Proving a Secret Massacre: The Case of South Africa’s Bloody Sunday, East London, 9 November 1952

Figures & data

Figure 1. East London circa 1952. (Source: M. Breier, Bloody Sunday: The Nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre, Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2021; published with the permission of the publishers.)

Figure 2. Police preventing journalists from entering Frere Hospital. (Source: Daily Dispatch, 10 November 1952. Cutting from King Dominican Archives, Johannesburg.)

Table 1. A comparison between the size and armoury of police and crowd at Duncan Village, 1952, and Sharpeville, 1960

	Crowd	Crowd weapons	Police numbers		Police weapons		Rounds fired	Duration of police massacre	Ratio of crowd numbers to police
			Total	Race	White policemen	Black policemen
East Bank Location/ Duncan Village^a	700 to 1,500	One loaded gun found, two shots heard (police version only), stones	109	‘Half’ black	Batons, .303 rifles with fixed bayonets, Sten guns, revolvers. Two armoured cars (Saracens) in area. No evidence they were used.	Batons	Unknown	In two stages. First, about 10 minutes, including two baton charges before shooting, according to police. Second, from about 5.30 p.m. to at least 9 p.m., shooting only	6:1 (lowest crowd to police estimate, all police) 14:1 (all police)
Sharpeville	18,000 to 25,000^b	Stones, possibly knives and chains and some small- calibre guns belonging to tsotsis. Two shots fired by Geelbooi Mofokeng, who had been assaulted by police some days before, precipitated the police reaction.^c	294^d	156 white, 138 black	.25 pistol (7), .38 pistol (87), .303 rifle (73), Sten gun (20), plus sidearms held by CID and Special Branch members, plus four Browning heavy machine guns on Saracens (not fired).	Assegais, knobkerries and bayonets	1,344	Less than one minute	61:1 (lowest crowd to police estimate, all police) 85:1 (highest crowd to police estimate) CID and Special Branch and machine gun operators not counted

Notes: ^aFor detailed police statements, see M. Breier, Bloody Sunday: The Nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2021); ^bThis is the range estimated by Philip Frankel in An Ordinary Atrocity: Sharpeville and its Massacre (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 2001), p. 97. Tom Lodge, in Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 94, estimated a maximum crowd of 20,000. ^cLodge, Sharpeville, p. 105; Frankel, An Ordinary Atrocity, pp. 94, 113. ^dFrankel, An Ordinary Atrocity, p. 108.

Figure 3. Record of the deaths of two infant patients of Dr Elsie Quinlan’s in the East London death register, 1952. (Source: Western Cape Archives, East London Register of Deaths, KAB, 3/ELN, HAEC, 1/2/6/6/18.)

Figure 4. The death certificate for Henry Lavans. (Source: ‘South Africa, Cape Province, Civil Records, 1840–1972’, database with images, FamilySearch, accessed at https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2QM-8J68, retrieved 10 March 2021. Henry Lavans, 10 November 1952, East London, Cape Province, South Africa; citing National Archives, Pretoria; FHL microfilm 1,796,207.)

Figure 5. The Dominican photo album with the Daily Dispatch photograph of police preventing entry to Frere Hospital, their own caption and anonymous notes on the massacre. (Source: King Dominican Archives, Johannesburg.)

Figure 6. Map of cemeteries in Buffalo City Municipality. (Source: M. Breier, private collection.) Note: The more than 200 informal burial grounds are marked on this map but not visible in this figure. The circles indicate the official cemeteries.

Figure 7. The grave of Alcott Gwentshe in the otherwise abandoned Mzonyana cemetery. (Source: M. Breier, private collection.)