66 Years After Sharpeville Massacre, Families Pursue Justice Through Courts

Paulina Mathinye was five years old when her father walked out the door on March 21, 1960, heading to a community meeting near the police station in Sharpeville, a township south of Johannesburg. She waited for him to come home. She imagined running to greet him, the way daughters do. He never returned.

That morning, her father had joined other men from the township at a gathering protesting apartheid's pass laws—the documents that dictated where Black South Africans could live and work. Police opened fire on the crowd. The official apartheid-era records counted 69 dead and 180 injured. Researchers examining those same records in 2024 found the toll was likely higher: as many as 91 killed and 238 wounded. The massacre became a defining rupture in South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle. March 21 is now commemorated as Human Rights Day. The country's democratic Constitution was signed in Sharpeville in 1996. But for the families who lost breadwinners that day, the consequences never ended.

Mathinye's father had supported the household. After his death, her mother worked as a domestic servant to feed five children. There were nights with empty stomachs, mornings when school came before breakfast. No electricity. Her mother sometimes could not afford a candle so the children could study. Mathinye wanted to become a teacher. She stayed in school and applied to study further, but her family had no money. She began working while still young to help her mother and siblings survive. Decades later, when she encountered former classmates who had become teachers and nurses, she carried the weight of the life she might have lived.

Ishmael Poho was six years old when his father left for the same meeting. His father told him to stay home, promised he would return. Poho saw him briefly that day—the last time. It took his mother three days to find his body. She searched police stations until she found him among corpses stacked in vehicle garages at one of the stations. His father had been the family's sole earner. His mother had never worked and did not speak English. She found work as a domestic servant in a nearby white neighborhood. As the children grew, they too worked to keep the household functioning. Now 72, Poho thinks about the teachers and nurses and health professionals he went to school with. "If my father was alive, I would have been different," he said. "My life would have been different from the life I have lived."

For more than six decades, survivors and the families of the dead were blocked from pursuing legal claims. In 1961, the apartheid government enacted the Indemnity Act, a law that shielded police and officials from civil and criminal liability for conduct related to the massacre. Victims and families attempted to seek redress immediately after 1960, but the law barred them. That barrier has stood for 66 years. Now, Lawyers for Human Rights has filed an application in the Gauteng High Court challenging the constitutionality of the Indemnity Act and seeking certification of a class action on behalf of survivors who were shot and dependents of those killed. The lawyers argue the Act created an unconstitutional legal barrier to justice. If the court grants the relief sought, individual claims for damages could then proceed. More than 70 survivors and relatives have expressed support for or interest in the litigation.

Mauleen Maine was not born when her uncle was killed at age 23. He had been the family's breadwinner. Her grandmother struggled financially after his death and eventually sold liquor to survive. She died without seeing the matter resolved. Maine's parents continued seeking redress. They too died without justice. Now 62, Maine is carrying forward the fight her grandmother began. She told Al Jazeera that compensation alone would not be enough. Her family wants better housing and educational opportunities for their children—a reckoning not just with what was lost in 1960, but with what might have been different in the decades that followed.

Vincent Thamae, a member of Voices of Sharpeville who has worked with survivors and families, argues the case cannot be reduced to a financial settlement. "It's not a question of the amount of money," he said. "It's the question of how much does it need for a change in the lives of the victims and survivors?" The effects of the massacre, he argues, reached beyond those who were shot. "The victims were not only those who were shot. We maintain even the whole township was a victim." Lawyers for Human Rights says the plaintiffs also want dialogue with the South African government about appropriate reparations and recognition. The formal court case, however, is narrower—a constitutional challenge to the Indemnity Act and a bid to certify the class action. The court has not yet ruled on the Act's constitutionality, nor has it determined government liability.

The urgency is acute. Mathinye is now 71. Poho is 72. Many of those directly affected by the massacre are elderly. Some who spent decades seeking redress have died without resolution. Charne Tracey-Mamdoo, a lawyer in the Strategic Litigation Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights, said the age of the survivors makes the case urgent. "They've already waited a very long time for this to happen and we are doing everything we can to just kind of move that process forward." Lawyers spent years locating surviving victims and witnesses, reconstructing claims, and gathering historical and expert evidence. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission formally awarded reparations to 51 Sharpeville survivors, but for many families, remembrance has not amounted to redress. Poho had hoped the democratic government that took office after apartheid would address the concerns of survivors. "We were happy that a Black government had stepped into office, and we were hopeful that our issues would be met and justice realised, only to realise it became worse. Nothing ever came." There is no clear timetable for the court proceedings. For these families, the story remains unfinished. And Mathinye is still asking the question she has carried since she was five: "Why did they shoot my father?"