Pass

... themselves coloured. In the Karoo they called this ‘om jou baadjie om te draai,’ to turn your jacket inside out. There were many advantages to passing as coloured. coloured people did not have to carry pass books and there were more jobs available. But with freedom comes dignity. Many of the ...

... this week. It is just one of the many side chapters in the history of the former government’s disastrous homeland policies. // Mathebe mountain pass, a pile of stones, this is how the Bafokeng remind themselves of victory in battle over the Bahurutshe in the late 1700s. Yet conflict between ...

In the fifties women were suddenly also required to carry a pass and had to qualify for permits in their own right. They were no longer seen as part of their husband’s household.

But there’s no way in which you could have lived through the last 40 years of apartheid and not know of the pass laws and not know of forced removals and not know of race classification and not know of group areas and also not know of what that did to communities and to individuals’ lives.

We are aware too of the anguish through which you have had to pass over so many years and in a way, although we’re still going to hear your testimony, it is wonderful that you had been vindicated.

is 714 6254. We would love to hear from you. Next week we’ll show you a special documentary on one of the most shameful practices of our past, the pass laws. And before we go, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, if you are watching. We miss you, please get back soon. Good bye to you all, until next Sunday ...

... and they stopped there and one of them just come out, climb on top of the car and use a torch to light us. And, in few seconds I saw one of them passing through the car lights and after few seconds he came out. They were all having guns, all of them. And they were shooting to us. And, we were ...

... say Hey! You mustn’t say I’m your child. I’m a child of South Africa. I’m a child of South Africa, not yours, because I am fighting for the pass ...

... that a minister ordered it was tested? We are dealing here once again with allegations made by people in amnesty applications who are trying to pass the ...

Botswana was never a training area. Most of the training was done in Angola and in Zambia. Botswana was a conduit I would say where people when they passed, coming from Zambia, from Zambia they’d pass through Botswana but without the Botswana government’s knowledge. We had to do this, we had no ...

... that did even more damage to generations of our people that cannot be narrowly defined as individual human rights violations. Practices such as the pass laws and the hostel system. Hostels have been called fortresses of fear. Hostels were mostly primitive buildings housing single black males who ...

... many African countries had cast off the colonialist yoke and became independent states. // The PAC organised a massive protest against the pass laws on 21 March 1960. In Sharpeville police killed 69 demonstrators. // This event rocked the country and focused international attention on ...

... wrenching disruption of forced removals in respect of their homes, businesses and land; who over the years suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades, and indeed centuries suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination; who for a long time ...

we were disturbed by flying aircraft. We then left that place and on the 6th were down here where we were killed. We were beaten for not wanting the pass system, the fencing off of our land, Bantu education and the introduction of taxes which meant paying for our own cows. Those were the things we ...

And when I started working outside and I saw how the men were being caught for pass books, how black men struggled I decided to play coloured to be able to live.

the last 15 years and worked for one employer for ten years, or be fifteen years in the area. // So the number of people who could qualify to have a pass that entitled them to be in the urban areas were limited, very strictly ...

In the fifties women were suddenly also required to carry a pass and had to qualify for permits in their own right. They were no longer seen as part of their husband’s household.