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Sharpeville must be remembered as Sharpeville
The 1960 murder of black protesters was a turning point in the awareness of racism globally, but today in South Africa, we are allowing it to be remembered simply as Human Rights Day, TSOANA NHLAPO tells Roger McKenzie
Thousands gather at the graveyard after the massacre

FOR Tsoana Nhlapo, chief executive of the Sharpeville Foundation in South Africa, the fight to keep alive the memory of the massacre that took place in March 1960 is a vital one.

Nhlapo says it is still important to remember what happened in the black township of Sharpeville, some 30 miles from Johannesburg, where the apartheid regime’s police murdered at least 69 black people and wounded about 180.

The massacre took place during one of the first open and most violent demonstrations against apartheid and is marked globally on March 21 each year as the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

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