SHARPEVILLE. As South Africans remembered the 1960 Sharpeville massacre that claimed 69 lives and galvanized the liberation movement into greater action, the government confirmed that it would not be galvanized into greater action by the daily massacre of 50 South Africans by criminals. "It's different," said a spokesman. "Murderers aren't racists."
At a moving ceremony at a BMW dealership on Sunday, the ANC released the official history of the 1960 massacre in four leather-bound volumes, describing how Jacob Zuma, aged 18, and Julius Malema, still just a fetus and armed only with a pointy stick, took on four battalions of boers at Sharpeville.
When the shooting had stopped all the boers were dead along with several dozen rapists and Tony Leon.
Asked if this version undermined the history of the civilian massacre, the ANC Youth League explained that history was "whatever the ANCYL says it is".
Official ANC historian Stalin Mxenge also rejected allegations that the ANC had hijacked the struggle legacy and achievements of the Pan Africanist Congress and its iconic leader Robert Sobukwe.
"Comrade Sobukwe never existed," explained Mxenge. "He was a cardboard cutout created by the boers to confuse and divide the Comrades."
He added that "Robert Sobukwe" had accidentally been left out in the rain after a rally in 1966 and had become "really soggy", triggering the beginning of the PAC's decline.
He said that he would love to stay and chat but had to get back to his darkroom where he was erasing the faces of PAC leaders from thousands of archival photographs.
Meanwhile the government has explained that the murder of 69 people in 1960 was a cause for national mourning and remembrance whereas the murder of 50 people every day throughout the country was "a major hassle and a bit of a downer".
"You can't compare them," explained Police Ministry spokesman Pussyfoot Maroga.
"Our murderers are not racists. They might be depriving their neighbours of life but they are not trying to take away their dignity or impose a racist regime."
Asked if the government would show the same fight against crime that it showed in liberating the country, Maroga said, "Meh."
hayibo.com
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