Proving a Secret Massacre: The Case of South Africa’s Bloody Sunday, East London, 9 November 1952

Abstract

When the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of 1996/97 was tasked with investigating gross human rights violations from 1 March 1960 to 1994, there was a presumption that apartheid atrocities began with the massacre at Sharpeville in which police shot and killed 69 people. That massacre, on 21 March 1960, is also thought to have been the largest single-day mass killing by police in the apartheid era. Research on the African National Congress (ANC) Defiance Campaign of 1952 questions both presumptions. There were numerous clashes between police and protesters that involved extensive police violence but have been remembered as ‘riots’. The worst was in East Bank Location/Duncan Village, East London, on 9 November 1952. Police broke up an ANC Youth League-organised meeting and over the next few hours shot and killed an untold number of people. Estimates of the death toll range from an official figure of eight to more than 200, with two white people killed by enraged crowds in retaliation. Until recently the events were clouded in secrecy. This article draws on the now extensive historiography on the day as well as new archival and field research and international literature on mass killings. It concludes that the police killings on South Africa’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ should be recognised as a massacre that was covered up by both sides.