Decades after apartheid, South Africans seek justice for crimes of the past
0 / 52
English
中文
A mass funeral is held in Sharpeville, South Africa, on March 30, 1960, for 69 people killed by police during an anti-apartheid protest. More than six decades later, victims' families are renewing their fight for justice. AP hide caption SHARPEVILLE, South Africa – Paulina Mathinye gestures with anguish at the rows of garbage-strewn graves, overrun with weeds, in the cemetery where her father is buried.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
"Look at that, where they sleep," she says of the dozens of Black protesters buried here, all of whom were killed when police opened fire on March 21, 1960 in what became one of the bloodiest days in apartheid history.
（暂无翻译）
"Why are they dirty?
（暂无翻译）
It's a disgrace," says the 71-year-old grandmother, who wears a floral dress and a smart sunhat. The cemetery, like much else in this visibly poor township about an hour's drive from Johannesburg, has been left to decay.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
But Mathinye notes that for one day a year at least, when South Africa's political elite descend to commemorate the massacre, the graveyard is spotless. The anniversary is a public holiday known as Human Rights Day. "I'm still angry.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
My anger comes out because that's the day my father was shot," says Mathinye, who was just five years old at the time. She says her father's part in what became a turning point in the struggle against apartheid has not been sufficiently recognized by the current democratic government.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
And she says she wants justice – however delayed.
（暂无翻译）
Paulina Mathinye stands at her father's graveside at a cemetery in Sharpeville, South Africa, on 23 September, 2026.
（暂无翻译）
Kate Bartlett/NPR hide caption That's why she's signed up to take part in a potential class action lawsuit 66 years later, along with Sharpeville survivors and the families of Sharpeville victims. At least 69 people were shot by police that day.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
They had been demonstrating against the country's pass laws – which restricted black people's movements and where they could live and work.
（暂无翻译）
While it's unclear if any perpetrators are still alive, those taking part in the case hope it could lead to reparations. But first, the group's lawyers must challenge an apartheid-era law that continues to block their efforts to seek legal redress.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
The law remains in force decades after apartheid ended and a Black-majority government took power.
（暂无翻译）
In September they filed an application in the Gauteng High Court challenging the continued existence of the Indemnity Act 61 of 1961. If the court finds the law unconstitutional, and also certifies a class action for survivors and dependants of those killed, then claims for individual damages could follow.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Mathinye says the repercussions of that day in 1960 have affected her whole life. Without her father, the main breadwinner, she couldn't finish school.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
That, in turn, affected the lives of her children and grandchildren.
（暂无翻译）
"So we struggled a lot. And we are still struggling now, because nothing has been happening," she told NPR.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
If the case goes ahead and succeeds, Mathinye says she'll use any money from reparations to fix up her modest home and pay for her four grandkids' educations. The Sharpeville case is just one in a new wave of legal efforts that are seeking truth, accountability and reparations for apartheid-era crimes before it's too late.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
"It's crucial that these issues of deep injustice are properly dealt with and that South Africa confronts them and does not sweep them under the carpet," says Daniel Leader, an international human rights lawyer advising the South African legal team representing the Sharpeville survivors and families.
（暂无翻译）
Other cases include a court ruling last year that found South Africa's first Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Chief Albert Luthuli, was beaten to death by apartheid police in 1967.
（暂无翻译）
Luthuli, the former leader of the African National Congress — Nelson Mandela's party — had previously been ruled to have died after being struck by a train.
（暂无翻译）
The new ruling overturned the finding of an earlier inquest.
（暂无翻译）
The inquest into the 1985 killings of four anti-apartheid activists known as the "Cradock Four" has also been reopened. The activists were abducted and killed by apartheid security forces near the Eastern Cape town of Cradock.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Although the officers involved are all dead, the victims' families hope the inquest will establish who ordered the killings. And the inquest into the torture and death of Steve Biko, the iconic Black Consciousness leader who died in police detention in 1977, has also returned to court. "It's very clear that the murder of Steve Biko was exactly that, murder," Biko's son Nkosinathi told media in September at the reopened inquest.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
"We hope that this inquest will eventually get to this very certain, unambiguous finding."
（暂无翻译）
The family of Steve Biko, South African Black Consciousness leader, await the start of an inquest into his prison death in Pretoria, Nov. 14, 1977. From left to right: his older brother Kaya Biko; his widow Nontsikelelo Biko; his sister Nobanile Mvovo; and his mother, Alice Biko.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Anonymous/CAPE ARGUS/AP hide caption The original inquest in 1977 heard from members of the security branch who said Biko had fallen and hit his head in a "scuffle with security police." The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a court-like restorative justice body set up in the 1990s to uncover the truth about human rights violations during apartheid, re-examined the Biko case. It denied amnesty to security officers who testified, saying they hadn't been truthful.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
That essentially cleared the way for possible prosecutions, but they never happened.
（暂无翻译）
In fact, hundreds of the TRC's recommendations for prosecutions were delayed or never pursued.
（暂无翻译）
Last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa established a formal inquiry to investigate whether the recommendations were deliberately shelved. The inquiry is looking into whether there was a secret deal between the old leaders of the apartheid regime and the country's new Black leaders not to prosecute cases in the interests of reconciliation.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Its findings are due in December. Back at the Sharpeville cemetery, Paulina Mathinye and three other descendants of those killed in the massacre, pause in front of a memorial plaque before exiting the graveyard.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Vincent Thamae, from the NGO, Voices of Sharpeville which works with survivors and descendants asks that they take leave of the dead. "We ask of those who are sleeping here to be with us as we pursue justice for them," he says.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
仅供学习使用，如有侵权请联系删除 · 查看原文