“Where’s Your Pass?”

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32391, 2 September 1970, Page 13

“Where’s Your Pass?”

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) JOHANNESBURG. "Where’s your pass?” is a question that any black in a South African city may expect to hear at any time. A policeman might ask it of a passer-by. He could be waiting at a Johannesburg

railway station to ask it as commuters come in from townships outside the city. If the police happen to be carrying out one of their night-time sweeps of the crime-ridden city of Johannesburg, a black man may wake up in his own home to hammering on the front door “Where’s your pass?” is most likely the first question asked of him. A person who has lost his pass book, or left it somewhere else, can be in trouble. Of all the restrictions and inconveniences needed to segregate a nation, the law requiring blacks to carry identity documents is probably the one they hate most. Whites must also have personal documentation in the form of identity cards. But a 1952 law says: “Any authorised officer may at any time call upon any Bantu to produce to him a reference book.” Blacks protested against the pass laws in.a campaign of mass marches and demonstrations which briefly paralysed the country in May, 1960. The protests were crushed after the Sharpeville shootings, in which police killed 70 demonstrators. Many whites have forgotten those troubled times—but the courts are now jammed with pass-laW offenders arrested at the rate of 1900 a day. Government supporters contend that such laws are the only way to prevent South Africa from being swamped by foreign blacks attracted by its higher living standards. Critics, however, ask if effort and money should be used in prosecuting people for infringements which are often purely technical.