Pass laws in South Africa were designed to segregate the population and severely limit the movements of the non-white populace. This legislation was one of the dominant features of the country's apartheid system. The Black population was required to carry these pass books with them when outside their homelands or designated areas. Failure to produce a pass often resulted in the person being arrested. Any white person, even a child, could ask a black African to produce his or her pass.
Read more about Pass Laws: History, Natives (Urban Areas) Act, Pass Laws Act
Famous quotes containing the words pass and/or laws:
“English people apparently queue up as a sort of hobby. A family man might pass a mild autumn evening by taking the wife and kids to stand in the cinema queue for a while and then leading them over for a few minutes in the sweetshop queue and then, as a special treat for the kids, saying “Perhaps we’ve time to have a look at the Number Thirty-One bus queue before we turn in.””
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1940)
“The members of a body-politic call it “the state” when it is passive, “the sovereign” when it is active, and a “power” when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title “people,” and they refer to one another individually as “citizens” when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as “subjects” when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)