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Keywords

USSR, South Africa

Abstract

On 21 March 1960, the Pan Africanist Congress urged people to join together to protest passes-identifying documents required to be carried at all times by black Africans-by surrendering themselves without the passes for arrest in defiance of the discriminatory law. Thousands of protesters gathered in front of the Sharpeville police station. After hours of singing and peaceful protest, a policeman was accidentally knocked down and the crowd rushed forward to investigate. Terror ensued when the policemen opened fire on the crowd. Humphrey Tyler, the assistant editor of Drum magazine, witnessed the chaos firsthand. He recounts chat after a cheerful and peaceful day, suddenly men, women, and children were being mowed down by the guns of the officers. Tyler wrote, "Hundreds of kids were running, too. One little boy had on an old blanket coat, which he held up behind his head, chinking, perhaps, chat it might save him from the bullecs." At the end of the carnage, 69 people were dead and over a hundred wounded. The Sharpeville Massacre, as it came to be called, was a turning point in South African history and the antiapartheid efforts. In the wake of chis tragic event, the USSR, a global power on the world stage and a proponent of equality, and antiapartheid organizations in South Africa developed more formal ties. Throughout the following years, the Soviet Union played a significant, if not always obvious, role in the antiapartheid movements in South Africa. While historians have been largely interested in Soviet motives for assisting the antiapartheid movements, the oral histories of the South Africans involved in the movement, many of whom differed in race, background, and political views, each emphasize their appreciation of the Soviet Union's ideological example, financial support, and active military support.

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