About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

1960

January : A calamity in the mines occurs when 440 miners are entombed at Clydesdale colliery, Coalbrook as the mine collapses over them and they cannot escape.

February : The people of Pondoland rise up against the imposition of Bantustans.

March 21 - The PAC (Pan-African Congress) newly formed in 1959 by a break-away group led by Robert Sobukwe, holds anti-pass demonstration in Sharpeville, near Vereeniging. The police open fire and shoot people fleeing. 69 are killed and hundreds injured. The news is spread world-wide. The ANC calls for a nation-wide stay-at-home.

March 30 - A State of Emergency is declared and over 2000 people are arrested.

Under the Unlawful Organisations Act the ANC and PAC are banned

14 July the SACP announces it is functioning underground (having dissolved itself in 1950)

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.