An Ordinary Atrocity

On March 21, 1960, police opened fire on members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) protesting peacefully in the Vaal Triangle township of Sharpeville against apartheid’s iniquitous 'pass laws.' Sixty-nine people died. The shots fired that day in an obscure corner of South Africa reverberated around the world, and Sharpeville became the symbol of the evil of the apartheid system. For a variety of reasons this seminal event has never been systematically documented. The Wessels Commission of Inquiry established to investigate the matter never published a formal and final report that was satisfactory to all the key players, and in the four decades since the shooting, the massacre has been so mythologized and contorted to serve various political interests that it precluded a thorough investigation. Philip Frankel’s book goes a long way toward correcting that deficiency.