The Population Registration Act of 1950 required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with their racial characteristics and culture as part of the system of apartheid. This law worked in tandem with other laws passed as part of the apartheid system. Under the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, it was illegal for a white person to marry a person of another race. With the enactment of the Immorality Amendment Act, 1950, it also became a crime for a white person and a person of another race to have sexual intercourse.
Social rights, political rights, educational opportunities, and economic status were largely determined by the group to which an individual belonged. There were three basic racial classifications under the law: Black, White and Coloured (mixed). Under the act, as amended, Coloureds and Indians were formally classified into various subgroups, including Cape Coloured, Malay, Griqua, Chinese, Indian, Other Asian and Other Coloured. Indians (that is, South Asians from the former British Raj, and their descendants) were later added as a separate classification as they were seen as having "no historical right to the country".
History Early history of race classification In 1910, the Union of South Africa was established with four provinces based on the old colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal and the two Boer republics of the Free State and the Transvaal, with a white parliament. Prior to this Union, each of the four colonies or republics had its own laws on how race was classified when it came to legislation containing race. Most classifications were based on whether one was white or a native, with coloured people linked under the native category. How race was classified, however, differed. In the Transvaal, it was based on appearance and descent, Free State, appearance, descent, general acceptance, repute and living conditions, while in Natal, it offered no criteria expect that it asked whether the native race originated from south of the equator. In Free State, people classified as Indian could not reside there, while Natal and the Transvaal had laws concerning living and working locations and identity documents, while Chinese immigration was banned in the Transvaal after 1906.
With the Union of 1910, its parliament sought to create legislation that applied to the whole country, but legislation enacted that contained segregation-based content, failed to establish a uniform means to define race to the extent that a person could be classified as a different race by different sets of legislation. Essentially, most race-based legislation had either one criterion or all four types of criteria to decide one's race, these being descent, appearance, acceptance and repute, and lastly mode of living. The 1911 Native Labour Regulation Act was one of the first laws that aimed to collect tax from natives (black South Africans), but was soon challenged by the courts as it had failed to exclude coloureds.
The Department of Native Affairs that applied the various forms of legislation did so with no clearly defined way of establishing a person's race, and so applied various sources and personal judgements. It attempted in 1926, via the Secretary for Native Affairs, to clarify who was native versus who was coloured and again in 1946, defining that a native would be determined by what was in each piece of individual legislation. So race classification could be established by the Native Affairs department via a case by case basis based on sources such as appearance, associating with other natives in their environment, language spoken or natural language used, their district of domicile, whether they lived in a location, paid native tax, and if married, was their spouse native and was lobolo paid. Other tests claimed to have been used included the hair test, eyelid test and intimate medical examinations such as genital pigmentation.
Basing race on descent was a troubling idea for white politicians in charge of legislation, best left undiscussed, as there were some in the white population whose ancestors had in the past married others who weren't white.
In 1921, the idea of classifying race in South Africa was proposed by Mine Minister Patrick Duncan. The idea, which proceed no further than that, was to create a national population register and classify the population by race. The idea arose again in 1935 when a parliamentary select committee discussed it, but was soon dismissed as impracticable and costly.
After 1948
In November 1948, the first inkling of the future legislation which would be known as the Population Registration Act, was announced by prime minister D. F. Malan at a Transvaal National Party Congress. He announced all South African races would be registered and issued with an identity card, and would supersede all current forms of identification. He made it clear that it would assist in the application of apartheid law, in particular, to identify which areas races could live in and who they could marry. Other areas it could be used, he said, were in identifying non-South Africans (aliens) and assisting in voter registration. One thing he suggested was that anyone with one-sixth black blood, a person's grandparents, would be classified as coloured, something that never made it into the future legislation.
On 20 February 1950, Eben Dönges, Minister of the Interior, introduced the Population Registration Act to the South African parliament. It called for the introduction of a population register to be compiled after a census of the population was conducted in 1951. A registration certificate would be created for all South Africans and non-South Africans, but would exclude those under the age of sixteen and Black women. Identity cards would then be issued after the census data was compiled and would include one's name, address, sex, race, date and place of birth, citizenship, marital status, electoral area, and an identification number. The production of an identification document as requested by a policeman (seven-day grace period) would be required on a date to be set in the future. One's race was to be classified as either European, Native African, or Coloured. Anyone not identifying as white or as a native African was to be classified as coloured.
By 1954, the details of all Black South African men and women were being maintained by the Central Reference Bureau and would be responsible for issuing the identity books Dompas and the collection of fingerprints for those aged older than sixteen.
The Population Registration Amendment Act, No. 71 of 1956, ended the indefinite time period a person had to object to their classification by giving the person disagreeing only 30 days to state their objection in writing to the Director of Census. It also added the presumption, which had previously been stated in the 1950 Act, that those who appearance was obviously white were classified as white, for those people who appear to be of an African race, were assumed to be native African, unless otherwise proved.
In 1959, the South African government addressed the issue of the lack of clarity with the Coloured classification. Proclamation No. 46 of 1959 was issued, which allocated sub-sections to the Coloured classification. A person classified Coloured could choose to be either a Cape Coloured, Cape Malays, Griqua, Chinese, Indian, Other Asiatic (Asians other than Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese), or Other Coloured. This proclamation was overturned in a 1967 ruling of the Cape Town division of the Supreme Court on the grounds it was too vague.
During November 1959, the Minister of the Interior announced that legislation would be introduced to make identity cards compulsory in order to vote in White only elections. The Population Registration Amendment Act, No. 30 of 1960, legislated the transfer of the management of the population register from the Director of Census to the Secretary of the Minister of the Interior. In January 1961, it was announced that the Governor-general would issue a proclamation in September making the possession of identity cards compulsory for whites and coloureds over 16 years of age. Reference books at this time were compulsory for black men over sixteen years of age but not black women. By January 1962, no proclamation had been issued concerning the compulsory production of identity cards when asked for by a policeman, and legislation requiring their use as identification for voting was only introduced that year, but the government had succeeded in issuing 3 million identity cards to the white, coloured, and Asian populations, with around 400,000 identity cards still unissued. On 1 February 1963, it finally became law that when challenged by a policeman, a white, coloured or Asian person had to produce an identity document within seven days or be fined.
The Population Registration Amendment Act, No. 61 of 1962, amended the description of what is a white person, basing it on their perceived appearance and acceptance by white society. It acknowledged the use of census data supplied by the Director of Census, would now to be used by the Interior Ministry, to maintain the population register. It also allowed the Secretary of the Interior the discretion to extend the time period a person or persons had to object to the race classification issued to that person from 30 days to up to a year. It legislated that it was the duty of a person providing information for the population register to prove their information was correct, and legislated the right to delegate duties to other civil servants to investigate and report to the Secretary of the Interior information provided to the population register.
In 1967, the South African government introduced an amendment bill to parliament, the Population Registration Amendment Act 64 of 1967, to further clarify aspects of the Population Registration Act. It had now added one's racial descent to the previous requirements of appearance and public acceptance used to determine a race classification. In race data from the 1951 Census, where a respondent had stated that their race as either white, black, or mixed; those who answered mixed race would be classified as coloured. The amendment also clarified that having two white parents classified you white, having one coloured parent classified you coloured, and having one white parent and the other black classified you as coloured. The state president was legislated with the ability to proclamate the racial sub-sections for coloureds. Proclamation R123 was announced on 26 May 1967 and restored the 1959 sub-sections of types of Coloured classification.