Tighter pass laws planned

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 8

Tighter pass laws planned

By RICHARD WILLIAMS, of NZPA-Reuter Cape Town More than 2000 blacks have been arrested in Cape Town’s black townships in the last month for breaking tough influx control laws which the South African Government plans to strengthen.

Government officials raided mostly at dawn the squatter camps on the bleak, windswept plains outside the city or in hostels reserved for men who work on contract in Cape Town. Many of those arrested were wives and family members of the hostel dwellers — people from the tribal homelands who work in the cities for a fixed period and who are not allowed under influx control regulations to bring their families with them. Most were fined 90 rand (SNZIOS) or sentenced to 90 days in jail. The court hearing their cases iri the black township of Nyanga sentenced on average three people a ' minute on some days.

“Men are sometimes fined for ‘harbouring their wives’ .

. . and one woman was threatened with being fined for ‘harbouring’, her children,” said Sue Williamson, chairman of Women for Peace, one of the organisations which has held rallies in the city to protest against the raids. Most of those arrested went to Cape Town from the desolate and impoverished homelands of Ciskei and Transkei in the Eastern Cape to be with their husbands, and to find work. But under the influx control laws blacks may live in an urban area only if they were born there, have lived there for 15 years, or have

worked there for the same employer for 10 years. Few of those arrested in the township raids qualified as “section tens” — bureaucratic jargon for those blacks with residential rights in the cities.

Influx control is particularly thorough in the Western Cape, which the Government has declared a “Coloured labour preference area,” allowing blacks to take jobs there only if there are no Coloureds (people of mixedrace) available. Despite Government action, blacks still flock to Cape Town to seek work, driven there by the poverty of their homelands.

The National Party Government is planning to tighten up the influx controls, or pass laws as they are often called, after the pass books all adult blacks must carry at all times and which state if they have the right to live in an urban area.

In Cape Town alone are 60,000 to 80,000 illegal blacks, while in Johannesburg’s satellite city of Soweto planners admit there as many as 200,000 “illegals,” as well as the one million "section tens.”

The measures proposed in the Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Persons Bill, to be debated when Parliament next meets in January, have been bitterly attacked by its critics. “I’m not trying to be melodramatic when I say that just as the Nazis had a final, solution for the Jews, so the South African Government has a final solution in much the same sort of terms for the blacks,” said Bishop Desmond Tutu, the secretary of the South African Council of

Churches. It proposes to shift responsibility for policing the influx control system on ,to employers and residents of urban areas, black and white, by imposing stiff penalties on people who employ or harbour “illegals.” At present Government officials and the police usually implement the pass laws. “The penalties for employing so-called illegals will in-crease-tenfold — a fine of up to 500 rand (SNZS99) now goes up to 5000 rand (JNZ5992) and for accommodating an illegal person the fine . . . (will be) 500 rand,” said an opposition spokesman, Helen Suzman, an outspoken critic of the Government’s racial policies.

“As I see it, the main difference is that (black) people won’t be stopped in the street during the day to produce their passes. “This will take place at the factory or at home in Soweto and maybe in the backyards of employers in the white areas. That’s where the raids will take place,” she said.

The proposed laws also allow for a nationwide curfew for blacks by prohibiting all blacks without section 10 rights from being in any urban area, black or white, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. the next day. Blacks at present are allowed to remain in an urban area for up to 72 hours without official permission. Critics conceded that the new bill contained one advance for blacks by recognising for the first, time thenrights as permanent urban residents. No previous National Party Government has conceded this privilege to "section tens.” Under

National Party ideology blacks have always been regarded as temporary residents in the cities, who one day would return to their tribal homelands. But another clause would deprive blacks of this new status if they do not have accommodation — a serious threat for many because there is a huge backlog for black housing in most cities. The bill forms part of a “hew deal” for blacks sponsored by the Co-operation and Development Minister (Black Affairs), Dr Piet Koornhof.

The only measure in the new deal’ to have become law so far is an act granting the councils of black townships the same rights as white local authorities. After a storm of criticism the act was heavily changed by a Parliamentary committee on which Opposition members also sit.

The Orderly Movement arid Settlement of Black Persons Bill has now also been referred to a select committee, but opposition spokesmen see little hope of serious changes, since these would represent a deviation from traditional National Party ideology. An Opposition leader, Frederik van Zyl Slabbed, attacked the whole policy of influx control and the thinking behind it last week at a regional congress of his Progressive Federal Party. “The tragic irony of it all is that . . . even if the Government obstinately sticks to its policy of influx control, then despite the policy there will still be 40 million people in our cities in the year 2000, of whom 34 million will be black,” he said.