Pass

In Johannesburg anyone who carried a pass would have had to visit the hated pass law office at 80 Albert Street. Here naked men would have to wait in queues for a medical examination before their passes would be endorsed. Part of this fitness examination was a public inspection of the penis.

When they see, even at a bus stop, when they see black people in a queue, they quickly surround them; arrest them, those who have got no passes. Everywhere! Even going to church, on Sunday, going to church, they stop them from going to church. They ask your pass. If you leave your pass you are ...

... because of the colour of their skin, and the language they were talking. // In certain places you could not find work because you carried a pass book. You had to first go to the magistrate to get a pass to go into certain towns if you were a Black person. Whereas the coloured could go ...

The beauty of the Karoo’s wide open spaces belies a cruel apartheid past in which black people were made to survive by passing themselves off as Coloureds. During the apartheid years the Karoo became by law an official Coloured area. For black people it became a hostile place to live and work. // ...

In Johannesburg anyone who carried a pass would have had to visit the hated pass law office at 80 Albert Street. Here naked men would have to wait in queues for a medical examination before their passes would be endorsed. Part of this fitness examination was a public inspection of the penis.

here, go to the café here next door and you meet up with a … inspector, and then the only thing he is going to say, ‘jong kom hier waar’s jou pass?’ [Where’s your pass?] No, I’ve left it here at work or here at home. ‘Kom, kom, kom.’ [Come, come, come] Then they take you to the ...

When they see, even at a bus stop, when they see black people in a queue, they quickly surround them; arrest them, those who have got no passes. Everywhere! Even going to church, on Sunday, going to church, they stop them from going to church. They ask your pass. If you leave your pass you are ...

became ‘Coloured’. In the Karoo they called this ‘om jou baadjie om te draai,’ to turn your jacket inside out. There were many advantages to pass as a Coloured. Coloured people did not have to carry pass books and there were more jobs available. Coloureds were better paid and their schools ...

... 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 ...

I just remember shaking. I don’t think I actually felt anything, I don’t think you did either. It wasn’t a time to feel things. I just remember sitting there shaking really and just letting the time pass.

... those questions. We also bring you a short documentary on the black people of the Karoo who have pretended for decades to be coloured to escape the pass laws and now want their African heritage back. But we start with the dramatic day in George in the Southern Cape. ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

the late 1700s the white settlers in South Africa forced slaves to carry identity books so they could control their movement. In some way or another pass books had existed since then, but when the National Party came to power in 1948 and formalized the ideology of apartheid they needed more ...

... 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 ...

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.

... 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 ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

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.