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were the major targets of scrutiny, and the pass book system allowed for comprehensive surveillance of their actions. "The whole system has been extended and rationalised over the years by widening the categories of officials who can formally demand the production of passes, and by linking this up with sophisticated computer technology centred on the reference book bureau of the Department of Plural Relations in Pretoria" (Frankel 1979, 207). |
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These data were entered into a centralized database that was cross-referenced across the different domains. Kahn notes: |
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Every African over sixteen must have on his person what is called a reference book, a bulky document measuring five-by-three and a half inches and containing ninety-five pages. As a rule, it is only Africans who are stopped by the police and asked to produce their passes. "The African must be a collector of documents from the day of his birth to the day of his death," says a publication issued by the Black Sash.
30 His passbook must contain particulars about every job he has had, every tax he has paid, and every x-ray he has taken. He would be well advised, the Black Sash has suggested, not to let himself get too far away from his birth certificate, baptismal certificate, school certificates, employment references, housing permits, hospital and clinic cards, prison discharge papers, rent receipts, and, the organization has added sarcastically, death and burial certificates. (1966, 91) |
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Horrell (1960) relates a story of an illiterate man "D.L." of Natal, who was arrested for having removed pages from his passbook. He was fined £10 or two months in jail (a huge sum for a black man at that time); unable to pay the fine, he went to jail. After being released, he could no longer find work, as he now had a prison record. A sympathetic literate friend investigated the case and found that the printers of the passbook had by accident eliminated pages 33 to 48 and instead had produced two sets of pages 49 to 64. D.L. had to appeal the conviction up to the Supreme Court level, again a costly and time-consuming business, where it was finally set aside. |
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In addition to the pass book system regulating the lives of black South Africans, the state attempted to enforce many other forms of segregation. Christopher Hope, in his novel A Separate Development, writes of petty apartheid such as the segregation of buses and benches: |
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One lived, of course, surrounded by such signs and notices. Most of them, however, served some clear purpose, the point of which everyone recognized as being essential for their survival: WHITES ONLY on park benches; BANTU MEN HERE on nonwhite lavatories; or INDIAN BENCH; or DEFENSE FORCE PROPERTY: PHOTOGRAPHS FORBIDDEN; or SECOND-CLASS TAXI; or THIS PLAYGROUND IS RESERVED FOR CHILDREN |
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