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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 6 of Episode 80
| Time | Summary | | | 38:00 | Let’s turn our attention now to another memory of our past that should not be lost. In the late 1700s the white settlers in South Africa forced slaves to carry identity books so that they could control their movements. In some way or another pass books had existed since then. But when the National Party came into power in 1948 and formalized the ideology of apartheid they needed more efficient instruments to separate races and enforce white rule. The dompas was born. It ruled the lives of millions of black adults until 1986. It was probably the greatest single human rights violation of our past. | Full Transcript | | 38:34 | ‘Mrs. Fourie decides however to check up on something else, that is whether her servant has his reference book and if his service contract is in order. Nothing missing, except one tooth. But with or without teeth photos are taken at the offices of the Department of Native Affairs where these workers are registered and assisted in finding work in urban areas. Daily, a large number turns up here for reference books. Each book contains the photograph of the owner, his name, race and particulars of employment. Naturally the officials who are employed here must have a thorough knowledge of Bantu customs and languages. Ah! He’s just received his reference book.’ | Full Transcript | | 39:50 | ‘Kaffir! Waar’s jou pas?’ [Where’s your pass?] // ’17 745 741 people arrested’ // If I think about that I feel my heart inside and my brains is like water, boiling. // And now was trying to make the people refugees of South Africa. // Sorry to say it but when I try to think about us, I want to cry. | Full Transcript | | 40:45 | Reference book, pass book, dompas, stinker, different names for the same thing. The hated document that determined the life of every black South African for decades, where they could sleep, live, work, visit and for how long. The main aim of the pass laws was to control the movement of black South Africans to the cities. The idea was to allow just enough black people into the cities to satisfy labour requirements. Anyone wanting to live and work in a city needed a permit; without one it was illegal to stay there for longer than 72 hours. | Full Transcript | | 41:26 | Before you can have a permit to be in Cape Town, you must be here in Cape Town for the last fifteen years and worked for one employer for ten years, or be 15 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 limited. | Full Transcript | | 41:50 | Pass laws denied black South Africans the right of citizenship. They were aliens in their own country. Pass law arrests gave millions of South Africans a criminal record, criminals for simply not having a valid pass to be in a certain place at a certain time in the country of their birth. Black South Africans were hunted, harassed, fined, imprisoned and ultimately deported to so-called ethnic homelands. Carrying a pass became a way of life; having a valid permit a means of survival. | Full Transcript | | 42:26 | If you see a lion coming you must run away, if this is a police in the street you run away, you know that you’d be arrested. // They used to come to our houses, knocking on the door whether you are naked or not, just knock on the door and walk in. There was no privacy anymore; your house was just their house. // If you go out here, go to the café here next door and you meet up with a … inspector, and then the only thing he is going to say, ‘jong kom hie’ waar’s jou pass?’ [Where’s your pass?] No, I’ve left it here at work or here at home. ‘Kom, kom, kom.’ [Come, come, come] Then they take you to the court. | Full Transcript | | 43:09 | When they see, even at a bus stop, when they see black people in a queue, they quickly surround them; arrest them, those who have got no passes. Everywhere! Even going to church, on Sunday, going to church, they stop them from going to church. They ask your pass. If you leave your pass you are going to be arrested. Your going to church will be nothing to the police; you are going to be locked up. | Full Transcript | | 43:44 | They are busy collecting us, they want to arrest us. So from 1976, early in the morning, they came with big lorries. They say, you are not allowed to be here, because this is our country. Go back to Transkei. We say no, no, no, we can’t. They take us by big lorries, send it to trains, trains that day were seven. | Full Transcript | | 44:18 | In Jo’burg it was worse because mostly people that was arrested, anyhow, anytime. Tress passers get in their houses, hotels, the police go inside of the houses or the flats, they search all these people. They want to know, where do you sleep, where do you come from, who’s your boss, what are you doing, and so forth. | Full Transcript | | 44:43 | The Boers were trying to phone to Transkei, those townships. They say we are coming to bring your families who are here, because they are not allowed to be here. So, also myself I phoned to my father, I say Hey! You mustn’t say I’m your child. I’m a child of South Africa. I’m a child of South Africa, not yours, because I am fighting for the pass laws. | Full Transcript | | 45:12 | If you are 18 years of age they say, where’s your pass? It’s in the house there, I’m going there… No! You are supposed to carry your pass with you. They lock you and you are going to pay the fine at the police station. It was not something which we were allowed to leave with, you must carry your pass. And your name was ‘kaffir’ and you accepted it. | Full Transcript | | 45:49 | In Johannesburg anyone who carried a pass would have had to visit the hated pass law office at 80 Albert Street. Here naked men would have to wait in queues for a medical examination before their passes would be endorsed. Part of this fitness examination was a public inspection of the penis. | Full Transcript | | 46:10 | That was a rubbish place, I want to tell you. Because mostly people who had been taken there, having a queue and you go naked, without trousers, sometimes they check you how you’re healthy and so forth. But that is another worse story, because you have to queue two to three lines, until your reference book is ready. And therefore if they find that you are not qualified in the area, they give you a stamp for 72 hours and you must move in Johannesburg. | Full Transcript | | 46:46 | In the fifties women were suddenly also required to carry a pass and had to qualify for permits in their own right. They were no longer seen as part of their husband’s household. | Full Transcript | | 46:58 | It was the worst of it, where people are not allowed to stay with his wife. They said when they are married that you will be separated by death, but they are separated by the police. | Full Transcript | | 47:14 | The millions of people arrested for pass law offences passed through special commissioner’s courts presided over by so-called Bantu or Native Commissioners. The sentences varied from fines to floggings. Usually offenders were endorsed out, meaning they had 72 hours to leave the area. | Full Transcript | | 47:35 | In thirty minutes’ time 15 people are already sentenced. You just come… Why? What do you want? Why do you come to this area without a permit? As if you can be given a permit if you want to. | Full Transcript | | 47:55 | But throughout the time of the pass laws there was always fierce resistance. It reached a peak in the Defiance Campaign of 1952 when people deliberately destroyed their passes and when a huge protest march of women took place to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. In the sixties it was again an anti-pass law campaign that led to the shooting of 69 people at Sharpeville and three at Langa in Cape Town. // By the eighties the arrests were not stopping, but the law was cracking under the strain. It was becoming too expensive to implement a law that people were defying more and more openly. In 1986 PW Botha repealed all pass and influx control laws. The tyranny of the dompas had finally come to an end. | Full Transcript and References |
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