sixty. as others
filled hospitals and covered cell-floors
with clenched bodies, dachau
was completed, stowe published her book,
alcatraz was shut down for good, and
we moved from non-whites
to non-carriers of passbooks.
© Rethabile Masilo
He also posts a poem by South African political activist and poet Dennis Brutus. It is titled, “A Poem About Sharpeville”:
What is important
about Sharpeville
is not that seventy died:
nor even that they were shot in the back
retreating, unarmed, defenseless
and certainly not
the heavy caliber slug
that tore through a mother’s back
and ripped through the child in her arms
killing it
Remember Sharpeville
bullet-in-the-back day
Because it epitomized oppression
and the nature of society
more clearly than anything else;
it was the classic event
Nowhere is racial dominance
more clearly defined
nowhere the will to oppress
more clearly demonstrated
what the world whispers
apartheid with snarling guns
the blood lust after
South Africa spills in the dust
Remember Sharpeville
Remember bullet-in-the-back day
And remember the unquenchable will for freedom
Remember the dead
and be glad.
© Dennis Brutus
Travel Blog Portfolio wishes all South Africans a safe and peaceful Human Rights day and ask them to learn more about Sharpeville Day.
How could such atrocities happen and no one is punished?, asks Sokari Ekine:
It’s been a long time coming, but change is gonna come, sang Sam Cooke about America. He could have been singing about South Africa, or the world, even. For what is baffling is how Sharpeville 1960, Soweto 1976, King’s and X’s murders, the Civil Rights movement, Mandela’s 27 years in jail, not to mention the thousands tortured and killed in South Africa, and tortured and lynched in America, what is baffling is how these have not entered the minds of all and instructed them on the evils of discrimination and segregation in all its forms. That is truly baffling to me.
It is also amazingly stunning that all these things happened and almost no one got punished for it, no international hunt for the wrong-doers, no motivation to see them “brought to justice,” as George Bush the son would say about so many who had committed so less. Today is a day to remember and to know why it should be remembered
Alpha Christian discusses the link between Good Friday, Human Rights Day and Sharpeville Day:
In a recent column in the Beeld, Nico Botha, deals with this anomaly where the Good Friday falls on the same date as the Human Rights Day, or, even better, the commemoration of Sharpeville Day. For many the debate was whether we will loose a public holiday as workers.
Where are we to find the key to link Good Friday to the significance of today, Human Rights day, Sharpeville day ?
I believe the little dialogue between Jesus and Pilate helps us to start to understand this link.
Michael Trapido remembers this day in his post on Thought Leader titled Sharpeville Redux and a Bit More:
On that fateful day a group of between 5 000 and 7 000 people converged on the local police station in the township of Sharpeville, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books.
As the large crowd gathered the atmosphere was peaceful and festive with less than 20 police officers in the station at the start of the protest. Police and military tried using low-flying jet fighters in an attempt disperse the crowd without success.
As a result the police set up Saracen armoured vehicles in a line facing the protesters and, at 13:15, incredibly, opened fire on the crowd.
He continues:
The official casualties were 69 people killed, including 8 women and 10 children, with more than 180 injured.
To date the worst case of police insanity in the history of this country.
As a result there followed a spontaneous uprising among black South Africans with demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and riots taking place throughout the country.
This led to the government declaring a state of emergency on March 30 1960, which saw more than 18 000 people detained.
Texas In Africa notes that Sharpeville was the first major turning point in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and that the massacre led to the militarisation of the anti-apartheid movement:
The rest of the world started to question the regime's racist policies much more openly; South Africa left the commonwealth a year later.
It also provoked the militarization of the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC's militant wing, MK (Umkhonto wa Sizwe) and Poqo, the military wing of the PAC, both formed soon after the massacre. The next thirty years were marked with horrific acts of violence before – to almost everyone's surprise – the evil of apartheid ended peacefully.
Five years later to the day, American civil rights protesters led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began marching from Selma to Montgomery. The attempt by 600 marchers to do the same thing three weeks earlier culminated in Bloody Sunday, an attack by local and state law enforcement officials. With a protective order from a federal judge, five times as many marchers turned out for the March 21 walk. A few months later, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, which effectively ended the last vestiges of legal discrimination in the south.
My students (whom, you will remember, are almost all black men) sometimes debate the question: “Are you a Malcolm or a Martin?” What they mean by this is, “Is social change best achieved through peaceful means (as MLK carried out his work) or violent means (as Malcolm X advocated)?”
I cannot even begin to claim to be qualified to answer this question. If we look at political history, it's clear that MLK's nonviolent methods worked to restore voting rights and some degree of social equality for American minorities, and they worked relatively quickly. MK and Poqo's violent methods certainly also had an effect on the apartheid regime, although the struggle was very long and ultimately did not end because of violence but rather because of economic turmoil and Mandela's willingness to negotiate a peaceful settlement with de Klerk. But nothing approaching true equality of economic opportunity has happened for the vast majority of blacks in either country.
Abioye discusses the international dimension of Sharpeville Day:
In 1966 the General Assembly of the UN proclaimed March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The UN called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. The Canadian government and various institutions in Canada including Carleton University and the University of Toronto, colluded with the white supremacist apartheid government of South Africa by refusing to
divest and continuing to trade with the government and South African companies.
South Africa Good News has posted a statement from Nelson Mandela Foundation:
March 21, 2010, marks 50 years since 69 unarmed protestors were killed by South African police outside a police station in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg.
Nelson Mandela burning his pass on March 28, 1960, in protest to the atrocities at SharpevilleWhen commemorating Human Rights day, during his presidency, Nelson Mandela said: “21 March is South African Human Rights Day. It is a day which, more than many others, captures the essence of the struggle of the South African people and the soul of our non-racial democracy. March 21 is the day on which we remember and sing praises to those who perished in the name of democracy and human dignity. It is also a day on which we reflect and assess the progress we are making in enshrining basic human rights and values.”
Photographer Greg Marinovich has Sharpeville Massacre photos on his blog.
The Sharpeville Massacre led to new ways of political organisation and resistance. The African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African Congress (PAC) were banned after the Sharpeville Massacre.
Monako Dibetle notes in his column in the Mail & Guardian that Sharpeville is still bleeding. Recently, the residents of Sharpeville rioted over poor social services .
- Questioning Obama's origins is a legitimate enterprise. Even by their own humble standards, the major media — including Obama's biographers — have done an impressively slack job in tracing the president's uncertain roots.
- Obama was almost assuredly born in Hawaii. There is no evidence that puts him elsewhere. Undoing the Kenyan possibility is the high likelihood that the "marriage" between Barack Sr. and Ann Dunham was a sham.
- Much depends on that marriage. "My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation," said Obama, establishing the romantic narrative in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His father was from Kenya. His mother was from "a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas."
- To paraphrase Harry Reid, Obama was no ordinary "Negro." Said Joe Biden of Obama's background, "I mean, that's a storybook, man." Enough depends on this story that Team Obama would and has dissembled to preserve it.
- For starters, Ann Dunham spent her formative years in Washington State, several of them in the progressive cocoon of Mercer Island. It was to Washington that she returned for a year immediately after Obama's birth, a fact missed by every Obama biography I could find.
- Baby Barack spent most of his first year in Washington as well, another fact overlooked by the biographers.
- There is not much storybook to a romance in which the mother leaves home immediately after her son's birth. Barack Sr.'s close friends have no memory even of a relationship between him and Dunham.
- When Barack Sr. left Hawaii a year after Obama's birth, Ann's father Stanley was there to see him off with smiles. He would always speak well of the black man who knocked up his daughter and then abandoned wife and child — mighty unusual behavior from a father-in-law.
- There was a marriage license from another county, Maui — a classic way to avoid local notification — and a divorce, but if there was a wedding, then no one attended it. There was no ring, no photos, no leis.
- Ann Dunham met Barack Sr. in Russian class. (In 1960, people like Lee Harvey Oswald took Russian classes.) The possibility that the Dunhams recruited Barack Sr. to front for a less savory impregnation of Ann by a black man makes more sense than the fabled romance. Obama looks nothing like Barack Sr.
- No, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the father was Malcolm X.
- This brings us back to "Pop." Every mainstream reviewer I could find has argued that the subject of the poem was Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham. None of them asked why Obama would write a poem about his "Gramps" and title it "Pop." None addressed the questions of paternity implicit in the title and in the confrontation between son and father figure.
- On closer examination, the poem is almost assuredly about Obama's African-American mentor, the communist Frank Marshall Davis. There are two good reasons to assert this. One is that "Pop" recites a poem that he had written. Davis was a poet. Dunham was not.
- The second reason is that "Pop" actually appears to have been written by Davis about his own relationship with Obama.
- A stronger case can be made for Davis's authorship than for Obama's. For one, "Pop" has a different style altogether from a silly adolescent poem called "Underground" published under Obama's name along with "Pop" in Feast. Critic Warwick Collins rightly describes "Pop" as "by far the more powerful and complex" of the two, and his is the consensus opinion.
- For another, "Pop" closely resembles in style, language, and subject a matter a poem published by Davis in 1975 called "To A Young Man." The literary analyst who unearthed this poem — I have referred to him as "Mr. West" — has argued for Davis as "Pop" from the beginning.
- In each of the two poems in question, the young man is the narrator. In each, the old man, the Davis character, is discussed in the third person. In the 1981 poem, the narrator calls him "Pop," in the 1975 poem "the old man." In each poem, when this older character speaks to the young man, he does so without benefit of quotation marks.
- In "To A Young Man," the Davis character says on one occasion, "Since then I have drunk/ Hal a hundred liquid years/ Distilled Through restless coils of wisdom."
- Note the similar flow of language in "Pop": "Pop switches channels, takes another/ Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks/ What to do with me, a green young man."
- As is evident in these two short samples, both poems are written in free verse and make ready use of what is called "enjambment" — that is the abrupt continuation of a sentence from one line into the next.
- There are parallels in word choice as well as style. "Neat" means without water or ice. "Neat" and "distilled" both suggest a kind of alcoholic purity. Each of these words is emphasized by isolating it from the flow of the text.
- Both poems are published with a seeming typo that may, in fact, be a pun.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Ghostface is one of my favorite emcees, but because of the concept and bad word of mouth, I avoided this LP like the plague. Well, heard it for the first time this weekend, and I’d like to issue an apology to Mr. Coles.
This album is crack.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I’ll take that one on the cheek and keep it moving.
^ayo
March 30th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
For the record, it was definitely promoted heavily online…
^This is self-defeating. Your promoting it to people who just plan to steal it.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
How do you make decisions on how you dress\look? Personal preference or strictly for bitches.
^
both. i’ll dress for breezies all day but i gotta ok the look in the mirror while playin my favorite chunes. hate me for it, i could giva fuck.
also, i keep a full beard thas groomed to look like a natural 5 o’clock shadow. then i watch chics clamor. i be shoppin at whole foods lookin yummy to chics.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
lololol cold worried about Achick
cOLD Says:
May 21st, 2009 at 1:12 pm
dude killed himself online for getting clowned yall niggas be easy.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Ghostface is one of my favorite emcees, but because of the concept and bad word of mouth, I avoided this LP like the plague. Well, heard it for the first time this weekend, and I’d like to issue an apology to Mr. Coles.
This album is crack.
—
I think people definately slept. I liked it.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
and bad word of mouth,
——-
LOL… i still say it sucks… by ghostface standards … it might be ok in comparison to the more prominent skinny jeans rap of today… but for a clansman, it sucks …
March 30th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
kevfrescura de talco Says:
i be shoppin at whole foods lookin yummy to chics.
^^^
Whole Foods is definitely a cool spot to find the femaliens
March 30th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
@ KzA
Seeing as you get flamed everyday in here, I can see Y you wanna past the torch. But seriously, STFU B!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
pass>past
lol!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
This album was pretty damn good…Sorry Ghost..these young’ns dont know shit..
March 30th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
i was just listening to WOP over the weekend. album is dope!!
*daps 1:39-1:46*
March 30th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
landLORD Says:
May 21st, 2009 at 1:38 pm
her neck look like Verrazano Narrows Bridge cables …
^
uifaeslufli
March 30th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
BTW the Wu-Massacre album is dope. Its real short, but I liked the whole project.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
B-Ease
12 mins ago
the whole site dumbed down… music as well… its a microcosm of society …. we done all fell off …
^^
Word.
^
* late pass*
true. I lurked for a long time, and finally started
commenting to restore the feelings, ever since French Kev came through and destroyed the buildings
March 30th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
“A” Chick Le Fleur – I Got My Billions UP Says:
March 30th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
@ KzA
Seeing as you get flamed everyday in here, I can see Y you wanna past the torch. But seriously, STFU B!
^
first of all.. no I dont. Second, pass the torch? Im reading a thread from a year ago. get over it
March 30th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
You couldn’t pay homage to Ghost or Rae as an MC. To try to redo their style would be abysmal for any artist.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
>>So with only one album left owed to Def Jam…
^word! get the fuck outta there.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
KzA Says:
first of all.. no I dont.
^you kind of do though
March 30th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
You couldn’t pay homage to Ghost or Rae as an MC. To try to redo their style would be abysmal for any artist.
—
You mean like a remake of one their songs? That would be difficult.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
*late pass*
I have to congratulate Beezy for having a good
run with those Dre lines
*daps Beezy and Dre*
March 30th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
first of all.. no I dont. Second, pass the torch? Im reading a thread from a year ago. get over it
————-
hl Says:
March 30th, 2010 at 11:38 am
The real Kza and his REAL girl at their wedding. Bless their hearts.
i43.tinypic.com/20axkr9.jpg
—-
holy.shit.
————-
SAY WORD U DON’T GET FLAMED EVERYDAY?
Again, STFU, B!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Beezy Says:
March 30th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
KzA Says:
first of all.. no I dont.
^you kind of do though
^
gtfoh. You the only one that ever says shit to me. and either way, Ive NEVER taken a beating as bad as that. shit was 4 posts long. even eskay was havin a field day.
A chick handled it pretty good then though, wierd how shes gettin cranky bout it now
March 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
I dont see how anybody wouldn’t like Wizard of Poetry when a lot of his hit singles over the years that everybody was feeling is similar to tracks on his album….*sarcastic* I guess it had to have a Drake or Weezy feature on it
March 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
ima listen to WOP one more time… cause i admit i gave it only 2 or 3 complete spins… but i remember being clearly dissapointed by all the soft r&b beats … sounded like beats for LLCoolJ …
March 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
g7 Says:
March 30th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
>>So with only one album left owed to Def Jam…
^word! get the fuck outta there.
———-
LOL! Def Jam stay giving artists 10 album deals. Word to LL….
March 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
You fuckin’ the FiOS nigga?!
March 30th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Ghost finna sign to Stones Throw
March 30th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
TheCo!!inB Says:
March 30th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Ghost finna sign to Stones Throw
——
now that would work for me …
March 30th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
his album before this was dope as fuk and no 1 bought it
this 1 had roughly the same first week sales
I bought it but expected more, it was still better than 90% of the shit out
it could have been bigger with some better features and a couple different beats
I hope Ghost goes indie
March 30th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Previously: Ghostface Speaks On Wizard Of Poetry’s Poor Sales (Video)