The World : Blacks Strike in S. Africa
Hundreds of thousands of black South Africans defied the white-led government and staged a national protest strike marking the 28th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre. The protest was widespread in the Johannesburg-Pretoria area, in Durban and around the eastern Cape province city of Port Elizabeth. Police estimated that 40% of the 800,000 black workers around Johannesburg stayed home. But there was no specific call for a strike in the Cape Town area, and major mining companies reported little or no disruption of their operations. The protest commemorated the killing of 69 blacks in 1960 when police fired on thousands of demonstrators protesting South Africa’s pass laws, which restricted blacks’ freedom of movement.
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