Sharpeville Commission Gives No Findings

Press, Volume C, Issue 29421, 25 January 1961, Page 18

Sharpeville Commission Gives No Findings

tatton—Copy rig hi)

(N.Z. Press Associ

CAPE TOWN, January 23. The report of the oneman commission of inquiry into the Sharpeville shootings last March gives no findings or conclusions. It simply relates the events in which 67 Africans were killed and 176 injured as unfolded by the evidence given the commission. But another report criticises the police decision to use force to quell disturbances at Langa. near Cape Town, on the same day. About seven Africans were killed in these clashes. Both reports were tabled in the South African Parliament today. The Langa report—also by a one-man commission—criticised the police decision in three respects. It said the commanding officer should have tried to communicate an order to disperse to the chairman of the meeting, or the organisers, before using force. The three-minute warning that force would be used was an unreasonably short period to give 10,000 people time to disperse. Because of noise, the loudspeaker had been ineffective, and the commanding officer should have repeated the warning more than three times, and from different vantage points. The Pan African Congress had launched a national campaign on March 21 by announcing a march on the

Langa police station where arrest would be invited by refusing to carry passes, and by organising a stay-at-home strike, said the report. The report said the crowd at the Langa meeting had been mostly unarmed, but several persons had carried fire-arms. A policy statutory warning to disperse had been broadcast. but ignored. | After criticising the police decision to use force, the report said two baton charges had been carried out, during which several police, particularly African police, had acted in an undisciplined manner. From the time the crowd started attacking them, the police had been in constant danger, and the commanding officer had been justified in opening fire. The Sharpeville inquiry commissioner (Mr Justice P. J. Wessels) said that, in his opinion, it was not the commission’s task to report on the liability or responsibility of individuals.