Pass

Public order policing: the anti-pass campaign 31 The anti-pass campaign of 1960 saw the first gross violations of human rights in the western Cape in the Commission’s mandate period. The PAC had called on all African men to leave their passes at home on 21 March and give themselves up for ...

... kind of widespread public protests and open street conflict that were occurred in subsequent decades. The violence of the police reaction to the pass protests and restrictions imposed on political activity effectively curtailed any large-scale public political protest until the 1970s. Hence, ...

... than detainees, for reasons discussed below. The inevitable effect of this restricted agenda was that there were gaps in the testimony heard. Pass law offenders 8 The first of these gaps concerned the experiences of pass law offenders who, for many of the years under review, formed a ...

... ethnic universities. The Promotion of Bantu Self-Governing Act lays the foundation for the creation of 'independent’ bantustans. An amendment to Pass Laws Act extends pass laws to women. Both the ANC and the PAC initiate protest campaigns against the pass laws. The Sekhukuneland revolt is ...

Volume THREE Chapter SIX Regional ProfileTransvaal ■ 1960–1975 Overview 1 In 1960, when the National Party (NP) government extended the pass laws to women, widespread public dissatisfaction crystallised into the mass protest that ended with the killing of sixty-nine demonstrators in ...

... after the Sharpville massacre, there were several trials involving the leadership of the PAC and people who had participated in the anti-pass protests. Within two months, on 4 May 1960, the leader of the organisation, Mr Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe [EC0155/97ALB], and eighteen other ...

... THAT THE POLICE DELIBERATELY OPENED FIRE ON AN UNARMED CROWD THAT HAD GATHERED PEACEFULLY AT SHARPVILLE ON 21 MARCH 1960 TO PROTEST AGAINST THE PASS LAWS. THE COMMISSION FINDS FURTHER THAT THE SAP FAILED TO GIVE THE CROWD AN ORDER TO DISPERSE BEFORE THEY BEGAN FIRING AND THAT THEY CONTINUED ...

... detentions and police brutality, and by criminal prosecutions under the main pillars of apartheid legislation. 28 From the early sixties, the pass laws were the primary instrument used by the state to arrest and charge its political opponents. By the same token, it was mainly the popular ...

... historic fragmentation of civic activity in the region, which had been based on specific living conditions and the social divisions created by the pass laws and the enforcement of migrant labour practices. Thus there was the Cape Housing Action Committee (CAHAC) in the coloured areas, the ...

... CALS submission argued that the definition of ‘severe ill treatment’ should be interpreted to include apartheid abuses such as forced removals, pass law arrests, alienation of land and breaking up of families. This approach finds support in the declaration to the Commission by five top judges ...

... examples of the everyday suffering imposed on workers. These included: a sexual harassment in the workplace; b the implementation of pass laws “through the active policing and collaboration of management as a means of labour control and cheapening labour”; c preventable ...

... 69 The Department of Prisons created the ‘farm prison’ system as a basis for providing cheap labour for white farmers. Africans arrested for pass law offences were frequently used to provide this form of labour. Although the Commission was not presented with evidence of this, it has been ...

... by allowing them to hide arms caches on their land and providing essential resources such as food. By these means, political activists would also pass on essential intelligence information to insurgents, such as details affecting their movement into the country – for example, details about ...

... areas of Cape Town in the 1980s have their roots in the state’s Coloured Labour Preference Policy, which resulted in rigorous influx control, pass law prosecutions and squatter camp removals. The discrimination between Africans with legal and permanent residence in Cape Town and those ...

... point to the Research Department of the Commission on 11 June 1997, it is stated that “the Surgeon General of the SANDF has undertaken to pass the press statement to all Curamus members”. 3 For example, former defence force chief, General Constand Viljoen, turned down an invitation to ...

... and the drafting of the Freedom Charter in 1955. In the 1960s, students were amongst those who rose up in their thousands to protest against the pass laws. The state’s response to these peaceful protests was mass repression. Many youth saw no option but to leave the country in order to take ...

... give evidence. The farm prisons system ensured that farmers were supplied with a cheap supply of labour. African people who failed to produce their passes were, in theory, offered the option of ‘volunteering’ as farm labour in exchange for having charges dropped against them. Arrests for ...

... Apartheid’s jails were constructed by big business, as were the buildings housing the vast apartheid bureaucracy. Apartheid’s labour laws, pass laws, forced removals and cheap labour system were all to the advantage of the business community. 22 Major Craig Williamson (a former ...

... resistance campaigns in the cities, such as the Defiance Campaign of 1952/53, the Congress of the People in 1955, the 1956 bus boycotts, the anti-pass laws campaigns in 1959 and 1960 and so on. There were also sporadic and scattered but sustained rural uprisings in Zeerust, Witzieshoek, ...

Security Legislation of the Homelands: It is in the security sphere that the independent homelands demonstrated their willingness and ability to pass and administer legislation to great effect. In legal terms, the four independent homelands had complete sovereignty, with their own police and ...