To commemorate Human Rights Day, Special Collections is showcasing three books from our collections:

Life in the time of Sharpeville—and wayward seeds of a new South Africa by Humphrey Tyler.

Humphrey Tyler was the only reporter in the crowd at Sharpeville on March 21 1960, when the police killed 69 people and wounded 178. It was an event that changed history. This book is the eye-witness, very human, story of times that were sometimes tragic but often also exhilarating.

Link to the catalogue: UnivofPretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/34382731

An Ordinary Atrocity: Sharpeville and Its Massacre by Philip Frankel.

The shots fired on 21 March 1960 in an obscure corner of South Africa reverberated around the world and Sharpeville became the symbol of the evil of the apartheid system. This seminal event in the history of African nationalism was never systematically documented, and in the decades since the shooting the massacre has been so mythologised and contorted to serve various political interests as to preclude a thorough investigation. This book corrects that deficiency. Drawing on a wide range of sources—from policemen to survivors and families of victims—he tells the raw and hitherto invisible story of this watershed moment in South Africa’s history.

Link to the catalogue: UnivofPretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/47270170

Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and Its Consequences by Tom Lodge.

The Sharpeville Massacre signalled the start of armed resistance in South Africa, and prompted worldwide condemnation of South Africa’s Apartheid policies. The events at Sharpeville deeply affected the attitudes of both black and white in South Africa and provided a major stimulus to the development of an international ‘Anti-Apartheid’ movement. In this book, Tom Lodge presents a reassessment of the crisis that led to the Massacre, looking at the social and political background to the events of March 1960, as well as the sequence of events that prompted the shootings themselves. Lodge looks at the long-term consequences of Sharpeville, explaining how it crucially affected South African politics over the following decades, both domestically and also in the country’s relationship with the rest of the world.

Link to the catalogue: UnivofPretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/679931154

These books are available at Special Collections, housed on level 5 of the Merensky 2 Library, and belong to our Africana (ZA) Collection.

The Special Collections unit of the Department of Library Services plays a stewardship role in the acquisition and preservation of the Library's rare and valuable information resources, making them accessible to students, staff and researchers, as well as safeguarding them for future generations.