South Africa commemorates Apartheid-era atrocities
Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) – President Cyril Ramaphosa will Tuesday lead the national commemoration of Human Rights Day under the theme, “Consolidating and Sustaining Human Rights Culture into the Future.”
The annual public holiday commemorates the 21 March, 1960 Sharpeville Massacre where police shot dead 69 anti-apartheid protesters.
The incident sent shockwaves around the world and sparked the first significant sanctions that saw South Africa isolated from the international community. Within weeks, the Congress of African Football suspended South Africa while FIFA, global football’s governing body followed suit in 1961. South Africa was only readmitted into the FIFA fold in 1990.
Human Rights Day also honours 35 people who were killed on 21 March 1985 when apartheid police targeted community members after a funeral in Uitenhage.
Ramaphosa noted that as part of the democratic dispensation, South Africa uses the event to promote respect for basic human rights for all and restore and uphold human dignity in line with the Bill of Rights. “This period also honours those who fought for liberation, and celebrates the many rights guaranteed under the Constitution, and which are the basis for building a united and inclusive, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society,” he said.
John Steenhuisen, the leader of the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said he will visit the family of a four-year-old girl who died tragically after falling into a pit-toilet at a school in Vaalbank in the Eastern Cape on Tuesday. He will then lead a delegation of DA public representatives to conduct an oversight visit to the school, where he will announce the party’s legal action to eradicate pit toilets across South Africa.
“This Human Rights Day, the DA will remind the ANC national government that proper sanitation is a fundamental human right that government must ensure all South Africans have access to,” he said.
-0- PANA CU/MA 21March2023
