196o, upstaging the ANC, they launched a campaign against the pass laws.
Large numbers of Africans assembled at police stations without
passes,
inviting arrest in the hope of clogging the machinery of justice. At the police
station at Sharpeville, near Johannesburg,
the police opened fire, killing 67
Africans and wounding
186, most of whom were shot in the back. In the
following weeks there were widespread work stoppages, and disturbances
in various parts of the country. In Cape Town, on March 30, a crowd of
Africans, estimated at between 15,000 and 3°,000,
marched in orderly
procession to the center of the city, near Parliament, which was in session;
but the police assured their leader, a twenty-three-year-old
university stu-
dent named Philip Kgosana, that the minister of justice would receive him
that evening if he would persuade the people to return home. He told them
to go, and they did so. That evening, when Kgosana reported, the police
arrested him.v?
As the disturbances
mounted, the government struck back fiercely. It
declared a state of emergency, mobilized the army reserves, outlawed the
ANC and the PAC, and arrested 98 Whites, 90 Indians, 36 Coloureds, and
11,279 Africans. The police jailed another 6,800 people, including the PAC