Decades after apartheid, South Africans seek justice for crimes of the past

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.

"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.

"Why are they dirty? 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. 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. 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.

And she says she wants justice – however delayed.

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. They had been demonstrating against the country's pass laws – which restricted black people's movements and where they could live and work.

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. The law remains in force decades after apartheid ended and a Black-majority government took power.

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. 

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. That, in turn, affected the lives of her children and grandchildren.

"So we struggled a lot. And we are still struggling now, because nothing has been happening," she told NPR.

If the case goes ahead and succeeds, Paulina says she'll use any money from reparations to fix up her modest home and pay for her four grandkids' educations.

Part of a wider trend

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.

"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.

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.

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. The new ruling overturned the finding of an earlier inquest.

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. 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. "We hope that this inquest will eventually get to this very certain, unambiguous finding."

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. That essentially cleared the way for possible prosecutions, but they never happened.

In fact, hundreds of the TRC's recommendations for prosecutions were delayed or never pursued. 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. 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.

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.