Sharpeville, South Africa – Paulina Mathinye was five years old when her father left home for a meeting near the police station in Sharpeville, a township south of Johannesburg. She remembers waiting for him to return. “I’ll go run to him,” Mathinye recalled thinking. “He will pick me up like daddies always do with their beloved daughters.” On March 21, 1960, Mathinye’s father joined other men from the community at a gathering protesting apartheid’s pass laws, which required Black South Africans to carry documents restricting where they could live and work. “There was a meeting here at the old police station, so he accompanies those fathers to the meeting. But then he never came back.” Police opened fire on the protesters that day in what became known as the Sharpeville Massacre. Apartheid-era police records put the death toll at 69 and the number of injured at 180.
Research published in 2024 using police records found that as many as 91 people may have been killed and 238 injured. The higher figures are also cited by lawyers representing Sharpeville survivors and families. The massacre became a defining moment in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. March 21 is now commemorated as Human Rights Day, and South Africa’s democratic Constitution was signed in Sharpeville in 1996.
But for the families of those killed and injured, the consequences did not end that day. More than six decades later, survivors and relatives are seeking redress through the courts. Lawyers for Human Rights has filed an application in the Gauteng High Court challenging the continued existence of the Indemnity Act 61 of 1961, an apartheid-era law that the applicants say prevented survivors and dependants of those killed from pursuing civil and criminal proceedings arising from the massacre. The applicants are also seeking certification of a class action involving survivors who were shot and dependants of those killed.
For Mathinye, the legal fight is inseparable from the life that followed her father’s death. He had been the family’s breadwinner. After he was killed, her mother worked as a domestic worker to support five children. “We sometimes go to bed with empty stomach. We sometimes go to school and when we come back from school we find nothing to eat.” There was no electricity, and sometimes her mother could not afford even a candle for the children to study. “There was no light.
There was no library. Struggle even to buy a candle, a mere candle.” Mathinye wanted to become a teacher. She stayed in school and applied to study further, but her family could not afford it. She eventually began working while still young to help support her mother and siblings.
When she encounters people she went to school with who became teachers and nurses, she thinks about the life she might have had. “If my father was not shot, maybe I was going to be one of those people… Maybe by this time I would be a teacher.” The effort to seek redress is not new. Charne Tracey-Mamdoo, a lawyer in the Strategic Litigation Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera that victims and families attempted to pursue claims soon after the massacre. “Immediately after the Sharpeville massacre, victims and families did attempt to pursue these sorts of claims, but they were barred because in 1961 the apartheid government enacted the Indemnity Act.” The applicants argue that the Act created a legal barrier to civil and criminal proceedings arising from conduct covered by the legislation. The current case challenges that barrier. Lawyers for Human Rights is asking the High Court to declare the Indemnity Act unconstitutional and invalid.
It is also seeking certification of a class action for survivors who were shot and dependants of those killed. The applicants must first persuade the court to grant the constitutional relief they seek and certify the proposed class action. If the case proceeds, individual claims for damages could then be pursued. More than 70 survivors and relatives have expressed support for or interest in the proposed litigation, according to Lawyers for Human Rights.
Tracey-Mamdoo said lawyers had spent years locating surviving victims and witnesses, reconstructing claims and gathering historical and expert evidence. The survivors’ age has added urgency. Many of those directly affected by the massacre are now elderly, and some who spent decades seeking redress have died without seeing the matter resolved. Ishmael Poho was six years old when his father left home for a community meeting on March 21.
Poho wanted to go with him. “He said, ‘No, I’ll come back. You need to stay home.’” Poho saw his father again briefly that day. “That was the last time I saw my father that day.” It took his mother three days to find his body. According to Poho’s account, related partly through an interpreter, his mother searched police stations before eventually finding him among bodies that had been placed in garages. “At that station, there were vehicle garages as part of the building and the infrastructure. However, bodies were piled up or stacked up in those garages,” the interpreter said.
His father’s death changed the family’s circumstances. His mother had never worked and did not speak English. She eventually found work as a domestic worker in a nearby white neighbourhood. As the children grew older, they also worked to support the household.
Poho, now 72, thinks about the people he went to school with who became teachers, nurses and other health professionals. “If my father was alive, I would have been different. My life would have been different from the life I have lived.” For Mauleen Maine, the loss began before she was born. Her uncle was 23 when he was killed. According to family history passed down by her grandmother, he had returned from a night shift, gone to buy bread and then returned to the meeting.
He had been the family’s breadwinner. After his death, Maine’s grandmother struggled financially and eventually sold liquor to survive. She died without seeing the matter resolved. Maine’s parents later continued seeking redress.
They too died without seeing justice. Now Maine, 62, is continuing the effort. She told Al Jazeera through an interpreter that compensation alone would not be enough. Her family also wants better housing and educational opportunities for their children.
For families like hers, the question is not only what was lost in 1960, but what might have been different in the decades that followed. For Vincent Thamae, a member of Voices of Sharpeville who has worked with survivors and families, the case cannot be reduced to compensation. “It’s not a question of the amount of money. It’s the question of how much does it need for a change in the lives of the victims and survivors?” Thamae argues that the effects of the massacre reached beyond those who were shot. “The victims were not only those who were shot,” he said. “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.
The applicants are challenging the Indemnity Act and seeking relief that would enable the proposed class action to proceed. The court has not yet ruled that the Act is unconstitutional, nor has it determined that the government is liable to compensate the applicants. That distinction matters because Sharpeville occupies a powerful place in South Africa’s democratic identity. It is remembered every year as a symbol of the struggle for human rights.
For some of the families who lived through the massacre, however, remembrance has not amounted to redress. Lawyers for Human Rights says 51 Sharpeville survivors were formally awarded reparations through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. Poho had expected the democratic government to address the concerns of survivors and families. “We were happy that a Black government had stepped into office, and we were hopeful that our issues would be met and, you know, justice realised, only to realise it became worse. Nothing ever came.” The government respondents will have an opportunity to respond to the application before the High Court considers the relief sought.
There is no clear timetable for the proceedings. For Tracey-Mamdoo, 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.” Mathinye is now 71. Poho is 72. Their fathers died more than six decades ago.
Their families have lived with the consequences ever since. Children grew up without fathers. Breadwinners were lost. Educational opportunities disappeared.
Mothers struggled to keep households afloat. And in some families, the next generation inherited not only the consequences of the massacre but also the fight for redress. Sharpeville is remembered as a turning point in South Africa’s history. 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?”
