SHARPEVILLE

black township, Gauteng province, South Africa, a suburb of Vereeniging. It was the scene of racial troubles in 1960 when the Pan-Africanist Congress organized a nonviolent demonstration for the abolition of South Africa's pass laws. Participants were instructed to surrender their reference books (passes) and invite arrest. On March 21 some 20,000 Africans gathered near a police station in Sharpeville to demonstrate against the pass laws. They began stoning police and their armoured cars. The police opened fire with submachine guns, and there were heavy casualties. About 69 Africans were killed and 186 were wounded, 48 women and children being among the victims. A state of emergency was declared in South Africa, and some 1,700 persons were detained. Reports of this incident, one of the first and most violent major episodes of the 1960s in South Africa, helped focus international criticism on South Africa's apartheid policy. South African President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the city in which he signed into law the country's new post-apartheid constitution on Dec. 10, 1996. Pop. (1972 est.) 42,000.