pass laws were abolished in south africa in 1986.
pass laws were abolished in south africa in 1986.
when were pass laws abolished in south africa?
1986
in south africa, pass laws were a form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanisation, and allocate migrant labour. also known as the natives law, pass laws severely limited the movements of not only black african citizens, but other people as well by requiring them to carry pass books when outside their homelands or designated areas. before the 1950s, this legislation largely applied to african men, and attempts to apply it to women in the 1910s and 1950s were met with significant protests. pass laws would be one of the dominant features of the country's apartheid system, until it was effectively ended in 1986.
pass laws
pass laws date “back to 1760 in the cape when slaves moving between urban and rural areas were required to carry passes authorizing their travel”. the pass laws, “had entitled police at any time to demand that africans show them a properly endorsed document or face arrest”, hindering their freedom of movement. this meant that it restricted where they could live, which in turn, this “tied them to their white employers, underpinning a system of cheap labour and humiliating subjection”. their implementation over time arose from two contradictory needs. pass laws have been due to two specific white needs. the white population in south africa utilised these laws as “an ‘exclusionary’ need to obtain political security by controlling and policing the number of africans in “white” areas, and an “inclusionary’ need to ensure a supply of cheap labour within these areas”. the legislation and practices associated with the pass laws have changed over time. as these demands and beliefs changed, so did the rights of the black population in south africa. when the pass laws were implemented at the turn of the century, they “encouraged the flow of labour into ‘white’ agriculture and industry and to redistribute labour into geographical areas where it was needed”. this process would last until the 1950’s, when the government opted to change the paradigm. this meant, “from 1950 onward the emphasis of the pass laws has been overtly exclusionary and directed to ‘relocating’ africans from ‘white’ areas and containing them within the bantustans”. therefore, there has always been a tension between the white and black community in south africa. this stemmed from the “efforts to use the pass system to balance white needs for security and labour”, while also creating laws that would allow for the control of the “african employment, housing, access to land, and citizenship”. due to these laws, “over 17,745,000 africans have been arrested or prosecuted” between 1916 and 1984. the policing of africans has allowed for the whites to maintain dominance over the black population for the greater part of the 20th century.
pass laws