essay of pass law act

Pass Laws During Apartheid

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South African pass laws were a major component of  apartheid  that focused on separating South African citizens according to their race. This was done to promote the supposed superiority of White people and to establish the minority White regime.

Legislative laws were passed to accomplish this, including the Land Act of 1913, the Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, and the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950—all of which were created to separate the races.

Designed to Control Movement

Under apartheid, pass laws were designed to control the movement of Black Africans , and they are considered one of the most grievous methods that the South African government used to support apartheid.

The resulting legislation (specifically Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act No. 67 of 1952 ) introduced in South Africa required Black Africans to carry identity documents in the form of a "reference book" when outside a set of reserves (later known as homelands or bantustans.)

Pass laws evolved from regulations that the Dutch and British enacted during the 18th-century and 19th-century enslavement economy of the Cape Colony. In the 19th century, new pass laws were enacted to ensure a steady supply of cheap African labor for the diamond and gold mines.

In 1952, the government passed an even more stringent law that required all African men age 16 and over to carry a "reference book" (replacing the previous passbook) which held their personal and employment information. (Attempts to force women to carry passbooks in 1910, and again during the 1950s, caused strong protests.)

Passbook Contents

The passbook was similar to a passport in that it contained details about the individual, including a photograph, fingerprint, address, the name of his employer, how long the person had been employed, and other identifying information. Employers often entered an evaluation of the pass holder's behavior.

As defined by law, an employer could only be a White person. The pass also documented when permission was requested to be in a certain region and for what purpose, and whether that request was denied or granted.

Urban areas were considered "White," so a non-White person needed a passbook to be inside a city.

Under the law, any governmental employee could remove these entries, essentially removing permission to stay in the area. If a passbook didn't have a valid entry, officials could arrest its owner and put him in prison.

Colloquially, passes were known as the dompas , which literally meant the "dumb pass." These passes became the most hated and despicable symbols of apartheid.

Violating Pass Laws

Africans often violated the pass laws to find work and support their families and thus lived under constant threat of fines, harassment, and arrests.

Protests against the suffocating laws drove the anti-apartheid struggle—including the Defiance Campaign in the early '50s and the huge women's protest in Pretoria in 1956.

In 1960, Africans burned their passes at the police station in Sharpeville and 69 protesters were killed. During the '70s and '80s, many Africans who violated pass laws lost their citizenship and were deported to impoverished rural "homelands." By the time the pass laws were repealed in 1986, 17 million people had been arrested.

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Who Was Affected by the Pass Laws and How?

On this page, we explore who was affected by the pass laws and how, in South Africa.

The pass laws in South Africa were one of the cornerstones of the apartheid system, a series of racial segregation policies that were enforced in the country for much of the 20th century. These laws had far-reaching consequences, affecting millions of people in various ways. This article explores the people who were affected by the pass laws and the ways in which their lives were impacted.

Table of Contents

The Pass Laws in South Africa predominantly affected black South Africans, but also had impacts on Coloured and Indian communities. These laws severely restricted the movement, residence, and employment of black individuals. People were forced to carry “passbooks” at all times, and failure to produce them could lead to arrest. This led to confinement in impoverished rural areas, limited employment opportunities, separation of families, and entrenchment of economic disparities. The laws furthered racial segregation, creating a hierarchical system that prioritized white citizens, and caused significant social disintegration, resistance, protests, and psychological trauma.

What Were the Pass Laws?

The pass laws were a set of legal regulations that controlled the movement of black South Africans. Black individuals were required to carry “passbooks” at all times, which contained personal information such as the holder’s name, photograph, place of origin, employment status, and fingerprints. Failure to produce this document upon request by law enforcement could lead to immediate arrest and imprisonment.

Who Was Affected?

1. black south africans.

The primary victims of the pass laws were black South Africans, who were subjected to severe restrictions on their movement, residence, and employment.

• Movement : Black individuals were prohibited from entering certain areas, particularly cities, without permission. This effectively trapped many in impoverished rural areas or designated townships.
• Employment : The laws controlled where black South Africans could work, limiting their employment opportunities and often forcing them into low-paying, undesirable jobs.
• Families : Many families were torn apart, as men were often required to live in male-only hostels near their workplaces, separated from their wives and children.

2. Coloured and Indian South Africans

Though primarily aimed at black individuals, some of the laws also affected Coloured and Indian South Africans, furthering racial segregation and creating a hierarchical system that prioritized white citizens.

The Impact of the Pass Laws

The pass laws had a profound and lasting impact on South African society:

• Economic Disparities : By restricting access to education and lucrative employment, the laws entrenched poverty among black communities.
• Social Disintegration : The forced separation of families led to social disintegration, eroding cultural ties and community structures.
• Resistance and Protests : The laws led to widespread resistance and protests, including events like the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, where 69 protestors were killed by police while demonstrating against the pass laws.
• Psychological Trauma : Living under the constant surveillance and control of the apartheid regime inflicted deep psychological wounds on those subjected to the pass laws, effects that continue to resonate today.

The pass laws were a brutal mechanism of control, segregation, and oppression in apartheid-era South Africa. They touched nearly every aspect of life for black South Africans and other marginalized groups, dictating where they could live, work, and even who they could see.

Their legacy remains a painful scar on South African society, a reminder of a time when human rights and dignity were trampled under the guise of legal regulation. The lessons learned from this dark chapter continue to inform the ongoing struggle for equality and justice, not just in South Africa but around the world.

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Essay About The Pass Laws 300 Words

let’s explore a piece of history that’s like a puzzle from the past – the Pass Laws. It’s a chapter of our world’s history filled with struggle, injustice, and the courage of those who fought against it. So, grab your time-traveling hats, and let’s dive into this important journey!

Table of Contents

What Were the Pass Laws? – A Glimpse into a Challenging Past

The Pass Laws were like a set of rules and regulations in South Africa during a time when things were not equal for everyone. They started way back in the 18th century but became more serious in the 20th century. These laws required people of color, mainly Black South Africans, to carry a special passbook with them at all times. It’s like carrying around a ticket just to prove who you are.

Apartheid – The Dark Background

To understand the Pass Laws, we need to talk about apartheid. Apartheid was like a big dark cloud that hung over South Africa for many years. It was a system of racial segregation that separated people based on the color of their skin. The Pass Laws were one of the tools used to enforce apartheid and control the movement of Black South Africans.

The Different Types of Passes

There were different types of passes for different purposes. It’s like having a bunch of keys, each unlocking a different door. There were work passes, travel passes, and even passbooks for children. These passes controlled where people could live, work, and travel.

The Struggles and Hardships

Living under the Pass Laws was like walking through a maze filled with obstacles. Black South Africans had to deal with constant police checks, arrests, and harassment. It was difficult to find work or move to different areas without the right passes. Families were often separated because of these laws.

Heroes Who Fought Back

Even in the darkest times, there were heroes who stood up against the Pass Laws. People like Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, and many others were like beacons of hope. They organized protests, spoke out against injustice, and worked tirelessly to bring about change.

International Pressure

The Pass Laws didn’t just affect South Africa; they caught the attention of the world. Other countries imposed sanctions and boycotts to pressure South Africa to end apartheid and the Pass Laws. It’s like a global chorus of voices demanding justice.

The End of Apartheid

Finally, in the early 1990s, the world witnessed a remarkable change. It was like a bright dawn breaking after a long night. South Africa started to dismantle apartheid and the Pass Laws. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and negotiations for a more equal society began.

Lessons Learned

The Pass Laws and apartheid are like reminders of the importance of equality, justice, and the power of people coming together to make a change. We must remember this part of history so that we can prevent such injustices from happening again.

Our Role in History

As young people, we also play a role in history. It’s like adding our own brushstrokes to a painting. We must learn about the past, stand up against injustice, and work towards a more equal world. Our actions today shape the future.

A Brighter Future

Today, South Africa has made progress towards equality, but the wounds of the past still linger. It’s like a healing process that takes time. By learning about the Pass Laws and understanding their impact, we can be part of a brighter future where all people are treated with fairness and respect.

Conclusion: Remembering and Learning

The Pass Laws were a dark chapter in South Africa’s history, but they also serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit and the power of change. By understanding this history and working towards a more just world, we can honor the heroes who fought against injustice and ensure that such laws are never repeated.

Author’s Note:

I hope you found this journey through history insightful. It’s like a window into a challenging time, but it also shows us the resilience of the human spirit. If you want to talk more about this or any other topic, just let me know!

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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Articles on Pass laws

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African Women`s Resistance to the Pass Laws in South Africa 1950-1960, by Elizabeth S. Schmidt

Introduction

The decade of the 1950s was a decade of turmoil in South Africa. In

the urban areas, a strong alliance was being forged between racially oppressed

groups and sympathetic whites. As a united front against apartheid, the

non-racial Congress Alliance, (2) formed from previously

organised racially-based and worker groups, defied unjust laws and conducted

campaigns against forced removals under the Group Areas Act and against

inferior "Bantu" education for African children. The alliance

organised bus boycotts, stay-at-homes, and rent strikes in the African

townships. Perhaps the most significant Congress campaign of the decade

was the campaign against the pass laws, and in particular, the extension

of reference books to African women. No other campaign was carried out

on such a massive scale or was sustained over as many years. No other campaign

struck at the very root of the apartheid system.

Protest against the pass laws was not an innovation of the 1950s. The

African National Congress (ANC) had been organising opposition to the legislation

since its founding in 1912. The significance of the campaigns of the 1950s

lay in the adoption of new strategies for bringing about fundamental change.

For the first time, anti-pass protesters employed techniques of mass action,

strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience on a wide scale, abandoning the

appeals, petitions and deputations that had characterised ANC protests

for more than forty years. Efforts at gentle suasion and pleas for patient

waiting were cast aside as remnants of a bygone era. The degree of popular

involvement in the anti-pass actions and the level of spontaneous activity

in the rural areas was unparallelled in any other period of South African

history. Finally, in the 1950s, the primary catalysts of the anti-pass

protests were not the traditional male leaders, but thousands of African

women, many of whom had never before been involved in political protests

or demonstrations.

In the urban areas, the women`s campaigns were primarily organised by

the ANC Women`s League and the nonracial Federation of South African Women.

In the rural areas, resistance was largely spontaneous. Although the Government

charged that the unrest was due to the work of "outside agitators",

the rural women were, for the most part, acting on their own initiative

and according to their own understanding of how the extension of the pass

laws could affect their lives. While women who worked in the urban areas

brought home new tactics, insights and information when they returned to

the reserves, they were contributing to a momentum that had gathered on

The militancy of the women, their level of organisation in the urban

areas, and the ease with which they discarded their expected subordinate

role came as a shock to many of the men and even to some of the women.

Although women were deeply involved in all of the Congress campaigns of

the 1950s, the leadership of the Congress organisations was dominated almost

exclusively by men. (3)

As the women`s campaigns gathered strength, the ANC National Executive

Committee pointedly acknowledged the role of women in the liberation struggle.

It was obvious, from the wording of its statements, that the importance

of women to the struggle had not previously been assumed. In its report

to the Annual Conference of December 17-18, 1955, the ANC National Executive

Committee remarked that the ANC Women`s League, which was formed in part

to "take up special problems and issues affecting women", was

not "just an auxiliary to the African National Congress, and we know

that we cannot win liberation or build a strong movement without the participation

of the women..." (4)

African women played a leading role in the resistance to pass legislation

because of the particular way in which influx control measures, implemented

through the pass system, affected their position in society as well as

African family life. On the basis of race, African women suffered the same

disabilities as African men. Because of their sex, however, they carried

a double burden. At the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy, African

women were predominantly employed in low-paying, unskilled jobs. Because

of the tenuous nature of their employment - largely in the domestic service

and informal sectors - African women were particularly vulnerable to removal

from the urban areas as "idle" Africans or "superfluous

appendages". Legal constraints made it far more difficult for African

women than men to acquire urban residency rights, accommodations in the

urban areas, and land in the African reserves. Influx control laws, and

by extension the pass system, were intentionally used by government officials

to bar African women from the urban areas and to confine them to the African

Life in the reserves was an existence of poverty and hardship for the

vast majority of the people. Enforced landlessness had transformed African

men from self-reliant peasants to migrant labourers in the white areas.

Influx control laws meant that their families were forced to stay in the

reserves, where the men could visit them once a year. The burden of raising

children under such conditions, which fell almost exclusively on the women,

became increasingly arduous. As the soil lost its fertility and landlessness

became more acute, the reserve economy deteriorated. The women`s role as

cultivators and providers eroded, and with it, women`s social status. Rather

than being major contributors to the families` livelihood, women became

increasingly dependent upon male earnings. However, these earnings were

neither large nor secure. In many cases, money from the "white"

areas came sporadically or not at all.

During the period that women were free from pass law restrictions, some

had been able to skirt the influx control regulations and join their husbands

in the urban areas. Some found menial jobs which, although low-paying and

insecure, were more lucrative than subsistence farming. These women knew

that the extension of passes to women would increase the effectiveness

of the influx control system. No longer would there be an exit from the

reserves, a way for women to earn money to feed their children or to live

with their husbands in the urban areas. As a result, when in 1952 the Government

announced that African women would be forced to carry passes, the women

responded with vehemence. Subjection to pass law controls would destroy

their last remaining hope - their freedom of movement. Unlike African men,

the women who resisted these laws had nothing further to lose. Protesters

in the rural areas were not risking the loss of urban residency rights,

houses or jobs. They could afford to be bold where men were apt to be hesitant.

The women could only gain by their militancy.

Resistance to the pass laws was the overwhelming, but not the only issue

of the 1950s. African women became involved in a number of campaigns focussing

on issues that affected their ability to care for their children and to

keep their family unit together. They protested the pass laws, "Bantu"

education, rent hikes, bus fare increases, forced removals of African communities,

government-owned beer halls that soaked up their husbands` wages and laws

that prevented them from selling home brew, an important source of income

for many women. In the rural areas, women resisted the Government`s "betterment"

schemes, which included the mandatory culling of precious livestock, required

women to fill and maintain cattle dipping tanks without pay, and enforced

soil conservation measures which dispossessed many families of arable land.

Although the disabilities imposed by apartheid laws were onerous for

every African, in many ways the burden fell heaviest on the women. In order

to comprehend the forces that propelled these women into action in the

1950s, it is necessary to understand the social and economic context of

their resistance. Perhaps the single most significant factor contributing

to their hardship was the deterioration of the economy in the reserves,

where the majority of African women were compelled to live. As a result

of this economic decline, an increasing number of able-bodied men were

leaving the reserves as migrant labourers. The outflow of labour from the

reserves and the destruction of the family unit intensified the hardships

borne by African women...

Passes for African women

In 1952, the same year that African women became subject to strict influx

control measures, the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of

Documents) Act was passed. Under this Act, the numerous documents African

men had been required to carry were replaced by a single document - the

reference book - which contained information concerning identity, employment,

place of legal residence, payment of taxes, and, if applicable, permission

to be in the urban areas. The Act further stipulated that African women,

at an unspecified further date, would for the first time be required to

carry reference books. In October 1962, the Government announced that all

African women would be required to carry reference books as of February

1, 1963. After this date, it would be criminal offence for African women,

as well as men, to be caught without a reference book. Moreover, it would

be illegal for anyone to employ an African of either sex who did not possess

a reference book. (5)

The term "pass" was frequently used to describe any document

which curtailed an African`s freedom of movement and was producible on

the demand of police or local authorities. Thus, residency permits, special

entry permits, workseekers` permits, and reference books often fell into

the general category of the "pass". Strictly speaking, permits

were the documents issued to workseekers and special cases under the terms

of the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952. Reference books, a government

euphemism for the consolidated pass documents, were issued under the terms

of the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act,

also of 1952. Ultimately, all African women in the towns, cities, "white"

rural areas and reserves were required to carry reference books, while

only certain women in the proclaimed areas were subject to the permit requirements.

The issuance of permits in the urban areas began a few years before the

issuance of reference books. African women declared that the permits were

simply forerunners of reference books and treated them with equal contempt.

The Government`s first attempts to force women to carry passes and permits

had been a major fiasco. In 1913, government officials in the Orange Free

State declared that women living in the urban townships would be required

to buy new entry permits each month. In response, the women sent deputations

to the Government, collected thousands of signatures on petitions, and

organised massive demonstrations to protest the permit requirement. Unrest

spread throughout the province and hundreds of women were sent to prison.

Civil disobedience and demonstrations continued sporadically for several

years. Ultimately the permit requirement was withdrawn.

No further attempts were made to require permits or passes for African

women until the 1950s. Although laws requiring such documents were enacted

in 1952, the Government did not begin issuing permits to women until 1954

and reference books until 1956. The issuing of permits began in the Western

Cape, which the Government had designated a "Coloured preference area".

Within the boundaries established by the Government, no African workers

could be hired unless the Department of Labour determined that Coloured

workers were not available. Foreign Africans were to be removed from the

area altogether. No new families would be allowed to enter, and women and

children who did not qualify to remain would be sent back to the reserves.

The entrance of the migrant labourers would henceforth be strictly controlled.

Male heads of households, whose families had been endorsed out or prevented

from entering the area, were housed with migrant workers in single-sex

hostels. The availability of family accommodations was so limited that

the number of units built lagged far behind the natural increase in population.

In order to enforce such drastic influx control measures, the Government

needed a means of identifying women who had no legal right to remain in

the Western Cape. According to the terms of the Native Laws Amendment Act,

women with Section 10(1)(a), (b), or (c) status were not compelled to carry

permits. Theoretically, only women in the Section 10(1)(d) category - that

is, workseekers or women with special permission to remain in the urban

area - were required to possess such documents. In spite of their legal

exemption, women with Section 10(1)(a), (b), and (c) rights were issued

permits by local authorities which claimed that the documents were for

their own protection. Any woman who could not prove her (a), (b), or (c)

status was liable to arrest and deportation.

Soon after permits were issued to women in the Western Cape, local officials

began to enforce the regulations throughout the Union. Reaction to the

new system was swift and hostile. Even before the Western Cape was designated

a "Coloured preference area", Africans were preparing for the

inevitable. On January 4, 1953, hundreds of African men and women assembled

in the Langa township outside Cape Town to protest the impending application

of the Native Laws Amendment Act. Delivering a fiery speech to the crowd

Dora Tamana, a member of the ANC Women`s League and a founding member of

the Federation of South African Women, declared:

"We, women, will never carry these passes. This is something that

touches my heart. I appeal to you young Africans to come forward and fight.

These passes make the road even narrower for us. We have seen unemployment,

lack of accommodation and families broken because of passes. We have seen

it with our men. Who will look after our children when we go to jail for

a small technical offence -- not having a pass?" (6)

The women`s campaign had begun. Throughout the Union, preparations were

made for the first nonracial National Conference of Women, to be held in

Johannesburg in April 1954.

The Federation of South African Women and the marches on Pretoria

in 1955 and 1956

One hundred and forty-six delegates, representing 230,000 women from

all parts of South Africa, attended the first National Conference of Women.

It was at this conference that the Federation of South African Women

was formed. Many of the delegates to the conference were members of the

various Congress organisations. Among the African leaders of the Federation,

a large number were trade unionists, primarily from the clothing, textile,

and food and canning industries. Some were teachers and nurses, members

of the small African professional class. Since fewer than one per cent

of African working women were engaged in production work in the 1950s,

the trade unionists, like the nurses and teachers, represented but a fraction

of all adult African women. The involvement of the trade unionists proved

to be critical, however. They contributed invaluable organisational skills

and mobilising techniques to the women`s struggle.

Although the Federation of South African Women included some individual

members, it was primarily composed of affiliated women`s groups, African,

Indian, "Coloured" and white political organisations, and trade

unions. According to its constitution, the objectives of the Federation

"To bring the women of South Africa together to secure full equality

of opportunity for all women, regardless of race, colour or creed; to remove

social and legal and economic disabilities; to work for the protection

of the women and children of our land." (8)

The "Women`s Charter", written at the first conference, called

for the enfranchisement of men and women of all races; equality of opportunity

in employment; equal pay for equal work; equal rights in relation to property,

marriage and children; and the removal of all laws and customs that denied

women such equality. The Charter further demanded paid maternity leave,

child care for working mothers, and free and compulsory education for all

South African children. (9)

Although the Federation acknowledged that the primary task at hand was

the struggle for national liberation, it warned that the struggle would

not be won without the full participation of women. Applying a distorted

version of "tribal" law, which had governed pre-industrial African

society, South African courts continued to regard African women as perpetual

minors under the permanent tutelage of their male guardians. Women`s property

rights were severely limited and control over their own earnings minimal.

The authors of the "Women`s Charter" did not hesitate to deal

with these issues. According to the Charter, laws governing African marriage

and property relations had "lagged behind the development of society

(and) no longer correspond to the actual social and economic position of

women". As a result, "the law has become an obstacle to the progress

of the women, and therefore, a brake on the whole of society". The

blame for "this intolerable condition" rested in part with "a

large section of our menfolk" who refuse "to concede to us women

the rights and privileges which they demand for themselves". The Charter

"We shall teach the men that they cannot hope to liberate themselves

from the evils of discrimination and prejudice as long as they fail to

extend to women complete and unqualified equality in law and practice...

freedom cannot be won for any one section or for the people as a whole

as long as we women are kept in bondage."

The demands laid out in the "Women`s Charter" were ultimately

incorporated into the "Freedom Charter", adopted by the Congress

of the People in Kliptown on June 25-26, 1955.

A major task of the Federation in succeeding years was the organisation

of massive protests against the extension of pass laws to women. Together

with the ANC Women`s League, the Federation organised scores of demonstrations

outside Government offices in towns and cities around the country. The

first national protest took place on October 27, 1955, when 2,000 women

of all races marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria, planning to meet

with the Cabinet ministers responsible for the administration of apartheid

laws. The Minister of Native Affairs, Dr. Verwoerd, under whose jurisdiction

the pass laws fell, pointedly refused to receive a multiracial delegation.

Less than a year later, the Women`s League and the Federation of South

African Women organised a second major demonstration - this time focussing

exclusively on the pass laws. On August 9, 1956, 20,000 women from all

parts of South Africa staged a second march on the Union Buildings. Prime

Minister Strijdom, who had been notified of the women`s mission, was not

there to receive them. In lieu of a meeting, the women left bundles of

petitions containing more than 100,000 signatures at the Prime Minister`s

Outside the Government building, they stood silently for 30 minutes,

their hands raised in the Congress salute.(12)

The women concluded their demonstration by singing freedom songs, including

a new one composed especially for the occasion:

Wathint` abafazi, Strijdom!

Wathint` imbokodo uzo kufa!

Now you have touched the women, Strijdom!

You have struck a rock

(You have dislodged a boulder!)

You will be crushed!

African women fought the pass laws as they had fought no other issue.

Passes were the symbol of their deepest oppression. It was through the

pass laws that the influx control system was enforced. It was influx control

that turned their husbands into migrant workers and made them into widows

in the reserves. Passes deprived them of the basic right to live with their

husbands and to raise their children in a stable family unit. Throughout

the 1950s, an average of 339,255 African men were convicted each year for

pass laws violations. If passes were extended to African women, that figure

would more than double. If mothers were arrested as well as fathers, the

women asked, who would care for the children?

The call-to-action flyers of the Women`s League and the Federation described

in vivid detail the plight of the African people under the pass laws. A

flyer printed in 1957 carried the following challenge: "Who knows

better than any African woman what it means to have a husband who must

carry a pass?" The flyer continued:

"Passes mean prison; passes mean broken homes; passes mean suffering

and misery for every African family in our country; passes are just another

way in which the Government makes slaves of the Africans; passes mean hunger

and unemployment; passed are an insult..."

The extension of passes to women constituted an "attack on ourselves,

our mothers, sisters, children and families", the flyer concluded,

an attack that would be fought with all the women`s strength. (13)

Other documents were written in a similar vein. The petition left with

the Prime Minister on August 9, 1956, described how the pass laws had brought

"untold suffering to every African family". Generations of women

had experienced the meaning of the pass laws as they witnessed their husbands

become victims of "raids, arrests, loss of pay, long hours at the

pass office, weeks in cells awaiting trial, forced farm labour". They

had seen their men subjected to "punishment and misery - not for a

crime, but for the lack of a pass". The extension of passes to women

would mean the further destruction of family life, that children would

be "left uncared for, helpless, and others (would be) torn from babies

for failure to produce a pass". The petition concluded with a warning

to the Prime Minister:

"(African women) shall not rest until ALL pass laws and all forms

of permits restricting our freedoms have been abolished. We shall not rest

until we have won for our children their fundamental rights of freedom,

justice and security." (14)

Male reactions to the women`s campaigns

Few of the men were prepared for the women`s militancy. According to

Mary Benson, Walter Sisulu, former Secretary-General of the African National

Congress, witnessed the march of 20,000 women on the Union Buildings in

Pretoria. Afterwards, he asked in zest: "How could they dare?"

Moses Mabhida, a leader of the African National Congress and an executive

of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), felt that because

of traditional male attitudes which perpetuated the subordinate status

of women, "the society didn`t expect women to participate in the way

they did". (16)

Benson writes that the men were taken aback because women were protesting

on a scale and with a spirit they had not begun to achieve. In her view,

the women`s militancy and the men`s reticence could be explained by the

different circumstances of their lives under the apartheid system. To illustrate

her point, Benson quotes Lilian Ngoyi:

"Men are born into the system, and it is as if it has been a life

tradition that they carry passes. We as women have seen the treatment our

men have - when they leave home in the morning you are not sure they will

come back. We are taking it very seriously. If the husband is to be arrested

and the mother, what about the child?" (17)

In spite of their hate for pass regulations and all they connoted, African

men had grown used to carrying the pass documents. For men, passes were

just one more aspect of the despised apartheid system. For women, the carrying

of passes imposed a new restriction on their freedom, a freedom that men

had never had. Women had more to lose by acquiescing to the new system

and more to gain by fighting it.

If the men were slow to recognise the women`s contribution, they had

staunch supporters of their efforts. Albert Lutuli, President-General of

the African National Congress, paid tribute to the women in August 1956.

"When the women begin to take an active part in the struggle as they

are doing now, no power on earth can stop us from achieving FREEDOM IN

OUR LIFETIME", he declared. (18)

In November 1956, the South African Congress of Trade Unions wrote to

the Transvaal Provincial Conference of the Federation of South African

Women, strongly supporting the women`s actions:

"It is the women of South Africa who have demonstrated to all progressive

forces the true meaning of militancy and organisation and we in the trade

union movement are determined to follow your courageous example."

The National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, after

paying tribute to the women`s anti-pass campaigns, criticised the men for

not playing a more active role in that struggle:

"The National Executive Committee regrets that men, who are even

more affected by the pass laws, play the role of spectators while women

were vigorously campaigning against the system. Men are called upon to

enter this campaign unreservedly. The tendency of regarding this as a women`s

struggle must be forthwith abandoned." (20)

The National Executive Committee also directed the men to be more supportive

of the women and their efforts. It was the duty of the men to:

"...make it possible for women to play their part in the liberation

movement by regarding them as equals, and helping to emancipate them in

the home, even relieving them of their many family and household burdens

so that women may be given an opportunity of being politically active.

The men in the Congress movement must fight constantly in every possible

way those outmoded customs which make women inferior and by personal example

must demonstrate their belief in the equality of all human beings, of both

sexes." (21)

By 1959, four years after the beginning of the women`s campaigns, the

men in the African National Congress had become ardent supporters of the

women`s efforts. For the Annual Conference of the African National Congress,

held in December of that year, the men made a special banner which read,

"Makabongwe Amakosikazi" - "We thank the ladies".

The local campaigns: women revolt in the towns and cities

Just as they had forty years before, the women`s anti-pass protests

of the 1950s began in the Orange Free State. The first actions were taken

against the permit system. In June 1952, in the mining town of Odendaalrus,

residents of the location were told that African women who had not registered

with the local authorities would be liable to arrest for violation of the

Urban Areas Act. If women could not prove that they were employed, they

could not remain in the Odendaalrus area. The authorities were acting illegally.

While women could be issued residence permits or permits of identification,

under the terms of the Urban Areas Act, only African men were required

to register their service contracts or status as workseekers. African women

were exempt from these regulations. (23)

Few of the residents were aware of this fact. When the authorities tried

to enforce their decree, rioting broke out. Stones were thrown. The car

of the location superintendent was burned. Police fired into the crowd,

killing one man and critically wounding a woman. Two days later, the location

residents went out on strike, most of them failing to appear for work.

Police from eight near-by towns raided the location with sten guns, pistols,

batons and tear gas, rounding up participants in the disturbances. By the

end of the week, 71 men and women had been detained. Forty-four women and

three men ultimately stood trial. (24)

By 1954, the issuance of residence permits to African women was taking

place in towns and cities throughout the Union. In February, a crowd of

700 women gathered outside the administration building in the New Brighton

township of Port Elizabeth, demanding that the manager of Native affairs

take back all the residence permits he had issued. When he refused, l00

women burned their permits, declaring that no more New Brighton women were

willing to carry them. (25)

In October 1955, while 2,000 women were marching on Pretoria, 1,000

were protesting in front of the Native administration building in Durban.

In Cape Town, hundreds of women marched through the streets in protest

of the permit regulations. The Minister of Native Affairs, Dr. Verwoerd,

chose this moment to announce that reference books would be issued to African

women beginning in January 1956. In response to the Government`s actions,

the African National Congress resolved in December 1955 to launch a massive

campaign against the pass laws. The goal of the campaign would be to educate

people throughout the country concerning the implications of the pass system,

and in particular, its effect on African women. In a letter to a provincial

official of the African National Congress, Secretary-General Oliver Tambo

described the extent of the African National Congress effort:.

"A systematic intensive organisation must be undertaken; house

to house, yard to yard, location to location, factory to factory, in the

towns and likewise in the country." (26)

In early 1956, the Government began issuing reference books to women

in the remote rural areas, intentionally shying away from the larger towns

and cities where the influence of the African National Congress was strongest.

The authorities focussed on the most vulnerable women - those in the reserves

and on the white farms, and domestic servants isolated in the white urban

areas. Only after the majority of African women had reference books would

the Government attack the African National Congress strongholds. The African

National Congress was not blind to the Government`s tactics. At the annual

Conference of the African National Congress (Transvaal) in November 1956,

President E.P. Moretsele warned that.

"plans are afoot to introduce reference books on the farms and

country dorps. The plan of the Government is perfectly clear. Alarmed by

the resistance it is encountering in the cities and being aware of the

weaknesses in the countryside, they have decided to isolate and encircle

the areas where resistance is most effective. At present the passes are

being introduced to women in the countryside and thereafter the cities

will be attacked with all viciousness and brutality for which the Nationalists

are famous." (27)

It was not until March 1956 that the first reference books were issued.

The first recipients were again women in the Orange Free State, this time

in the town of Winburg. In April, hundreds of Winburg women marched to

the magistrate`s court and charged that many of those who had taken reference

books had been tricked into accepting them. They proceeded to dump a sack

containing 141 reference books on the ground and burned them. All of the

women were arrested. Although it was not yet mandatory for women to carry

reference books, it was illegal to destroy them. (28)

Protests spread throughout the country. Twelve hundred women demonstrated

in Germiston, 2,000 in Johannesburg, 4,000 in Pretoria, and 350 in Bethlehem.

In Durban, a deputation of more than 300 women marched to the Native

Commissioner`s office.(30)

Seven hundred Port Elizabeth women deposited more than 4,000 protest

forms with the Native Commissioner - all of which were promptly turned

over to the police. (31)

The people of Evaton were in the sixth month of a bus boycott to protest

fare increases when the women`s protest began. Rather than break the boycott,

200 women marched seven miles to the Native Commissioner`s office, where

they left 10,000 protest forms. (32)

On 9 August, while 20,000 women were descending on the Union Buildings

in Pretoria, thousands of women were demonstrating in other parts of South

Africa. In Cradock, 300 women assembled in front of the magistrate`s office

while a deputation presented the magistrate with a memorandum. Later in

the day, a meeting of more than 1,000 people was held in the location to

protest the pass laws. In Queenstown, women congregated outside the magistrate`s

court, while a deputation met with the Native Commissioner. An African

policeman who witnessed the Queenstown demonstration later gave evidence

in court. After providing the particulars of the meeting, Native Detective

A. Moxambuza remarked:

"Passes not popular amongst Africans. I myself have a wife and

children, and if wife were to face same dangers of arrest as average African

male, I would be most unhappy. I am aware that when first suggested that

African women would carry passes, this caused resentment and heat amongst

African women and their men-folk."

Throughout 1957 and 1958, as supporters of the African National Congress

and of the Federation of South African Women protested in the towns and

cities, the rural areas in the western Transvaal were in utter turmoil.

In close proximity to South Africa`s major mining and industrial centre,

the Witwatersrand, the Lefurutse reserve of the western Transvaal was a

source of migrant labour for South Africa`s industries, farms, and mines.

Prior to the extension of reference books to African women, the reserve

had been an area without previous disturbances. By the end of the ordeal,

the reserve and surrounding district had become a virtual military camp.

Thousands of refugees had fled the area. Whole villages had been destroyed

and deserted. The people who remained were subjected to nightly terror

by police and the "bodyguards" of collaborating tribal authorities.

The disturbances began in March 1957 when the Reference Book Unit came

to Zeerust, the largest town in the Marico District. Only eight women,

from an African population of 4,000 bought reference books. The vast majority

refused to purchase the new documents. (33)

The Reference Book Unit moved on to Dinokana, the village of Chief Abraham

Moiloa. The Native Commissioner had presented the chief with an ultimatum

-- either he tell his women to accept reference books or be deposed. (34)

In the years preceding the issuance of reference books, Chief Moiloa

had fallen from favour with the South African Government. He had delayed

in signing the Bantu Authorities Act, which parodied tribal Government,

making chiefs and headmen instruments of the white regime, rather than

leaders who acted with the consent of their people. (35)

In 1955, the chief had been requested to persuade the villagers of Braklaagte

and Leeuwfontein to abandon their homes and move to a new location. The

area surrounding the two villages had been declared "white",

and the Government was determined to move all "Black spots" within

it. Chief Moiloa`s half-hearted efforts at persuasion had failed completely.

It was rumoured within government circles that the chief actually opposed

the removal policy, the Bantu Authorities Act and the introduction of "Bantu

education" for African children. (37)

Although Chief Moiloa informed his people about the reference books,

he refused to order the women to buy them. When the Reference Book Unit

arrived, only 76 out of 4,000 Diokana women purchased the books - less

than one in 50. Most of the 76 were school teachers, employees of the Government

or wives of men who had been threatened with dismissal from their jobs

if their wives did not cooperate. (38)

Government retribution was swift. Chief Moiloa was summarily deposed

and ordered to leave the reserve. (39)

In the towns and cities of the Witwatersrand, the Bafurutse workers

heard that trouble was brewing. Within days, thewomen had returned home

and organised boycotts against a white trader sympathetic to the Government`s

efforts and against government schools where teachers had taken out reference

books. Out of 1,200 students, less than 150 continued to go to classes.

All of the boycotters were expelled and blacklisted. Their names were circulated

by the Native Affairs Department to prevent them from continuing their

education elsewhere. Ultimately, Dinokana`s only school was forced to close

down permanently. (40)

The following weekend, 150 Bafurutse men arrived from Johannesburg.

A meeting was held and a decision made: all of the reference books were

to be destroyed. The women went from door to door, collecting the documents.

On Sunday, the reference books were brought to the public square and burned.

Several thousand people gathered around the blaze, singing as the passes

went up in smoke. (41)

That evening, as the men made their way to Zeerust to catch the train

back to Johannesburg, they walked into a police cordon. One hundred men

were arrested. Toavenge the arrests, the women in the village began to

burn the huts of people loyal to the Government. The loyalists included

a school principal, members of a church whose leader had advocated the

acceptance of reference books, policemen and other employees and beneficiaries

of the South African Government. (42)

On Monday, large-scale arrests began. By the end of the week, the jail

in Zeerust was full. The unrest that began in Dinokana quickly spread throughout

the reserve. The women of Lekgophung took matters into their own hands

and told their chief to be absent when the Reference Book Unit arrived.

Although it was unheard of for women to give orders to a chief, the chief

obeyed them. When the government officials arrived, the women informed

them that they did not want passes. The authorities left without issuing

a single reference book. (43)

In the village of Supingstad, the women suddenly discovered that they

had urgent business elsewhere. When the Reference Book Unit appeared, the

village was deserted. In Braklaagte and Borakalalo, the books were refused

without ceremony. The Reference Book Unit returned to Motswedi three times

without issuing a single book - in spite of the chief`s command that the

women cooperate. (44)

Only a handful of books were accepted in Leeuwfontein, where villagers

speaking against the books were arrested. (45)

In Gopane, the chief applied pressure, and approximately one-third of

the women purchased reference books. When the village men came home for

the Easter holidays, they were livid. The chief had no right to take action

on an issue of such importance without consulting them. The reference books

had to be destroyed. Immediately, police reinforcements were sent from

Pretoria. A mobile column of police armed with automatic weapons entered

the village with orders to arrest some 20 women suspected of burning their

reference books. A crowd of more than 200 women surrounded the suspects

and challenged the police to arrest them all. Two hundred and thirty-three

women were arrested, and 400 offered themselves for trial. Mired in confusion,

the case was finally abandoned. (46)

In the white farming district surrounding the reserve, the acceptance

of reference books was predetermined. Unlike workers in the urban areas,

farm labourers lacked protective support networks. They could not organise

trade unions or form community organisations, uniting in their efforts

to protect their rights. They could not initiate economic boycotts against

discriminating or otherwise unfair merchants who, more often than not,

were their own employers. Unlike the more fortunate peasants in the reserves,

farm labourers did not possess the means of production; they had no land,

tools or livestock of their own. They were completely at the mercy of their

employers for their economic security and well-being. When reference books

were introduced into the farming area near the Lefurutse reserve, the farmers

frequently transported their female workers to the Reference Book Unit

and waited while they purchased the books. In many instances, girls as

young as 12 and 13 were issued reference books, even though they were three

and four years under the minimum age of 16. Their employers then confiscated

the books, informing the girls that if they ever left the farm, they would

be hunted down by the police and put in jail. Without knowledge or means

to challenge their employers` actions, these girls were often tied to the

land for life. (47)

As time wore on and relatively few women purchased reference books,

the authorities increasingly resorted to coercion. Medical services became

restricted in the reserve. Civil marriages could not take place if both

partners could not produce reference books. Married men who attempted to

pay their taxes were turned away if their wives had not purchased reference

books. Unless their wives complied with the authorities, these men were

liable to arrest, imprisonment, fines and compulsory farm labour for non-payment

of taxes. (48)

Women pensioners who had not purchased reference books were no longer

allowed to collect their pensions in the villages. Instead, they were forced

to make the long journey into Zeerust to pick up their payments. Suddenly,

the bus service in Dinokana was discontinued. Villagers who had to travel

to Zeerust were compelled to walk more than 30 miles to Zeerust and back.

The Dinokana post office was closed down. No more telegrams could be sent

or money received from relatives working in the cities. (49)

Collaborating chiefs, whose wives were usually among the first to take

out reference books, refused to let women defiers reap their crops. Their

land and farm implements were confiscated. (50)

Although it was not yet mandatory for women to carry reference books,

those caught without them were subject to stiff - and illegal - fines.

The chiefs claimed that the fines were "for Congress offences - African

National Congress crimes", although many of the villagers did not

know what a "Congress offence" or the African National Congress

Women who could not pay the fines fled to the hills, abandoning their

homes and leaving their fields and animals untended. Throughout 1957, the

police mobile column moved from village to village, criss-crossing the

Lefurutse reserve. In its wake were mass arrests, night raids, and brutal

beatings of those who protested the issuance of reference books. In terror,

the villagers left their houses at night and slept in the bush. The mobile

column became a virtual army of occupation, camping in the villages, commandeering

animals for food and women for domestic service. (52)

In November 1957, the mobile column began to extend its protection to

pro-government chiefs - against their own people. Contingents of "bodyguards"

were organised, composed of government sympathisers and police. Village

men were forcibly impressed into their ranks. Once they were associated

with the "bodyguards", these men could not safely return to their

villages. Their only hope of protection was to remain with the para-police

units. Communities were thus divided internally, and violence spread. The

"bodyguards" conducted nightly raids, searching for pass-burners,

whipping and clubbing the villagers. Women were severely beaten, their

bodies covered with bruises and deep gashes made from the sharpened edges

of strips of tire. (53)

Rather than intimidating the people, the police tactics intensified

their anger and will to resist. Women were brought to the Zeerust jails

by the hundreds, singing "Open wide the doors of the prison, Commissioner.

The women of Lafurutse are ready to come in". (54)

In response to harassment by police and government sympathisers, villagers

engaged in acts of sabotage and counter-attack. In Leeuwfontein, 14 to

15 huts were burned and the chief forced into hiding. Many of the homes

belonged to members of the Zion Church women who, together with the chief,

had agreed to participate in the Government`s removal scheme. (55)

In December, riots broke out in Witkleigat. For some time, the "bodyguards"

had made a practice of meeting the buses coming into the village and screening

the passengers as they descended. They habitually beat people who had paid

fines rather than go to jail and those awaiting trial who were out on bail.

The "bodyguards" also attacked men whose wives had not taken

reference books, parents of those who had fled, and villagers who had helped

the families of detainees. (56)

At Christmas time, when the Witkleigat men returned from the cities,

they were attacked by the "bodyguards" as they stepped off the

buses. For the first time, the passengers fought back. A crowd gathered

and marched to the home of the pro-Government chief. The chief had fled,

leaving his house and car to be burned, his wife beaten, and his "bodyguards"

killed. The mobile column from Pretoria arrived on the scene. Ninety people

were arrested and charged with murder. By the end of the month, the homes

of 36 government collaborators had been burned. Rioting spread to other

villages. Large-scale, indiscriminate arrests were made throughout the

reserve. In early January, police shot and killed four Africans in Gopane.

Massive exodus from the villages began. By January 1958, people were

leaving by the thousands, abandoning huts, fields and cattle. They went

to the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, to the Witwatersrand, even

to Cape Town, a thousand miles away. In a single week in February, one

thousand refugees fled to Bechuanaland, and more than one thousand left

for other parts of South Africa. (58)

Among the involuntary refugees were political "agitators",

banished to remote parts of the Union where frequently they could not speak

the local language. In March 1958, the Minister of Native Affairs announced

that African National Congress membership, slogans and salutes were henceforth

illegal in certain African areas, including the Lefurutse reserve. Africans

could not enter the reserve without written permission from the Native

Affairs Department. Migrant workers returning from their places of employment

were required to take out permits in order to enter their own "homeland".

The penalty for breaking these regulations was a fine of up to R300

or three years` imprisonment, plus three years` imprisonment without the

option of a fine. A person who raised his hand in a Congress salute could

thus be sentenced to six years in prison. (60)

By 1960, an estimated 3,O2O,28l African women - approximately 75 per

cent of the adult female population - had accepted passes. (61)

Although it was not yet compulsory for women to take out reference books,

they were subject to severe disabilities if they did not have them. Women

without reference books could not rent houses in the urban areas, or they

lost those that they had. They could not register the births of their children

or be married according to common law. Without a reference book, women

could not receive old age pensions or maintenance grants. They were not

issued driver`s licences. Teachers and nurses without passes were dismissed

from their jobs. Some women claimed that their rent money was not accepted,

and they could not get licences to sell beer until they had produced a

reference book. (62)

In 1958, many employers began to make the possession of reference books

a condition of employment, even though there was no law requiring African

women to register their service contracts or to carry reference books.

The last anti-pass demonstrations took place in March 1960...

On April 8, the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress

were banned under the terms of the newly-passed Unlawful Organisations

Act. Already weakened by the arrests of their leaders, the remnants of

the African National Congress and of the Pan Africanist Congress went underground.

As outlawed organisations, they could no longer convene mass meetings and

demonstrations. The days of anti-pass protests were over. On October 26,

1962, the Government announced that all African women, aged 16 and over,

would be required to carry reference books as of February 1, 1963. By that

time, the African National Congress Women`s League had been outlawed, and

the Federation of South African Women had effectively ceased to exist.

Much of their leadership had been banned, banished or imprisoned.

The women`s

anti-pass campaign had lasted for more than a decade. Protests and demonstrations

had shaken towns, cities and villages across the country. Tens of thousands

of women had participated in the resistance, forcing the Government to

delay for eleven years the mandatory extension of reference books to African

women. The women had fought the pass legislation with unprecedented militancy.

They had resisted the implementation of laws which threatened the very

core of their existence - their position in society, their ability to provide

for their children, and their capacity to create for their husbands and

children a stable and secure family life. The women had clung to their

last remaining freedom - the freedom of movement - with a tenacity unparallelled

in other struggles. Unlike African men, who had lost this freedom generations

before, the women still hoped to avoid the inevitable. Although they were

defeated in their immediate objectives, the repeal of pass laws affecting

women, the women had won a major victory.

They had gained their rightful

place in the struggle for national liberation, a place at the forefront,

on footing equal to that of men. They had shown that men could not hope

to liberate themselves if women were relegated to a subordinate status.

For without the women, the men did not know the day and the hour..pa

From "Notes and Documents", No. 6/83,

The earliest alliance was formed between the African

National Congress (ANC) and the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), which

together organised the Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws in 1952. In

1953, the South African Coloured People`s Organisation (SACPO) and the

Congress of Democrats (COD) were founded. The latter was composed primarily

of white supporters of the Congress movement. The nonracial South African

Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) ws founded in March 1955. On June 25 and

26, 1955, these organisations came together in Kliptown for the historic

Congress of the People. It was at this Congress that 2,884 deleqates of

all racial groups from all parts of South Africa adopted the "Freedom

In December 1956, Lilian Ngoyi, national president

of both the Federation of South African Women and the African National

Congress Women`s League, became the first woman ever to be elected to the

National Executive Committee of the African National Congress.

"Report of the National Executive Committee

of the African National Congress", African National Congress Annual

Conference of December 17-18, 1955. Document 13(c) contained in Thomas

Karis and Gwendolen M. Carter, eds., From Protest to Challenge, A Documentary

History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964, 4 vols. (Stanford:

Hoover Institution Press, 1973), Vol. 3.

Muriel Horrell, ed., Laws Affecting Race Relations

in South Africa, 1948-1976, p. 175.

"Strong Protest against New Pass Law", Advance, Cape Town, January 8, 1953

Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or

Starve: the South African Congress of Trade Unions (London: Lawrence

and Wishart, 1980), p. 301; "Report of the Second National Conference

of the Federation of South African Women", August 11-12, 1956, reel

19B of the Carter/Karis Collection of South African Political Materials,

housed at the Centre for Research Libraries, Chicago, Illinois.

"Constitution of the Federation of South

African Women". Reel 19B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

"Our Aims", from the Women`s Charter,

First National Conference of the Federation of South African Women, April

17, 1954. Reel 19B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.; "Women

Act in Transvaal", Advance, July 8, 1954.

Helen Joseph, Tomorrow`s Sun, A Smuggled

Journal From South Africa (New York: The John Day Co., 1966), p. 73.

Without reading the petitions, the Prime Minister

handed them over to the Security Police. They were later presented as evidence

in the Treason Trial of 1956-61. Mary Benson, South Africa, the Struggle

For A Birthright (Minerva Press, 1969), p. 185; Anthony Sampson, The

Treason Cage: The Opposition on Trial in South Arica (London: Heinemann,

1958), p. 26.

Benson, op. cit., p. 184; Luckhardt and

Wall, op. cit., p. 302; Joseph, op. cit., p. 93; United Nations

Department of Public Information, The Plight of Black Women in Apartheid

South Africa (New York: United Nations, 1981), p. 24.

"Repeal the Pass Laws... A Great Demonstration

to Parliament" - flyer issued by the Federation of South African Women

and the African National Congress Women`s League (Cape Western), June 13,

1957. Document 24, contained in Karis and Carter, op. cit.

"The Demand of the Women of South Africa

for the Withdrawal of Passes for Women and the Repeal of the Pass Laws".

Petition presented to the Prime Minister on August 9, 1956. Reel 19B of

the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit

Benson, op. cit., p. 182

Luckhardt and Wall, op. cit., p. 305

Benson, op.cit., p.l83

Karis and Carter, op. cit., p. 74, quoting New Age, Cape Town, August 16, 1956

Luckhardt and Wall, op, cit., p. 306

"Resolution in Support of the Federation

of South African Women and the African National Congress Women`s League",

National Executive Committee of the African National Oongress. Reel 3B

of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

of the African National Congress Conference of December 17-18, 1955. Document

13(c), contained in Karis and Carter, op. cit., p. 237

Luckhardt and Wall, op. cit., p. 305.

"Passes for Women Leads to a Riot", The Clarion, Cape Town, June 26, 1952; "Odendaalrus Municipality

Acted Illegally", Ibid., June 31, 1952

"Women Burn Passes", Advance,

March 4, 1954

Letter from O. R. Tambo, Secretary-General of

the African National Congress, to a Provincial Secretary of the African

National Congress, January 8, 1956. Reel 3B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

"Presidential Address by E. P. Moretsele",

African National Congress Transvaal Annual Conference of November 3-4,

1956. Document 17 (a), contained in Karis and Carter op. cit.

Karis and Carter, op. cit., p. 74; Benson,

op. cit., p. 183; "Protests and Petitions against the Extension

of the Pass Laws to Women and Pass Burning by Women". Reel 7B of the

Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

Benson, op. cit., p. 183& In Durban,

a deputation of more than 300 women marched to the Native Commissioner`s

office. 30 &"The African National Congress Anti-Pass Campaign".

Reel 3B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

"The African National Congress Anti-Pass

Campaign". Reel 3B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

"Protests and Petitions..." op.

Benson, op. cit., p. 183; "Protests

and Petitions..." op.cit.

Hooper, Charles, Brief Authority (London:

Collins, 1960), p. 146; "Chief Told: `Your Women Accept Passes or

Else`", The World, April 13, 1957.

"Chief Told..." op.cit.

Hooper, op. cit., p. 149

Ibid., p. 146

Ibid., p. 276

Ibid., pp. 151-52

Ibid., p. 152; "Chief Moiloa Turns

Down `Advice`: May be Deported", The World, April 20, 1957.

Hooper, op. cit., p. 157

Ibid., p. 165; "Chief Moiloa Turns

Down..." op. cit.

Hooper, op. cit. pp. 166-67

Ibid., pp. 174, 296

Ibid., pp. 176-77

Wall, Mary Ann, The Dominee and the Dom-Pass (Cape Town: Insight, 1961), p. 28

Hooper, op. cit. pp. 177-78

Ibid., pp. 201, 203

Ibid., pp. 204-05

Ibid., p. 176

Ibid., p. 349

Wall, op. cit., p. 53

Hooper, op. cit., p. 219

Ibid., pp. 317-18

Ibid., p. 308; Wall, op. cit.,

Hooper, op. cit., pp. 329-31, 335

Ibid., p. 361

Ibid., pp. 374-75; Horrell, A Survey

of Race Relations....1957-1958, op. cit., pp. 14-15

Hooper, op. cit., p. 375

United Nations, "The Role of Women in the

Struggle..." op. cit., p. 22

Ibid.; "Must Women Carry Passes?

We say No!" African National Congress Women`s League leaflet. Reel

3B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.; "The Fight against

Passes is On!! We Call upon All Men and Women!!" Flyer for National

Anti-Pass Conference (African National Congress), Saturday 30 May. Reel

3B of the Carter/Karis Collection, op. cit.

Luckhardt and Wall, op. cit., p. 307.

In 1959, the Native Labour Regulations Act of 1911 was revised so that,

for the first time, the regulations were applicable to African women as

well as men. As of January 9, 1959, no one could legally employ an African

man or woman who had not registered with a local or district labour bureau.

Horrell, Laws..." op. cit..

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Arizona supreme court upholds 1864 law banning almost all abortions

Justices rule to hold off on requiring state to enforce ban for 14 days, to allow advocates to ask lower court to pause it again

The Arizona supreme court ruled on Tuesday to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, a decision that could curtail abortion access in the US south-west and could make Arizona one of the biggest battlefields in the 2024 electoral fight over abortion rights.

The justices said Arizona could enforce an 1864 near-total abortion ban, first passed before Arizona became a state, that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade. However, the justices also ruled to hold off on requiring the state to enforce the ban for 14 days, in order to allow advocates to ask a lower court to pause it again.

The ban can only be enforced “prospectively”, according to the 4-2 ruling. Minutes after the ruling Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, vowed not to prosecute any doctors or women under the 1864 ban.

“Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the civil war was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state,” Mayes said in a statement.

Voters may be able to weigh in on the issue in November: abortion rights supporters in Arizona have spent months gathering signatures for a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, and the Tuesday decision raises the stakes for their efforts significantly. If it succeeds, the ballot measure would declare that people in Arizona have a “ fundamental right to abortion ” and that the state will not try to curb that right before a pregnancy reaches fetal viability, which is generally pegged to about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Although ballot measures need to amass 383,923 signatures by July to get on the ballot, the organizers behind the Arizona measure announced last week that they have gathered more than 500,000 signatures, and plan to collect more.

Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Tuesday was a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.

Hobbs vowed to do everything in her power to preserve access to reproductive care in the state. The governor last year issued a sweeping executive order banning county attorneys from prosecuting women who seek abortions and doctors who perform them.

Asked about the possibility that her directive could be challenged in court following Tuesday’s ruling, Hobbs said: “Bring it on.”

While the long-term impact of the decision on abortion access in Arizona is not yet clear, a number of providers said Tuesday that they will stay open as long as they can. Planned Parenthood Arizona, which operates multiple locations in the state, intends to continue providing abortions as long as the procedure is legal. Thanks to a court order in a separate case, Planned Parenthood appears to be able to legally provide abortions beyond the 14-day window and potentially as late as into May.

“Regardless of today’s decision, what I can tell you is that our doors will remain open,” Angela Florez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, told reporters on a call after the supreme court decision. “We will continue to provide what essential healthcare we can within the limitations of the law, and we hope that supporters will continue to support and that patients will still continue to feel safe in our care.”

Dr Gabrielle Goodrick, a longtime abortion provider in Phoenix, also told the Guardian that her clinic would continue offering abortions, at least through the 14-day window.

“We are not closing. Ever. That’s not a question,” Goodrick said. “I have reassurances from the governor and the attorney general that they’re not going to prosecute, but I need to investigate that further.”

The ruling became a campaign issue almost as soon as it was issued. Kamala Harris quickly laid the blame on Donald Trump, whose three supreme court appointees voted to overturn Roe, paving the way for state-level abortion bans. The revived ban is “a reality because of Donald Trump, who brags about being ‘proudly the person responsible’ for overturning Roe v Wade, and made it possible for states to enforce cruel bans”, the vice-president said in a statement. Harris also warned of nationwide restrictions to reproductive care that could come with a second Trump presidency.

The vice-president will visit Arizona on Friday for a trip that was planned before Tuesday’s decision.

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Democrat Ruben Gallego, who is running against the Republican and stalwart Trump supporter Kari Lake to represent Arizona in the US Senate, condemned the law in a statement.

“Our fight against extremist bans like the one enacted today has never been more important – which is why I’m committed to doing whatever it takes to protect abortion rights at the federal level,” Gallego said.

Arizona is one of roughly a dozen states where voters may get a chance to vote directly on abortion rights come November. However, as a key battleground state in the presidential election, the stakes in Arizona are particularly high, since Democrats hope that outrage over Roe’s overturning will also propel their candidates –including Joe Biden – to victory.

Tuesday’s decision is likely to galvanize voters. Several states have held abortion-related ballot measures since Roe fell, and in every state – including Republican strongholds such as Kansas and Kentucky – abortion rights supporters have triumphed.

In a statement, Lake said that she opposed the Tuesday ruling. Lake has previously called abortion “the ultimate sin”, but like many other Republicans in the wake of Roe’s demise and abortion rights supporters’ ballot box successes, has moved to moderate her position on abortion policy.

“I am calling on Katie Hobbs and the statelegislature to come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support,” Lake said. “Ultimately, Arizona voters will make the decision on the ballot come November.”

Until the 1864 ban is enforced, abortion is accessible in Arizona up until 15 weeks of pregnancy. Under the 1864 ban, it is illegal to help “procure the miscarriage” of a pregnant woman. The law only permits abortions to save a woman’s life and does not have exceptions for rape or incest.

The impact of the ruling will reverberate beyond Arizona’s borders. Goodrick told the Guardian last year that many of her patients come from Texas, which has banned almost all abortions since even before Roe fell. Because Texas is home to one in 10 women of reproductive age in the US, Arizona has been a critical release valve for Texans fleeing the state’s abortion bans.

Lauren Gambino contributed reporting

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Abortion in Arizona set to be illegal in nearly all circumstances, state high court rules

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The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a 160-year-old law that bans abortions and punishes doctors who provide them, saying the ban that existed before Arizona became a state can be enforced going forward.

The ruling indicated the ban cannot be retroactively enforced, and the court stayed enforcement for 14 days.

But the shocking ruling quickly caused political earthquakes.

"There really is no way to sugarcoat it, today is a dark day for Arizona," said Angela Florez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona.

The pre-statehood law mandates two to five years in prison for anyone aiding an abortion, except if the procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother. A law from the same era requiring at least a year in prison for a woman seeking an abortion was repealed in 2021 .

Arizona politics: Vice President Kamala Harris returning to Arizona for abortion-related campaign event

Enforcement of the ban could mean the end of legal abortions in Arizona, which reproductive rights activists warn means Arizona women can expect potential health complications.

In the wake of the ruling, some providers said they will continue offering abortions up to 15 weeks of pregnancy at least for a time — likely through May — because of an existing court ruling in another case. And, abortion rights advocates see a backstop in the state's top Democrats, who have taken steps to thwart any enforcement of the ban.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs issued an executive order last year giving all power to enforce abortion laws to the state attorney general instead of county prosecutors. Attorney General Kris Mayes, also a Democrat, has vowed not to prosecute any abortion case, and she reaffirmed that position Tuesday.

“No woman or doctor will be prosecuted under this law as long as I am attorney general," Mayes said. "Not by me, nor by any county attorney serving in our state, not on my watch.”  

Mayes and Hobbs' stance relies on an untested legal argument, and could be challenged by one of the state's county attorneys .

'Abortions ... are illegal,' court says

The decision was 4-2, with Justices John R. Lopez IV, Clint Bolick, James P. Beene and Kathryn H. King  in the majority. Lopez wrote the majority opinion, while Vice Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer penned a dissent. Chief Justice Robert M. Brutinel joined Timmer. The court's seventh justice, William G. Montgomery, recused himself from the case.

All of Arizona's justices were appointed by Republican governors.

"Physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal ... and that additional criminal and regulatory sanctions may apply to abortions performed after fifteen weeks’ gestation," the ruling reads.

The majority ruled that a law passed by the Arizona Legislature in 2022, which prohibited abortions after 15 weeks, did not repeal the pre-statehood law nor create a right to abortion. The majority relied on language in the bill that enacted that law, which said it did not " repeal, by implication or otherwise " the pre-statehood ban.

The court concluded "the legislature made its intent known," in part through "an unwavering intent since 1864 to proscribe elective abortions." And the court said the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which left no constitutional right to an abortion, made Arizona's ban enforceable.

"The legislature has demonstrated its consistent design to restrict elective abortion to the degree permitted" prior to Roe being overturned, the opinion says.

“Life is a human right, and today’s decision allows the state to respect that right and fully protect life again — just as the Legislature intended,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Jake Warner, who argued the case before the court in favor of the pre-statehood ban.

Timmer, in her dissent, wrote that the 2022 law prohibiting most abortions after 15 weeks was meant to create an exception to the pre-statehood law and was not contingent on Roe v. Wade.

She objected to the majority using the bill language to interpret the Legislature's intent, saying she would not "engage in the guesswork" they did and that it was "implausible to conclude the legislature planted within the (bill) a bombshell of reverting to a near–total ban on abortion."

"The statute says what it means and means what it says: The state will prosecute physicians for performing abortions after the fetus reaches fifteen weeks in age unless a medical emergency requires the procedure. The state will not prosecute physicians for performing abortions before the fetus reaches fifteen weeks in age. These abortions are lawful. There is no room for misunderstanding."

One effect of the ruling could be more support for a ballot measure in the works for this year to put abortion access into the Arizona Constitution. Advocates say they've already got more than 500,000 signatures , well above the threshold of 383,923 signatures needed by an early July deadline.

“We were expecting the worst and hoping for the best, but we have to keep moving forward," said Chris Love, a spokesperson for the ballot measure known as Arizona for Abortion Access. "We have an opportunity to change things at the ballot in November.”  

The state Supreme Court's ruling puts a stark choice before voters: Choose the new reproductive rights measure or watch abortion policy turn back to the 19th century.

That black-and-white choice, as well as an anticipated increase in turnout by Democrats because of the ballot measure, could also affect races in the state Legislature or other offices.

Hobbs said Tuesday the ruling left Arizona with "one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country,” and she called on the GOP-led Legislature to immediately repeal the 1864 ban.

“The Republicans at the Legislature have time and again refused to act to protect our freedoms,” Hobbs said, as she stood with more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers. Hobbs had pledged to spend six figures to unseat those Republican lawmakers, who are all on the ballot this year.

When does the ruling go into effect?

The highly anticipated ruling came as a shock to many abortion rights advocates in a state where abortion access has been uncertain ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and abortion rights, in 2022. Because of Arizona's two laws, clinics provided abortions off and on for a time, subject to the decisions of courts along the way.

A new element of uncertainty emerged Tuesday even after the ruling from the state's top court, as various involved groups offered differing timelines for when enforcement could begin.

Warner said he believed county attorneys could pursue cases when the court's stay expires in 14 days.

But Planned Parenthood Arizona and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona said the law cannot be enforced for 45 days after the court issues a final mandate, which has not yet happened. That view was also shared by some abortion opponents, including GOP legislative leaders and the Center for Arizona Policy, who said they believe enforcement cannot occur until later.

That's because of a separate court decision from Maricopa County, in which the state's former attorney general, Republican Mark Brnovich, agreed not to enforce the 1864 law until 45 days after the current case had been resolved . That agreement came in October 2022.

Cathi Herrod, president of the conservative Center for Arizona Policy, praised the court's decision.

"The Arizona Supreme Court reached the appropriate legal conclusion," she said in a statement. "Today’s outcome acknowledges the sanctity of all human life and spares women the physical and emotional harms of abortion. ... Today’s decision preserves a system designed to be blind to all but the law, and in doing so, it upholds the right of life for all Arizonans."

Planned Parenthood Arizona: Abortions up to 15 weeks will remain legal for a limited time, Arizona providers say

US Supreme Court ruling paved way for return of 1864 law

The abortion ban first codified in Arizona law in 1864 has been sitting on the books for 160 years.

First appearing in the 1864 Howell Code, a book of laws compiled by Arizona's First Territorial Legislature, the state's abortion ban was similar to those in many states. It was enforced vigorously in Arizona until the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

In 1971, Planned Parenthood of Tucson sued the state to overturn the old ban. The group lost the case in 1973 when the state Court of Appeals ruled against it. But the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Roe v. Wade decision the same year, causing the state Court of Appeals to issue an injunction against the pre-statehood ban.

For almost 50 years, legal abortions were considered a fact of American life, until the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in June 2022 that removed the Roe protections.

The ruling by the new, more conservative U.S. Supreme Court spurred Arizona Republican politicians to ask the courts to lift the injunction from 1973 and allow police and prosecut o rs to enforce the 1864 law. The new court action had the effect of renewing Planned Parenthood's 1971 legal fight.

The Arizona Supreme Court recognized all that was unsettled in implementing its 14-day stay before the 1864 law can be enforced. That window allows any legal challenges that were started in 1971, but essentially put on hold because of Roe v. Wade, to be pursued again now, over 50 years later.

Mayes said her office was weighing its response. The state's top court sent the case back to the original Superior Court, in Pima County, to consider the possibility of further action.

“My office is, as we speak, discussing what our next steps are, whether that is appealing this decision to the United States Supreme Court, whether that is taking ... the constitutional questions that remain, back down to the Superior Court," Mayes said.

Republic reporters Mary Jo Pitzl, Reagan Priest and Stephanie Innes contributed to this article.

Reach reporter Stacey Barchenger at   [email protected]  or 480-416-5669 . Reach the reporter at [email protected]  or 480-276-3237. Follow him on X @raystern .

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Ugandan Court Upholds Draconian Anti-Gay Law

The law, which includes the death penalty as a punishment in some cases, has been strongly condemned, including by the United States.

By Abdi Latif Dahir

Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya

Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday largely upheld a sweeping anti-gay law that President Yoweri Museveni signed last year, undermining the efforts of activists and rights groups to abolish legislation that drew worldwide condemnation and strained the East African nation’s relationship with the West.

The legislation, which was signed into law by Mr. Museveni in May, calls for life imprisonment for anyone who engages in gay sex. Anyone who tries to have same-sex relations could face up to a decade in prison.

Uganda has faced international consequences for passing the law, with the World Bank suspending all new funding and the United States imposing sanctions and visa restrictions on top Ugandan officials. But the law was popular in Uganda, a landlocked nation of over 48 million people, where religious and political leaders frequently inveigh against homosexuality.

The fallout for Uganda will be watched closely in other African countries where a nti-gay sentiment is on the rise and anti-gay legislation is under consideration, including in Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania and South Sudan. In February, Ghana’s Parliament passed an anti-gay law , but the country’s president said that he would not sign it until the Supreme Court ruled on its constitutionality.

In Uganda, the five-judge bench said the law violated several key rights granted in the country’s Constitution, including the right to health and privacy. They also struck down sections of the law that criminalized failing to report homosexual acts, allowing any premises to be used to commit homosexuality or giving someone a “terminal illness” through gay sex.

But in their 200-page judgment, the judges largely rejected the request to quash the law.

“We decline to nullify the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 in its entirety, neither will we grant a permanent injunction against its enforcement,” Richard Buteera, one of the judges, said in a reading of the judgment’s summary to a packed courtroom. He added, “The upshot of our judgment is that this petition substantially fails.”

Frank Mugisha, a prominent gay rights activist and one of the petitioners, said that they would appeal the Constitutional Court’s decision to the Supreme Court.

“I am very sad,” Mr. Mugisha said in a telephone interview. “The judges have been swayed by the propaganda from the anti-gay movement who kept saying that this is in the public interest and refuting all the arguments that we made that relate to the Constitution and international obligations.”

The law in Uganda decrees the death penalty for anyone convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a sweeping term defined as acts of same-sex relations with minors or disabled people, those carried out under threat or while someone is unconscious. Even being accused of what the law refers to as “attempted aggravated homosexuality” carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

Passage of the law — which also imposes harsh fines on organizations convicted of promoting homosexuality — alarmed human rights advocates, who said it would give new impetus for the introduction of equivalent draconian laws in other African nations. Uganda is among the African countries that already ban gay sex, but the new law creates additional offenses and prescribes far more punitive penalties.

The United Nations, along with local and international human rights groups, said that the law conflicted with Uganda’s Constitution and that it would most likely be used to harass and intimidate its L.G.B.T.Q. population.

The ratification of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, as the law is officially known, renewed scrutiny of the government of Mr. Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with a tight grip for almost four decades. Mr. Museveni, his son — whom he recently appointed as head of the army — and other top members of his government have been accused of detaining, beating, torturing and disappearing critics and opposition members.

The law was first introduced in March last year by a lawmaker who said that homosexuality was becoming pervasive and threatening the sanctity of the Ugandan family. Some legislators also claimed that their constituents had notified them of alleged plans to promote and recruit schoolchildren into homosexuality — accusations that rights groups said were false.

Anti-gay sentiment is prevalent among Muslim and Christian lawmakers and religious leaders from both faiths. They say that homosexuality is a Western import, and they held rallies to show support for the law before it passed.

A few weeks after it was introduced in Parliament, the law was quickly passed with only two lawmakers opposing it.

Activists, academics and human rights lawyers who challenged the law in court said it contravened not only Uganda’s Constitution, which guarantees freedom from discrimination, but also international treaties, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. They also argued that Parliament passed the law too quickly, with not enough time allowed for public participation — arguments the judges rejected in their decision.

Human rights groups said that since the law was introduced and passed, L.G.B.T.Q. Ugandans have faced intensive violence and harassment.

Convening for Equality, a coalition of human rights groups in Uganda, has documented hundreds of rights violations and abuses, including arrests and forced anal examinations. Gay and transgender Ugandans have also been evicted from their homes and beaten up by family members — forcing many to flee to neighboring countries like Kenya .

The law’s passage brought swift repercussions for Uganda, too. Health experts also worried the law would hinder medical access for gay people, especially those seeking H.I.V. testing, prevention and treatment.

The United States said it would restrict visas for current and former Ugandan officials who were believed to be responsible for enacting the anti-gay policy. The Biden administration also issued a business advisory for Uganda and removed the country from a special program that allows African products duty-free access to the United States.

The World Bank, citing the anti-gay law, also said in August it would halt all future funding to Uganda . The economic pressures continued to pile on, with foreign travelers and investors staying away from Uganda.

Ahead of the ruling, Mr. Museveni remained publicly defiant, but analysts and diplomats said he privately worried about his country’s being labeled an outcast, and the devastating economic repercussions it was causing.

On Wednesday, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community said the court’s judgment would not only amplify the government’s antagonism toward gay people but also deepen the animosity they face from members of the public.

The court’s decision opens a “Pandora’s box” that will push the lives of gay Ugandans “further more into darkness,” said Steven Kabuye, a gay rights advocate who fled to Canada after he was stabbed in January in an attack that activists said was spurred by homophobia linked to the law.

“I feel very disappointed but not surprised,” Mr. Kabuye said in a telephone interview.

Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent for The Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He covers a broad range of issues including geopolitics, business, society and arts. More about Abdi Latif Dahir

ACT government changes jury laws after Bruce Lehrmann mistrial exposes gaps

The ACT government has passed changes to its jury laws after the abandoned prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins exposed holes in the law.

Mr Lehrmann's prosecution in the ACT Supreme Court ended in a mistrial  in 2022 after a juror brought a research paper into the jury room.

No findings were recorded against the former Liberal staffer and he has always maintained his innocence. 

The Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, which passed the ACT Legislative Assembly today, means jurors who do their own research during a trial will face jail times of up to two years. 

A second change means courts may be able to accept a majority verdict if 11 out of 12 jurors agree after six hours of deliberation.

The court also has to be satisfied the jury will not reach a unanimous verdict after more deliberation. 

Laws will help prevent retrials, government says

ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said the changes to the laws would help prevent retrials and boost community confidence in the system.

“In a diverse community people may not always agree, resulting in hung juries," he said.

"This not only causes delays and increased costs, but also adds emotional strain for victims, accused people and others involved in the proceedings."

Mr Rattenbury said the changes were developed in consultation with justice stakeholders.

Chair of the criminal law committee at the ACT Law Society, Michael Kukulies-Smith said there may already have been a way to penalise juror misconduct within the existing laws. 

"However, the society acknowledges that having a specific juror misconduct offence clearly communicates to jurors what their obligations are, and that there are serious consequences for non-compliance," he said.

Mr Kukulies-Smith said while the law society supported the majority verdict change, unanimous verdicts remained the best protection to ensure justice had been served. 

"It remains important that unanimous verdicts remain the focus of our trial processes and in many cases it will be necessary that more than six hours of deliberations occur before it would be appropriate for a majority verdict to be accepted," he said. 

Additional bill introduced following inquiry

The Attorney-General also introduced a second amendment bill to the Assembly on Wednesday in response to a recommendation made by the board of inquiry into Mr Lehrmann's prosecution .

That bill would introduce changes to "cement" what the prosecution must disclose during a criminal trial and when, Mr Rattenbury told the Assembly.

It also includes a requirement for prosecutors to disclose all evidence available to them.

The board of inquiry found the former Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold tried to block a police report from being disclosed to defence lawyers, though the Supreme Court later ruled the findings were affected by an apprehension of bias.

The attorney-general's bill also proposed an amendment to ensure a person can be heard by the court in matters when an application is made for confidential material to be heard in a trial. 

Currently, complainants in family violence and sexual assault matters don't have the explicit right to appear and be heard by the court when applications are made for confidential material to be introduced as evidence. 

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