SIMON TAYLOR: Living in a democracy is far more than just having a vote

The tragedy of Sharpeville is not only confined to the events of March 21 1960 but includes the legalisation of state violence against innocent citizens. This institutional devaluing of human life is arguably something from which SA society has never fully recovered.

By March 1960, apartheid as an explicit government policy had been functioning for 12 years. Throughout that period there had been numerous forms of protest against the policy. While the responses from the state had been forceful, rough-handed and certainly violated many of the rights to protest we now enjoy, there was nonetheless a clear line that the state did not cross. Joe Slovo once remarked there something of a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the protestors and the police: police might treat protestors harshly, but they would not seriously injure or kill anyone.

That all changed on March 21 1960. There is a reason this date was chosen as the beginning of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) investigations into gross abuses of human rights. On that day, the police opened fire on the protesters, killing 69 individuals, with many being shot in the back as they tried to flee. The police killing protesters was a heinous crime in itself, but what happened in the aftermath set SA down a path of violence and a devaluing of human life that reached a crescendo in the 1980s and early 1990s, and arguably we are still reeling from it.

When the police killed striking miners at Marikana in 2012, no-one was ever prosecuted for the killings, and many parallels were (rightly) drawn with Sharpeville. However, the fundamental difference between the two is the legal aftermath. Following the Sharpeville massacre not only were the police officers never investigated nor prosecuted for the killings, but government passed legislation, the Indemnity Act (1961), to retroactively indemnify the police and protect them from any legal consequences for killing innocent people. The legality of state violence against civilians was further cemented by the General Law Amendment Act (1962) and the Terrorism Act (1967), with the latter allowing for indefinite detention without trial. Whatever gentlemen’s agreement about protesting and police treatment that existed before was quickly brushed aside.

It was this triumvirate of legal foundations on which the violence of the apartheid state was built. For the next 30 years anyone acting on behalf of the state was free to inflict as much violence, death and destruction as they wished without fear of  consequences. The TRC estimated there were about 50,000 instances of torture at the hands of the police. Defendants would arrive for their court hearings with visible wounds, pleading with judges that their confessions were coerced via torture, but seldom received any sympathy from the robed gentleman of the court. The targeted killing of human rights lawyers, activists, students and academics became commonplace. The bombings of churches and trade union offices by police officers were routine in the 1980s.

The laws passed to indemnify state actors against prosecution for crimes against civilians directly contributed to the later formation of Vlakplaas as an agency of state terrorism and one of the world’s most notorious death squads. The state actors behind the “Third Force” wave of terror that rocked the country during the negotiations of the early 1990s continued their egregious attacks believing they would not be held accountable for their crimes. To this day barely any of the perpetrators have been arrested, much less successfully prosecuted for their human rights abuses.

The former government attempted to pass off such systemic violence as the work of a few bad apples. However, numerous testimonies at the TRC from former police officers, commissioners, and even some ministers, provide incontrovertible evidence that perpetrators were promoted for their actions. Some of the most notorious acts of state terror were committed following directives from then state president PW Botha such as Operation Zero-Zero, the bombing of Khotso House, and the targeted killing of the Pebco Three. 

Living in a democracy means far more than simply having a vote. It means not only that citizens have a say in how laws are created, but also in how they are implemented, especially in how the state uses force or violence against its own citizens. It is this civilian oversight over the state’s use of force that determines whether the violence is legitimate, and it is the belief and practice of this principle that means democracies tend to kill far fewer of their own citizens than other forms of government.

Commemorating Human Rights Day it is not limited to remembering those who died in the pursuit of a just and democratic SA, but also to serve as a reminder that as citizens we must be ever vigilant in defending democracy and holding the state accountable for its actions. While the legal institutions of SA are now bound by a Bill of Rights, socially and individually we still have a long way to go to internalise these rights to heal from wounds of the past.

• Taylor, a former senior foreign service officer in the department of international relations and co-operation, is founder of Ana Nzinga Research.