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The mass murder that signalled the end of apartheid
MARC WADSWORTH reports from the meeting to commemorate the Sharpeville Massacre 65 years ago
MEMORY SERVES US RIGHT: (L to R) Activists at The Liberation Movement event; Sharpeville massacre memorial, in Brixton 2018

AMANDLA, the Xhosa and Zulu word meaning power, was repeatedly responded to with “Ngawethu” – “the power is ours” – at The Liberation Movement’s (TLM) UN Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination event that commemorated South Africa’s Sharpeville massacre of peaceful protesters 65 years ago. 

The upraised clenched fist that accompanied the defiant words symbolises solidarity and support which was a key symbol of the black South African liberation movement.
 
A dozen British-based South Africans joined many other community and trade union activists at the central London event on March 21 that had a decidedly internationalist outlook. 

Among the speakers was Finland’s first black woman member of parliament, Bella Asha Maria Belaynesh Forsgren, a leading Green League politician, who could not attend in person but sent a moving video message.

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