“March 21 is the day on which we remember and sing praises to those who perished in the name of democracy and human dignity.” – Nelson Mandela.

​A few days before March 21, 1960, South African anti-segregation activists notified police in Sharpeville that they would initiate a series peaceful rallies to express their dissent with a new law that required black people to carry passes or face prison. Essentially, the document was aimed at segregating the black community from the white despotic Dutch colonizers, who against any respect to human rights and international law, oppressed the people that had welcomed them to their country. The white community was fine with exploiting the black people of South Africa, but didn't want them living among them.

And despite all the humiliation and subhuman treatment, the anti-segregation movement stayed peaceful. In spite of being stripped of their homes and sent to squalid townships specifically designed to house the black community apart from the white, oppressive and highly racist community, South Africa blacks and anti-segregationists refrained from resorting to violence.

This candid attitude would not pay off nor would the courtesy of notifying authorities of the protests, as exactly 55 years ago a legitimate demand for respect of their rights, would rapidly degenerate into a massacre, whereby 69 people were cowardly killed and about 300 injured. Many of the victims were shot in the back as they ran for their lives after realizing that police – integrated by all white people – were there to violently repress them. No protesters was armed.

That Fatal Day in Sharpeville

It was early on a Sunday exactly 55 years ago, when as widely announced, the people of Sharpeville, then a township of about 25,000 people, began to descend toward the local police station to express their repudiation to the new law which basically segregated the white community from the black, which were forced to live in very poor conditions.

An estimated 5,000 people had begun to gather that morning, and the ruling white oppressors sent various fighter jets hoping to intimidate the crowds and force them to desist from demonstrating. Since that did not result as they had planned, they sent various armored vehicles and then a group of heavily armed police to confront the swelling crowds.

Some 20,000 people had poured into the unpaved streets of the town signing and dancing, and by no means armed, not even with sticks.

Suddenly, according to witnesses, screaming broke out and panic spread profusely as people where being beaten by inexplicably irate police. Then, screams were drowned by heavy gun fire.

“People were running in all directions … some couldn't believe that people had been shot, they thought they had heard firecrackers. Only when they saw the blood and dead people, did they see that the police meant business," explained Humphrey Tyler, assistant editor of Drum magazine, who was there at the time.

As the streets cleared and the dust settled, many bodies could be seen scattered, mangled, inert, including those of many children. People injured could be heard moaning, wounded, dazzled by the violent response which they could not comprehend.

"I don't know how many people we shot," said Colonel J. Piernaar, then local police commander at Sharpeville. "It all started when hordes of natives surrounded the police station. My car was struck by a stone. If they do these things they must learn their lesson the hard way."

This testimony was published by the Guardian the day after the incident, while in light of international condemnation the Dutch authorities began justifying the massacre by falsely accusing the protesters of shooting at police, trespassing businesses and homes and causing senseless destruction.

But the crude reality is evident and undeniable: A massive crime of racism had been perpetrated, fomenting the genesis of a worldwide movement to create racial discrimination awareness, which, however, has not been all that successful considering the global culture of prejudice, xenophobia, and human exploitation.

South Africa to date is one of the most racist countries in the world, a precedent set there by right-wing oppressive white colonizers. Apartheid would later be imposed and persist until 1992, after years of struggle led by many African activists and leaders, including Nelson Mandela, perhaps one of the world's most important symbols of anti-racism.

At the time of the massacre Mandela was on five-year trial along with other African National Congress (ANC) leaders, who were arrested in 1956 because of their growing influence among the black community inspiring them to fight for their their civil rights.

“The massacre at Sharpeville created a new situation in the country,” said Mandela in his autobiography, “A Long Walk to Freedom.”

He was mainly referring to a turning point were the ANC and its offshoot PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) had realized that their peaceful approach to apartheid or segregation had no effect and were weighing the possibility of becoming more aggressive. And in fact, after both movements being banned April 8, 1960, the ANC and PAC decided to shift from policies of passive resistance to those of “armed struggle.”

The Inception of CERD

In December 1960, following incidents of Sharpeville, as well as many other instances of  violence stemming from racial discrimination in several parts of the world, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning "all manifestations and practices of racial, religious and national hatred" as violations of the United Nations Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the late 1940s.

The resolution also called on governments of all countries to "take all necessary measures to prevent all manifestations of racial, religious and national hatred."

(Photo: AFP)

Motivated by the cruelty and violent repression that led to the Sharpeville massacre, the United Nations General Assembly in 1965, proclaimed March 21 the International Day of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD), Jose Francisco Cali Itzay, the head of the CERD, told teleSUR.

Three years later, the United Nations promoted the creation of the The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which is monitored by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). This body also serves as an individual complaints mechanism, effectively making it enforceable against its parties, which as of 2013 totaled 177.

The 2015 IDERD theme is "Learning from historical tragedies to combat racial discrimination today," which Cali Itzay said aims to explore the root causes of racism and racial discrimination and will stress the essential need to learn the lessons history has provided in order to combat racism and racial discrimination today.

Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon instructed that this year’s activities of the IDERD take place in New York and Geneva, where panelists will speak about the importance of preserving the historical memory of past human rights tragedies, including slavery, the slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, apartheid, colonialism and genocide, which have led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

“Since the General Assembly adopted a program of activities in 1979 to be undertaken to combat racism and racial discrimination, the apartheid system in South Africa has been dismantled. racist laws and practices have been abolished in many countries, and we have built an international framework for fighting racism,” the U.N. stated on its website.

However, the international body recognized that in all regions of the world, “too many individuals, communities and societies suffer from the injustice and stigma that racism brings.”

It also added that racial and ethnic discrimination occur on a daily basis, hindering progress for millions of people around the globe. “Racism and intolerance can take various forms — from denying individuals the basic principles of equality to fueling ethnic hatred that may lead to genocide — all of which can destroy lives and fracture communities,” the U.N. stated.

(Photo_ Reuters)

Brief History of Racism

Author and Scholar Robert Nielsen wrote on his online blog an essay entitled “Terrible Parts Of The Bible,” in which he dedicated a part to racism. He emphasizes the constant claim the Jews are the chosen people. He quotes Deuteronomy chapter 7, in which “God tells the Israelites” that there are other ethnic groups living in the promised land that are larger and stronger than them, and instead of calling on tolerance or peace, it says: “Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations ... yo shall smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them nor shew mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them.”

Nielsen adds, “This isn’t the only time the Israelites exterminated others, God commands the Israelites to exterminate another people, not for any crime but merely because they are a different ethnic group with a different religion. This exceeds even the Ku Klux Klan level of racism.”

Prejudice against people who look different goes back to the beginning of recorded history. Although up until a few hundred years ago, discrimination was not about race or color, but about the alleged differences between civilized people and barbarians. And for many years it was about military dominance and anybody could be a slave.

But after the demise of the Roman Empire, the main factor dividing Europeans and other peoples was not race, but religion. The figures for the numbers of people enslaved in ancient Greece are astonishing, as there were three or four slaves for each free household, according to historian David Tannard.

He estimated that between the first and second centuries A.D., nearly half the population of Italy were slaves, mostly prisoners captured in Roman wars.

Thomas Cole's 'The Fall of Rome'

Many historians agree that while slaves might have originally been regarded as infidels or barbarians, who could be treated with great cruelty, they were not seen as a class of essentially inferior beings.

Theorists, economists and historians alike agree that slavery is not the cause of racism, but rather racism the consequence of slavery.

Racism is a particular form of oppression, experts have explained, adding that it stems from discrimination against a group of people based on the idea that some are inferior or superior to others.

Lance Selfa, author and frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review, and who  writes a column on U.S. politics for the Socialist Worker newspaper, stated that the concepts of "race" and "racism" are modern inventions. “They arose and became part of the dominant ideology of society in the context of the African slave trade at the dawn of capitalism in the 1500s and 1600s.”

Selfa added that Karl Marx described the processes that created modern racism and that his explanation of the rise of capitalism placed the African slave trade, the European extermination of indigenous people in the Americas, and colonialism at its heart.

Lance Selfa (Photo: International Socialist Organization)

Trinidadian historian of slavery Eric Williams once wrote, "Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery."

Selfa said, “And, one should add, the consequence of modern slavery at the dawn of capitalism. While slavery existed as an economic system for thousands of years before the conquest of America, racism as we understand it today did not exist.”

In conclusion, as long as capitalism exists, so will racial discrimination. And today many people, including experts, feel it will never be eradicated, a belief that is strengthened by the United Nations’ recognition that there are groups of people that are more vulnerable to racial discrimination than others, such as migrants, women, people with disabilities, and minorities.

However, the head of the CERD, Jose Francisco Cali Tzay expressed optimism in an interview with teleSUR that education from an early age will ultimately end racial discrimination.