It was 1931, and the curfew rule was still not applied to women. The Natives Laws Amendment Act of 1937 was directed at both men and women, but once again, none of the rules concerning medical examinations, passes, permits or certificates with regards to permission to be in the city were implemented. White officials remained hesitant to infringe on the freedom of women, whom they apparently regarded as the ‘territory’ of black men. They preferred not to antagonise the men, seeming to expect that the women could play a stabilising role. Women’s traditional roles were emphasised: in rural areas they took care of children and old people, while in the cities they helped to keep the working men within bounds. It was expected of them to be caring and maternal, both in their own families and in the white families where they worked.
These viewpoints were based on the assumption of the women’s obedience to black men. As Eales suggests, white officials simply assumed it would be an unneccesary duplication of discipline to try to take over their role. The 1937 law was therefore only applied to individuals such as liquor sellers, prostitutes and other ‘reprobates’. Salaries were kept deliberately low, often based on the supposedly low cost of living in the rural areas. The Department of Social Affairs in 1939 decided not to grant black women the ‘mother’s pension’ to which they were entitled according to the Children’s Act of 1937. This would merely attract more women to the cities, it was argued, and the city should never be made too comfortable a space for black people.
Nevertheless, because of the slackness in applying the laws, more and more women were finding a foothold in the city. The census of 1936 showed that, for the first time, more women than men were doing domestic work: 22 765 as against 21 027 men.30 This was a huge increase from the 5 000 women who in 1932 were known to do domestic work. The women seem to have cast off the image of immorality and unreliability which for so long had made white families fear their presence in their homes. Black women were becoming part of what was considered a stable and reliable urban workforce, and employers were getting used to the familiar figure of a black woman in their kitchens: someone with a name, even though it might not be her real one, and wearing a neat uniform and apron, with a doek tied around her head. ‘Knowing’ an Emily or Mavis in the kitchen did not, however, stop employers from voting into power governments that discriminated against black people in general. As the role of the state grew, it became increasingly totalitarian. Terminology also began to change towards the end of the 1940s. The singular noun ‘native’, referring to all Africans, was replaced by ‘Bantu’, a term that aimed to confer a dubious status and ‘autonomy’ upon designated groups within a specific geographical area. At the same time, a paternalistic Bantu administration introduced the spurious logic of ‘separate but equal’.31 It was in this climate that a law was passed in the mid-1950s forcing black women also to carry passes.
1956 – Passes for Women
‘Strijdom, you have tampered with the women, you have struck a rock.’
Although World War II was not fought on South African territory, it had significant repercussions in the economic and political history of the country. Secondary industries were increasing, and black workers began to dominate the unskilled and semi-skilled labour sectors whereas white people worked mainly as clerks or administrators. Rural areas were unable to sustain growing numbers of black people, and more and more were migrating to towns and cities where huge squatter camps developed. Black inhabitants in towns increased from 18.4% in 1936 to 23.4% in 1946, according to the census. The presence of black women was becoming increasingly evident and they played a major role during the Alexandra bus boycott of 1943 – one of the first overtly political actions by black people in South Africa.
A few years later, on 8 March 1947, a procession of hundreds of women of all races claiming freedom and equality took place in the streets of Johannesburg. Women also often protested against high food prices. In 1948 the National Party came into power, and three years later, during the fifth general census, it was revealed that only 23.7% of South African women were economically active as against 91.9% of the men. Practically all of the active women were black and doing domestic work – either their own or in the service of a ‘madam’.
For half a century, proposals that black women should also carry passes were held at bay in all kinds of ways, but in September 1955 the National Party government announced that it would start issuing women with pass documents. This was three years after the government had given the assurance that it was not planning to extend the hated pass laws to women. Though the anti-pass demonstrations of 1950 and 1951 were still uppermost in people’s minds, by 1955 the National Party knew that it occupied a safe position in parliament, and that it also enjoyed the support of many English-speaking citizens. There was little opposition to contentious issues, and neither the ANC nor the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) initiated meaningful protest action against the demolition of Sophiatown in Johannesburg or the passing of the contentious Bantu Education Law of 1953.32 The government therefore assumed that there would not be much opposition to the introduction of passes for women. This time, however, they seriously misjudged the mood. For decades, black women had been moving to the cities unhampered by official control measures, and they were not prepared to give up this freedom without a fight. As Cherryl Walker points out:
The announcement that reference books would be issued to women set the stage for an unprecedented outburst of popular resistance among them. More than any other issue, the threat of passes stirred an enormous response among women and raised their active involvement in politics to new levels.33
In spite of grave practical obstacles, between 1 000 and 2 000 women, mainly black, but also white, coloured and Indian, gathered to demonstrate at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on 27 October 1955. It was a dignified protest, but government ministers refused to meet with the women. The Afrikaans daily Die Vaderland focused in its report on the presence of white women and implied that they were the reason why the protest gathering was ‘quiet and disciplined’. The Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) gained much publicity from the event, and in December Lilian Ngoyi was chosen as a member of the national executive council of the ANC – a clear indication that male members had taken note of the political power of women after their well-organised anti-pass demonstration. In November 1955, Ngoyi issued a fierce and defiant statement: ‘We have decided to join battle with Verwoerd on this issue and we say without the slightest hesitation that we shall defeat the government.’34
In accordance with the ANC’s general viewpoint, it was decided that women’s organisations, with FEDSAW in the forefront, would for the next four years continue to protest against the pass laws. ‘There is nothing in the country that makes an African a prisoner […] more than the operation of pass laws’, the influential magazine Drum declared in February 1956. Colourfully, it went on to state: