Families of 1961 Sharpeville massacre victims take South African government to court

The morning of 21 March 1960 began brightly as residents of the South African township of Sharpeville gathered to protest against pass laws, which required Black, Indian and Coloured South Africans to carry documents specifying where they were permitted to be at all times.

Abraham Mofokeng, then a 20-year-old factory worker, joined the march, one of dozens organised nationwide by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway group from the African National Congress. "The weather was very nice, the sun was out. You could not have suspected that the day would go so horribly," he said.

Now 86, Mofokeng was among the thousands gathered peacefully outside the police station in Sharpeville, located about 40 miles south of Johannesburg in an industrialised region known as the Vaal Triangle.

The crowd was singing, he said, when officers opened fire without warning. At least 91 people were killed and 238 injured in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre.

As Mofokeng fled, a bullet grazed the inside of his right foot, tearing off his shoe. A woman fell to the ground before him; he jumped over her and kept running. Only later, when he noticed blood running down his legs, did he realise he had been shot in the back, with a bullet remaining lodged in his spine.

Mofokeng is among three claimants suing the South African government, in a case filed on Thursday, for compensation for the massacre. If successful, dozens more could file claims.

The case forms part of a wave of litigation seeking justice for apartheid-era crimes, amid widespread disillusionment with ANC-led governments that have failed to address South Africa's racial inequality and poverty since the end of apartheid over three decades ago.

In January 2025, 25 survivors and relatives of victims of apartheid state violence sued South Africa's government for failing to prosecute cases referred to it by the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That May, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a judicial inquiry into potential political interference, which is still ongoing.

Spokespeople for South Africa's justice department did not respond to a request for comment on the Sharpeville compensation case.

In the immediate aftermath, police claimed that protesters had been throwing rocks at them. Colonel J Pienaar, the local police commander, was reported by CuriosityNews the following day as saying: "I don't know how many we shot. It all started when hordes of natives surrounded the police station. My car was struck with a stone. If they do these things they must learn their lesson the hard way."

In July 1961, in response to victims filing compensation claims, the white minority regime passed a law indemnifying the government and anyone acting under its authority for actions taken "in good faith for the prevention or suppression of internal disorder, the maintenance or restoration of good order, public safety or essential services, or the preservation of life or property."

The law, made effective retrospectively from the date of the massacre, remains in force. The claimants' legal team argues that it is unconstitutional.

The claimants hope to receive compensation of about 500,000 rand (£23,000), according to Daniel Leader, a partner with UK law firm Leigh Day, which is advising the South African legal team led by Lawyers For Human Rights.

Mofokeng was awarded 30,000 rand as a one-off payment after the TRC concluded in 2003. The TRC had recommended annual reparations payments of around 20,000 rand for six years.

"We continued to suffer," said Mofokeng, who still lives in Sharpeville. "Especially now ... I am struggling and my health is not up to standard."

The other two test claimants were children when their fathers were killed. Paulina Mathinye was five when her father Samson was shot. "Every time he came back from work, I would be so happy to see him that I would run to him, and then he would pick me up," she said.

Mathinye did not initially understand what had happened. "I kept on asking my mum: 'Mummy, why are you crying?'"

Her mother struggled to raise five children on a domestic worker's wages, and Mathinye, who had wanted to train as a teacher but could not afford the bursary, left education at 17 to find work.

Now 71, Mathinye said she hoped compensation would make up for some of what she lost. "Some of my friends are teachers, some of them are nurses, and I'm staying in the same house that my father did."

Vincent Thamae, a PAC member supporting the victims, said Sharpeville's problems stemmed from the dispossession of Black South Africans from productive land, forced removals to townships, and exclusion from the economy. "When people talk about compensation now," he said, "compensation is a concept to them that includes all the land that they lost, the economy that they were taken out of and even how they have been treated in the new democracy."