Pass

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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. // ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

... 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 ...

In fact you are not the only one who killed there are others, it’s still going on. Right now if you go down the road you’re not sure if you’ll pass safely. All we want is peace and 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 ...

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 ...

... policemen. // Your callousness, your coldness and insensitivity shows us the kind of leaders that the South African government chose. // No compassion. // We have a fascinating piece on black people from the Karoo who have spent many years trying to pass as coloureds and now want their old ...

... how was I going to live with myself with it?’ So that even during basics I was starting to collect information which I thought I might be able to pass on to someone at a later ...

... on the ground. I could see her eyes staring. I couldn’t tell whether she was dead already. I rushed to our home which was burning. As I tried to pass the soldiers, they said I should stand back. Nobody was allowed in, because those people were there and they would kill me. I said I did not ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

... 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 ...