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"On 21 March 1960 police opened fire on members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) protesting peacefully in the South African township of Sharpeville against apartheid's iniquitous 'pass laws'. Sixty-nine people died, many shot in the back. The shots fired that day in an obscure corner of South Africa reverberated around the world and Sharpeville became the symbol of the evil of the apartheid system." "This seminal event in the history of African nationalism has never been systematically documented. The Wessels Commission of Inquiry established to investigate the crisis never published a satisfactory final report. And in the four decades since the shooting the massacre has been so mythologised and contorted to serve various political interests as to preclude a thorough investigation."--Jacket.