From a massacre in apartheid South Africa to ‘feel good’ multiculturalism: The dark history of Harmony Day

It was the early hours of the morning, on March 21, 1960, when a crowd began to coalesce outside a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville.

The peaceful protesters were calling for the removal of the so-called “pass laws”, an apartheid system that forced Black South Africans to carry an internal passport which meant they could not travel freely through the country. 

Organisers had urged demonstrators to leave their passes at home, which was against the law, positing that it wouldn’t be possible to arrest thousands of people. Outside the station, some of the demonstrators burnt their documents on bonfires. 

By lunchtime, the crowd had grown to thousands of people. Hundreds of police officers had also gathered, but for the most part, first-hand accounts suggest the mood was peaceful.

Exactly what triggered the shift is unclear. What we know is that chaos and confusion took over and an officer opened fire. His colleagues then followed. 

Sixty-nine unarmed protesters were killed and hundreds more were injured in what would later become known as the Sharpeville massacre. 

Less than a decade after the Sharpeville massacre, the United Nations proclaimed March 21 the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.(Flickr: www.thejournalist.org.za )From massacre to Harmony Day

Photos and video of peaceful protesters fleeing the barrage of bullets with jackets held over their heads sent shock waves around the world. 

Writing in The Conversation, Steven Wheatley, a professor of international law at Lancaster University, says moral outrage at the killings prompted the development of modern international human rights law. 

Six years after the massacre, the United Nations officially named March 21 the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 

But in Australia, unlike the rest of the world, the anniversary has a different name: Harmony Day. 

“If you think about the difference between those two concepts, harmony is a very positive thing, it makes you feel good,” says Associate Professor Christina Ho, who researches migration and cultural diversity at the University of Technology Sydney.

“Talking about racial discrimination is a lot more confronting.”

Former prime minister John Howard introduced Harmony Day in 1999. (Reuters)

Harmony Day was introduced by the former Howard government in 1999, off the back of a government-commissioned study on racism in Australia. Since then, the day has been an opportunity for successive governments to promote events and celebrations that highlight multicultural success stories and belonging. 

Ho believes the decision to use “harmony” in the name was intentionally ideological.

“This was a very socially conservative government that didn’t want to acknowledge racism, didn’t want to say sorry to Indigenous people. There used to be a minister for immigration and multiculturalism, but the Howard government removed the word multiculturalism,” she says.

“It was actually a deliberate political move. That is something that we can question now.”

‘We remember with a sense of mourning’

Pearl Proud grew up in apartheid South Africa before starting a new life in Perth. She finds it difficult to separate the joyous events held on March 21 from solemn remembrance. 

“I don’t know if many people connect Harmony Day with apartheid. We remember with a sense of mourning if you’re a South African,” she says. 

“Harmony Day seems to be separate from that, in the fact that it tends to be a day of celebration rather than a day of mourning.”

Pearl has a more personal relationship to March 21 than most in Australia. She tries to remember the significance of the day with family back home.(Supplied)

Proud’s relationship with March 21 is complicated. She enjoys the opportunity to celebrate diversity and has been involved with organising events in her city, but she’s also worried that the day’s original meaning has been lost in the pageantry.

“It’s seen as people from diverse cultures celebrating their culture and connecting with ancestry, rather than it being a day for everyone in the world to consciously make a stand against discrimination,” she says.

Outside of her community work, Proud tries to start conversations with family about the history and keep up to date with the news in South Africa.

“It’s just a way for me to connect to … my history, so that then I remember those who passed on the day,” she says.

“And the significance of the day in terms of how it shaped South African history — and shifted the dial in the apartheid struggle.”

Australia’s ‘feel-good multiculturalism’

Christina Ho has also observed Harmony Day’s evolution into a celebratory affair, complete with orange T-shirts and ribbons and multicultural morning teas in schools. 

“For first-generation migrants, it’s a great way for them to receive the kind of recognition of their traditions and their culture,” she says. 

“What it doesn’t really enable so much is that discussion of the more confronting aspects, like racism, police brutality, deaths in custody, like discrimination. Those things don’t fit into a harmony framework.”

Christina Ho believes Australia needs to move past “feel good” multiculturalism to address systemic issues.(Credit: Chris Bennett)

She believes this focus on “feel good” multiculturalism is not equipping the country to deal with the darker parts of its history and the issues currently facing multicultural communities. 

“We do need to get beyond the feel good,” she says.

“Because not everything about Australia’s history with cultural diversity is about feeling good. It’s not just about celebrating the lovely aspects of culture.

“It’s about confronting Australia’s past and some of the terrible legacies of racism and colonialism that Australia still hasn’t really come to grips with.”

Should Australia change the name of Harmony Day?

Given the history of March 21, some leaders are now calling for the day’s name to be changed to better reflect its origins. 

FECCA, the national peak body representing people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, is among them. They would like to see the name changed back to the one given by the United Nations in the years following the Sharpeville massacre.

Mohammad Al-Khafaji is calling on people to use United Nations’ description for March 21 — the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.(ABC News: Stephanie Dalzell)

“We believe it is more important to acknowledge that racism exists and that we should all work together to eliminate it,” FECCA chief executive Mohammad Al-Khafaji says.

“In the process, we can still celebrate the great diversity of cultures that makes Australia unique.”

Without addressing racism, Al-Khafaji says, there cannot be harmony. To address racism, he says, Australia needs to be able to speak about it openly.

“Australia is the only country in the world that calls the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21 ‘Harmony Day’,” Al-Khafaji says. “We are asking everyone to call March 21 by its proper name: the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.”

Ho agrees that changing the name would help redirect the focus of the anniversary. 

“Harmony is a very specific concept … it’s more focusing on the unity, rather than the diversity. And it’s certainly not focusing on the diversity of people’s experiences and inequalities and injustices,” she says.

“We do actually need a different word. Harmony Day doesn’t really allow us to open up the conversation to include all of those other questions.”