Population Registration Act, 1950

Early history of race classification In 1910 the Union of South Africa was established with four provinces based on the old colonies of the Cape, Natal and the two Afrikaner republics of the Free State and the Transvaal, with a white parliament. The idea arose again in 1935 when a parliamentary select committee discussed it, but was soon dismissed as impracticable and costly. He announced all South African races would be registered and issued with an identity card, and would supersede all current forms of identification. It called for the introduction of a population register to be compiled after a census of the population was conducted in 1951. The Population Registration Amendment Act, No. 71 of 1956, ended the indefinite time period a person had to object to their classification by giving the person disagreeing only 30 days to state their objection in writing to the Director of Census. It also added the presumption, which had previously been stated in the 1950 Act, that those who appearance was obviously white were classified as white, for those people who appear to be of an African race, were assumed to be native African, unless otherwise proved. In 1959, the South African government addressed the issue of the lack of clarity with the Coloured classification. Proclamation No. 46 of 1959 was issued, which allocated sub-sections to the Coloured classification. A person classified Coloured could choose to be either a Cape Coloured, Cape Malays, Griqua, Chinese, Indian, Other Asiatic (Asians other than Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese), or Other Coloured. During November 1959, the Minister of the Interior announced that legislation would be introduced to make identity cards compulsory in order to vote in White only elections. The Population Registration Amendment Act, No. 30 of 1960, legislated the transfer of the management of the population register from the Director of Census to the Secretary of the Minister of the Interior. In January 1961, it was announced that the Governor-general would issue a proclamation in September making the possession of identity cards compulsory for whites and coloureds over 16 years of age. Reference books at this time were compulsory for black men over sixteen years of age but not black women. On 1 February 1963, it finally became law that when challenged by a policeman, a white, coloured or Asian person had to produce an identity document within seven days or be fined. The Population Registration Amendment Act, No. 61 of 1962, amended the description of what is a white person, basing it on their perceived appearance and acceptance by white society. It acknowledged the use of census data supplied by the Director of Census, would now to be used by the Interior Ministry, to maintain the population register. It also allowed the Secretary of the Interior the discretion to extend the time period a person or persons had to object to the race classification issued to that person from 30 days to up to a year. It legislated that it was the duty of a person providing information for the population register to prove their information was correct, and legislated the right to delegate duties to other civil servants to investigate and report to the Secretary of the Interior information provided to the population register. In 1967, the South African government introduced an amendment bill to parliament, the Population Registration Amendment Act 64 of 1967, to further clarify aspects of the Population Registration Act. It had now added one's racial descent to the previous requirements of appearance and public acceptance used to determine a race classification. The reference book became an identity book and an indication of their citizenship in a black homeland. On 25 June 1986, the passbook for urban Black South Africans, which was a requirement from age sixteen, was scrapped and replaced with a uniform identity document carried by all the citizens of the Republic of South Africa, the exception being citizens of the homeland states. By 1990, there were a dozen or more population registers, starting with the national South African population register itself and the homeland states' versions which overlapped with the formers or were duplicated. In February 1991, the national population register was deracialised, but the incorporation of the data from the homeland's population registers was not inserted into the former until 1994. In order to fix the database mess generated by the numerous population registers, the national cabinet decided in 1996 to repair the population register and issue new identity documents by introducing the Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS). The new plan for the identity document project had three parts. The creation of an automated fingerprint system, the integration of the system into the current population register, and establishing a card-issuing facility. ==Impact of racial classification on certain population groups==

Indian descent Traditionally, those identifying as Indian were not regarded as residents of the country and successive South African colonies and governments sought to have them returned to India. The Natal Colony had brought in indentured Indians from India since 1860, and in 1870s, free Indian migrants. Essentially, Indians were regarded as immigrants while whites were colonists. In 1932, 80% of the Indian population were born in South Africa; by 1960, it was as high as 90%. The next wave was in the Transvaal when 60,000 Chinese were brought in for gold mining from 1904 to 1906 and were mostly repatriated by 1910. In May 1962, a loophole in the Population Register Act had to be closed by means of a proclamation, when a Chinese man, David Song, successfully contested his Asiatic classification based on his association with white people and his acceptance by them, which assisted him being reclassified as white. Initially they were indentured servants, then released after five years and by legislation, were regarded like other Indians in Natal. With the 1950's and the introduction of the Population Registration Act, the Zanzibaris would be initially classified as Native (Black) and then by the late 1950's, as Coloured, then later with the expansion of the Coloured classification, as Other Asiatics. Group Areas Act eventually settled them in Chatsworth. ==Identify documents==

Identity card (1953-1972) As envisioned in 1950, the South African identification card was to be a laminated wallet sized card issued to all South Africans and permanent residents, while those classed as black had their cards glued to their reference books. It had a photograph that had been supplied by the card owner and contained details that the owner had supplied during the 1951 Census and used to populate the identification card. The card contained their name, surname, address, identity number and race classification. The number was made up of the first two numbers of their birth year, followed by their census district number, a birth registration number for that district, and lastly a letter indicating their race. By the 1960s, that race letter was highlighted in red. The cards header for whites, coloured's, and Asians was "SA Burger - SA Citizen" while the reference cards header for Blacks stated it as "Bevolkingsregister - Naturelle : Population Register - Natives". Book of Life (1972 onwards) From 1966 onwards, the Book of Life project was revived by the Department of the Interior, building on the original 1950 idea that the population register would contain a record of everything that occurred during a person's life. A dissenting voice against the introduction of the new identity document project was the director of the Census. He reminded the politicians that the object of the population register was to make and preserve Apartheid by identifying a person's race, and that identification was a secondary goal of the initial project. He also warned about the issues and costs of computing, and that the administrative issues involved in maintaining the current register would continue with the new project and its centralisation goals. The first part was to move the project to a new building, as the population register had been maintained in a temporary building at the Census Bureau. Being an ambitious project, the population register would now hold the details of an individual's marriage certificate, gun and drivers licences, stripping that collection and storage from magistrates and municipal offices. This was in addition to maintaining the collection of births, deaths, and residential addresses for voting districts. By 1971, a new dedicated building had been built in Pretoria called the Civitas to maintain the register, properly staffed and a new IBM mainframe, with regional offices based around the country. The mainframe was installed in May 1971, and the build was only fully completed in 1973. Applications for the new Book of Life began in February 1972. Unable to cope with the applications, the department restricted the latter to people turning sixteen years old and to certain magisterial districts. But the department was not able to keep up with the workload, and by 1978 it had only converted half the population over to the new identity document, with some applications taking two years. This brought additional issues, as identity books had not been issued to the whole white population, the could not be used for voter identification and registration at elections at that time. In addition the date to have drivers licences in the Book of Life was continually extended to the point at which the drivers licenses were being pasted into the identity book as slips of paper defeating the objective of a secure centrally managed system. And lastly, most of the sixty pages of the identity book remained unused due to implementation delays and confusion by bureaucrats as to what exactly was to be included in the book. ==Amendments ==

The original act was amended many times as it attempted to close loopholes and reduced the number of departmental decisions that were challenged in the courts: • Population Registration Amendment Act, Act No. 71 of 1956 • Population Registration Amendment Act, Act No. 30 of 1960 • Population Registration Amendment Act, Act No. 61 of 1962 • Population Registration Amendment Act, Act No. 64 of 1967 • Population Registration Amendment Act, Act No. 106 of 1969 • Population Registration Amendment Act, 1970 • Population Registration and Identity Documents Amendment Act, 1973 • Population Registration and Identity Documents in South West Africa Amendment Act, 1977 • Population Registration Amendment Act, 1977 • Population Registration Amendment Act; 1980 • Population Registration Amendment Act, Act No. 101 of 1982 • Population Registration and Elections Amendment Act, Act No. 103 of 1984 • Identification Act, Act No. 72 of 1986 ==Repealed==

The South African Parliament repealed the act on 17 June 1991. Voting on the repeal act, 178 members of the white parliament cast their vote which resulted in 38 voting against while 11 abstained, with all the votes against coming from the Conservative Party. However, the racial categories defined in the Apartheid act remain ingrained in South African culture and they still form the basis of some official policies and statistics aimed at redressing past economic imbalances (Black Economic Empowerment and Employment Equity). The Employment Equity Act (Act 55 of 1998) introduced affirmative action into employment in the country with the emphasis on black, coloured and Indian people as target for this classification. ==Application of the legislation ==

An Office for Race Classification was set up to overview the classification process. Classification into groups was carried out using criteria such as outer appearance, general acceptance and social standing. For example, it defined a "white person" as one who "in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a coloured person, or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person." Because some aspects of the profile were of a social nature, • Coloured woman lost her foster child as he had been reclassified black; ==See also==