Pass Laws

Pass Laws, South African legislation controlling the movements of blacks and Coloureds (people of mixed racial descent) under the system of apartheid, or racial segregation. The earliest pass controls were developed in the 18th century by the whites in South Africa in order to control black labor and to keep blacks and Coloureds in inferior positions.

A regulation of 1760 passed in the Cape Colony (what is now western South Africa) required slaves moving between town and country to carry passes signed by their owners authorizing their journeys. When the British purchased the Cape Colony from the Dutch in 1814 a system of passes already existed for Coloureds and blacks. Beginning in 1809 pass laws were introduced and amended frequently across South Africa. The purpose of these laws was to control the movement of blacks and to obtain their labor in both rural and urban areas. The mining industry became a major force behind demands for pass law controls.

Beginning in 1923, pass regulations were constantly tightened and amended. Between 1939 and 1941 as many as 273,790 people were convicted of pass law offenses in the Transvaal alone. Major unrest from 1944 to 1946 in opposition to the pass laws led the government to tighten them still further. By 1948, 265 urban areas had been proclaimed, which meant that black movement was rigidly controlled. In 1952, the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act substituted a single reference book for 11 existing pass laws. It was a crime for black men and women from the age of 16 upwards to be without their books, which gave their personal information and also their employment record. At the same time an amendment to the Natives (Urban Areas) Act applied strict regulations to all urban areas; a black person entering such an area had only 72 hours to find employment before being subject to arrest. Amendments to the laws in 1955, 1957, and 1964 made it increasingly difficult for blacks to qualify for permanent residence in any urban area. The aim was to control the population in such a way that only single male contract laborers could go to work in urban areas, and they could work for no more than a year before returning to the rural areas. What became known as “endorsing out” took place, which meant that Africans without work in an urban area had their passes stamped to show that they had to return to the rural areas.

Many demonstrations, acts of passive resistance, and uprisings were directed at the pass system. In 1930, for example, the Communist Party organized a mass burning of passes on Dingane's Day, a day celebrated in honor of the Zulu chief Dingane. A major antipass campaign was mounted in 1944. In March 1960 countrywide demonstrations against the pass laws culminated in the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, when the police fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing 69 blacks. Between 1952 and 1986 millions of blacks were punished by the courts for failing to carry their passes, and by the early 1970s about one million blacks were arrested every year under the pass laws. The pass laws and influx control were finally abolished in 1986 when the process of dismantling the apartheid system began.