Pass

we were disturbed by flying aircraft. We then left that place and on the 6th were down here where we were killed. We were beaten for not wanting the pass system, the fencing off of our land, Bantu education and the introduction of taxes which meant paying for our own cows. Those were the things we ...

And when I started working outside and I saw how the men were being caught for pass books, how black men struggled I decided to play coloured to be able to live.

... and they stopped there and one of them just come out, climb on top of the car and use a torch to light us. And, in few seconds I saw one of them passing through the car lights and after few seconds he came out. They were all having guns, all of them. And they were shooting to us. And, we were ...

... themselves coloured. In the Karoo they called this ‘om jou baadjie om te draai,’ to turn your jacket inside out. There were many advantages to passing as coloured. coloured people did not have to carry pass books and there were more jobs available. But with freedom comes dignity. Many of the ...

... those questions. We also bring you a short documentary on the black people of the Karoo who have pretended for decades to be coloured to escape the pass laws and now want their African heritage back. But we start with the dramatic day in George in the Southern Cape. ...

the late 1700s the white settlers in South Africa forced slaves to carry identity books so they could control their movement. In some way or another pass books had existed since then, but when the National Party came to power in 1948 and formalized the ideology of apartheid they needed more ...

I just remember shaking. I don’t think I actually felt anything, I don’t think you did either. It wasn’t a time to feel things. I just remember sitting there shaking really and just letting the time pass.

the last 15 years and worked for one employer for ten years, or be fifteen years in the area. // So the number of people who could qualify to have a pass that entitled them to be in the urban areas were limited, very strictly ...

... wrenching disruption of forced removals in respect of their homes, businesses and land; who over the years suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades, and indeed centuries suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination; who for a long time ...

... that did even more damage to generations of our people that cannot be narrowly defined as individual human rights violations. Practices such as the pass laws and the hostel system. Hostels have been called fortresses of fear. Hostels were mostly primitive buildings housing single black males who ...

... this week. It is just one of the many side chapters in the history of the former government’s disastrous homeland policies. // Mathebe mountain pass, a pile of stones, this is how the Bafokeng remind themselves of victory in battle over the Bahurutshe in the late 1700s. Yet conflict between ...

... on the ground. I could see her eyes staring. I couldn’t tell whether she was dead already. I rushed to our home which was burning. As I tried to pass the soldiers, they said I should stand back. Nobody was allowed in, because those people were there and they would kill me. I said I did not ...

Botswana was never a training area. Most of the training was done in Angola and in Zambia. Botswana was a conduit I would say where people when they passed, coming from Zambia, from Zambia they’d pass through Botswana but without the Botswana government’s knowledge. We had to do this, we had no ...

... that a minister ordered it was tested? We are dealing here once again with allegations made by people in amnesty applications who are trying to pass the ...

... many African countries had cast off the colonialist yoke and became independent states. // The PAC organised a massive protest against the pass laws on 21 March 1960. In Sharpeville police killed 69 demonstrators. // This event rocked the country and focused international attention on ...

... on the amnesty applications of the three policemen involved with the killing of the Gugulethu Seven. We look at the history and effects of the pass laws and the hostel system and we look at truth commissions elsewhere in the world. We also bring you a special documentary on the notorious ...

... policemen. // Your callousness, your coldness and insensitivity shows us the kind of leaders that the South African government chose. // No compassion. // We have a fascinating piece on black people from the Karoo who have spent many years trying to pass as coloureds and now want their old ...