“Reformed” pass laws

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 16

“Reformed” pass laws

Two claims in particular made by the South African Government are demonstrably specious. One is that the regime permits a free press. It does not; whenever censorship is found politically expedient censorship Is used. The second is that the courts are free. The courts have, indeed, given a fair trial to accused persons brought before them; but every year thousands of persons, politically suspect for one reason or another, are detained without trial. In these cases the freedom of the courts is theoretical; it is simply not tested.

The Government is now reported to be considering some amelioration of the pass laws, which restrict the movements of Africans. It is already abundantly clear that the intention is to ease administrative problems that have become intolerable, not to remove any of the irritations passbook holders have to suffer. The Government is obviously concerned about the vast numbers of convictions and sentences of imprisonment for breaches of the pass laws. When changes in the system were mooted, it was claimed that the provision of “advice centres” would ease the pressures on the Department of Justice, the courts, the prisons, and the police. There is apparently no intention of relaxing the restraints on Africans, who offend by being in areas not prescribed in their passbooks. The Minister of Justice, Mr Pelser, made no attempt to conceal the magnitude of the passbook problem when he recently told Parliament that 40 per cent of short-term prisoners—those in gaol for less than four months—were convicted of pass-law offences. He said that last year, of a total of 484,000 people imprisoned in South Africa, 416,000 were Africans serving sentences of up to four months. Daily arrests are said to average about 2000.

The Minister of Justice does not want the courts to waste time dealing with these offenders. So there may be “ aid centres ”, where books may be “ corrected ”; will these “ aid centres ” be, in effect, detention camps, where Africans may be held indefinitely without figuring at all in the prison statistics? The problem would thus be conveniently buried, or at any rate largely hidden from public scrutiny. Perhaps that is the “ reform ” contemplated by Mr Vorster’s Government.