More than six decades after apartheid police opened fire on peaceful protesters in the South African township of Sharpeville, survivors and relatives of those killed have launched a landmark legal case demanding compensation from the government. Three test claimants filed the suit on Thursday, and if it succeeds, dozens more could follow — making it one of the most significant attempts yet to secure financial redress for apartheid-era violence.
On 21 March 1960, thousands of Black South Africans gathered outside the Sharpeville police station — located roughly 40 miles south of Johannesburg in the heavily industrialised Vaal Triangle — to protest against pass laws, which required Black, Indian and Coloured citizens to carry documents at all times specifying where they were permitted to be. Without warning, officers opened fire on the crowd. Between 69 and 91 people were killed and more than 200 wounded, in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre. The event shocked the world and came to symbolise the brutality of apartheid rule. Abraham Mofokeng, now in his late eighties, was a 20-year-old factory worker that day. He recalls the crowd singing in the sunshine before the shooting began. As he fled, a bullet grazed his foot and another struck his back, where it remains lodged in his spine to this day. "We continued to suffer," he said. "Especially now … I am struggling and my health is not up to standard."
The central legal obstacle facing the claimants is a law passed by the white minority government in July 1961, just over a year after the massacre, which indemnified the state and anyone acting under its authority for actions taken "in good faith" to suppress internal disorder. Crucially, the law was made retroactively effective from the date of the massacre, and it remains on the statute books today. The legal team — led by the South African NGO Lawyers for Human Rights and advised by UK firm Leigh Day — is seeking to have this Indemnity Act declared unconstitutional, and to have massacre survivors and victims' relatives certified as a class eligible to pursue individual damages claims. The case names the president, the minister of police and the minister of justice as defendants.
The claimants are seeking approximately 500,000 rand (around £23,000) each. This stands in stark contrast to the one-off payment of 30,000 rand that Mofokeng received following South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which concluded in 2003 and had recommended annual reparations of around 20,000 rand over six years — recommendations the government never fully implemented. Fellow claimant Paulina Mathinye, who was five years old when her father Samson was shot dead, says decades of economic hardship followed his death. Unable to afford further education, she left school at 17. "Some of my friends are teachers, some of them are nurses, and I'm staying in the same house that my father did," she said.
The case reflects growing frustration among South Africans who feel the post-apartheid democratic transition failed to deliver economic justice. It follows a separate suit filed in January 2025 by 25 survivors and families, who sued the government for failing to prosecute cases referred to it by the TRC — a matter that prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce a judicial inquiry into potential political interference, which remains ongoing. For many in Sharpeville, compensation is inseparable from broader questions of land dispossession and economic exclusion. "Compensation is a concept to them that includes all the land that they lost, the economy that they were taken out of," said Vincent Thamae, a PAC member who supports the victims and their families. South Africa's justice department did not respond to requests for comment.