South Africa's Apartheid Immunity Law Faces Legal Challenge After 66 Years

JOHANNESBURG. Abraham Mofokeng, 86, still carries a bullet lodged in his spine from March 21, 1960. Sixty-six years after apartheid police opened fire on unarmed protesters at Sharpeville, a legal challenge now seeks to overturn the indemnity law that has shielded perpetrators from criminal prosecution since 1961. Lawyers for Human Rights, a South African non-governmental organisation, and UK-based firm Leigh Day announced the case Thursday. Their goal is to strike down the 1961 Indemnity Act as unconstitutional and secure class action certification for dozens of survivors and relatives of the dead to sue the state collectively. The massacre killed at least 69 people and injured more than 200. Recent research by South African scholars places the death toll as high as 91. Police fired more than 1,300 bullets into a crowd protesting pass laws that restricted Black South Africans' movement and employment. The scale of the violence was staggering. The legal silence that followed has lasted longer still. The indemnity law closed every avenue for criminal charges or civil claims against those involved, and it has remained on South Africa's statute books through more than three decades of democratic rule following the 1994 constitution. Constitutional law expert Prof Frans Viljoen explained why. "If there were laws in our statute book in 1994, the constitution explicitly says they remain in force until parliament repeals them, abolishes them or changes them," Viljoen said, pointing to the principle of continuity of statehood as the reason earlier legislation persists without fresh parliamentary action. By contrast, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process produced no accountability for Sharpeville specifically. No police officers applied for amnesty to the Commission for the shootings. The justice department acknowledged that 560 TRC-recognised victims of apartheid-era violence received individual grants totalling approximately 31 million dollars, a figure the community's lawyers consider inadequate and incomplete. Approximately 70 people are expected to join the class action. Lawyer Charne Tracey said the community seeks "reparations to enable their healing" and considers Sharpeville "a forgotten community." A successful class action would open a new avenue for civil claims and potentially enable criminal charges against alleged perpetrators still living. Mofokeng, who has carried that bullet for six and a half decades, framed the stakes plainly. "Apartheid is dead and buried. A win would bring complete healing, not just for us, but for future generations as well," he told the BBC. The government, for its part, told the BBC it supported apartheid victims and would not oppose survivors pursuing legal remedies. Whether parliament will act to repeal or amend the 1961 Indemnity Act before the courts rule on its constitutionality remains the central question hanging over the case.