The founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, was the leading architect of the anti-pass campaign of March 1960. It was planned as a five-day non-violent event in which people would march to police stations without their passbooks, which would force the police to arrest them, clog the jails, and bring industry to a standstill. But the reaction of the police at Sharpeville, which made headlines around the world, turned everything on its head. Drum journalist Stanley Motjuwadi recalled an interview with Sobukwe: "A day after the Sharpeville shootings I had an interview in Johannesburg's Fort (prison) with Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe...He was awaiting trial on a charge of incitement and seemed to have aged overnight. He was depressed and almost at the point of tears " the Sharpeville tragedy had really hit him hard."
Human Sciences Research Council (2026) studied this question.