Appeal Ruling Holds S.A Family Is White

Press, Volume C, Issue 29702, 21 December 1961, Page 15

Appeal Ruling Holds S.A Family Is White

(hl .Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PRETORIA, December 19. A South African family of eight became officially “white” today when they successfully appealed against a Race Classification Board judgment that they were “coloured”— of mixed white and non-white descent.

Mr Justice Snyman ruled that although evidence cast doubt on whether the father was "white” by descent, he regarded the man’s features as those of “a white person of the European peoples along the Mediterranean seaboard.” At one point during today’s proceedings, at which the family’s name was ordered to be withheld, the family’s six children filed before the Judge. Before inspecting them, he asked: “What is a white person? How can I Judge?” The definition ot a "white person” as given in the South African Population

Registration Act, which was read out in court, is: “One whose appearance obviously is white, or who is generally accepted as a white person." Judge Snyman heard that the family had been classified as “white’ in the 1951 census and the mother’s and father’s marriage certificate also called them "white.” But the three-man Race Classification Board had decided, by two to one, that there was doubt about some members of the family. It ruled that as a whole, they had been accepted as “coloured.” Judge Snyman today found that this had not been proved.