Today marks an important day in the history of South Africa.
On your desk calendar at work or in your diary it probably says "Human Rights Day". What does this actually mean and what actually happened on this day? Well today , Fifty years back, the oppressed people under the Apartheid regime decided to rise up against Government.
How you may ask? During Apartheid in South Africa non-white people who were living in and around towns and cities were permitted to carry a pass on them. This was a law and if one was caught without a "pass" one would be arrested or evicted out of the city.
So, people decided to go to the police stations with their pass and ask to be arrested. The ideology was that the prisons would be so full that the system would actually result in chaos. One Hundred and eighty people were injured in a protest at Sharpville-Gauteng and an estimate of sixty-seven people killed. Here are some of the rights these people were fighting for and are included in our "Bill of rights".
So, people decided to go to the police stations with their pass and ask to be arrested. The ideology was that the prisons would be so full that the system would actually result in chaos. One Hundred and eighty people were injured in a protest at Sharpville-Gauteng and an estimate of sixty-seven people killed. Here are some of the rights these people were fighting for and are included in our "Bill of rights".
- Equality (Section 9)
- Human dignity (Section 10)
- Freedom of expression (Section 16)
- Assembly, demonstration, picket and petition (Section 17)
- Freedom of association (Section 18) and
- Freedom of movement and residence (Section 21).
