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| Table 6.2 Numbers of objections to racial classifications under the population registration act, 1968 | | Total number of reclassifications | Of the total, number made as the result of representations by the person concerned | | White to Coloured | 9 | 1 | | Coloured to White | 91 | 91 | | Coloured to Bantu | 29 | 3 | | Bantu to Coloured | 136 | 136 | | Source: Horrell 1969: 42. |
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over the age of sixteen years to be able to produce identity cards, on which the racial group of the holder is. Until then, large numbers of people on the racial borderline had apparently not submitted themselves for classification" (Horrell 1968, 23). |
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There were several factors involved in weaving the texture of categories in the lives of those in the borderlands of apartheid. Often there were long bureaucratic delays in assigning a racial classification to those who appeared ambiguous. The Associated Press cites a case in which two preschool children were held in detention for three years while they awaited a government decision about their race (6 April 1984). |
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Approximately 100,000 people applied for reclassification (Brookes 1968, Horrell 1958). Few were approved. Bamford notes that "The board would seem to have been overstrict against the subjectthe court has upheld its decision in only one of the ten reported cases involving the merits of reclassification" (1967, 39). A typical year is shown in table 6.2. |
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By May 1956 officials had dealt with 18,469 cases "in which objection had been raised to the classification claimed by the person concerned. Of these 1182 had been classified as White, 9,642 as Coloured, and 7,645 as Bantu" (Brookes 1968, 23). |
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Some years later, the figures had risen slightly but the basic direction of the changes remained the same. In 198182, 997 people changed races; in 1983, 690. In 1984, 795 people were reclassified. Of these, 518 went from coloured to white; two whites became Chinese and one became Indian; 89 black Africans became coloured, and 5 coloured people became African (Ormond 1986). A man from Durban won his |
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