Submit an article to Indago - a peer reviewed journal
Submit an article to Indago - a peer reviewed journal
Submit an article to Indago - a peer reviewed journal

Thirty years after the end of apartheid it is hard to imagine what life was like for black South Africans under the apartheid rule (1948–1994). Although this period in South Africa’s troubled history is well documented, the testimonies of people’s personal experiences of apartheid portray a startling picture of conditions in the so-called ‘locations’ (townships). Interviews conducted with elderly residents of Bloemfontein’s (Mangaung) Batho township (est. 1918) by oral historians of the National Museum provided interviewees with an opportunity to testify about their experiences of the apartheid system. The lives of black people were regulated by a multitude of apartheid laws, including the Pass Laws Act of 1952 that required black people to carry a passbook and to obtain a host of permits that allowed them to stay in a specified house in a specified location. The free movement of black people between the locations and whites-only areas was strictly regulated.

The cover and first page of a typical passbook that had to be carried by black people during apartheid, c. 1950s. Being without a passbook could lead to immediate arrest. (Photos: National Museum)

In the atmosphere of fear and mistrust that typified life in the locations, the presence of a stranger caused suspicion among residents. Any visitor, including family members, who wished to remain in a location for a period longer than 72 hours had to obtain a lodger’s permit from the Superintendent of Locations. Without such a permit the visitor could be arrested, jailed overnight, and fined. According to the interviewees’ testimonies it was not uncommon for neighbours to spy on each other’s visitors. Because Batho’s plots were small it was easy to spy on one’s neighbours. Typically, unwelcome strangers were reported to the ‘blockmen’ – a name given to ward councillors during apartheid. Without fail, the blockmen then reported the presence of unauthorised persons to the Superintendent who then informed the police or so-called ‘platkeps. (The police were nicknamed platkeps because of the shape of their caps.) Batho resident Mateboho D. Modiroa (b. 1941) said it was not uncommon for the residents themselves to inform the platkeps of the presence of strangers. “We, ourselves, were spies!”, she confessed.

Batho residents could easily spy on their neighbours because houses were built close to each other, undated. (Photo: National Museum)

Hambakazi S. Nonqo (b. 1933) remembered that unexpected visitors who arrived without the necessary permits to sleep over caused much anxiety to the host. She explained that if a person without a lodger’s permit arrived at her place to stay overnight, she went to bed “… very worried because even the neighbours could report you”. The presence of a person in a house after hours without the necessary permit often warranted the notorious nightly house raids that epitomised apartheid-era dread for many Batho residents. Bloemfontein’s Location Regulations, which were based on the Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923, authorised the platkeps to perform such raids unannounced. The regulations allowed a policeman “… at all times [to] have the right of entry to any building in the location in the execution of his duties”.

Hambakazi Nonqo, 2012. (Photo: National Museum)

While house raids were legally sanctioned by Bloemfontein’s Location Regulations in the 1920s, the prevalence of such raids (authorised or not) in Bloemfontein’s first locations, namely Waaihoek and Kaffirfontein (both demolished), dates to the late 1800s. In 1897, the Bloemfontein newspaper De Express reported on abusive police behaviour in Waaihoek. The policemen’s misconduct was made public by a Waaihoek resident, who wrote a letter to the newspaper under the pseudonym “Your eye-witness”. The person wrote that if “… the law makers were to see how their policemen handle people in Waaihoek, surely you would not like it”. The writer of the letter asked “… why policemen go in houses and turn everything up-side-down? Is it a law to go inside the houses and catch people?”

Although this photo of a police house raid was taken in Cato Manor, Durban, in 1961, location residents all over South Africa – including Batho’s residents – were familiar with this practice throughout the apartheid period. (Photo: The Friend)

The unannounced raids caused much trepidation in Waaihoek and later also in the apartheid-era Batho because they were typically performed in the early hours of the morning when people were asleep. Batho resident Selotlogeng E. Maphatsoane (b. unknown) recalled such a nightly police raid at her house: “When you were asleep …. you will hear ‘open, open!’. They [police] had with them torches. They would say they were told there is someone sleeping here”. Selotlogeng testified that this incident has haunted her for years. Whenever she heard a vehicle late at night, she thought the police were coming for her. She explained that since that incident she often went to bed fearing that she might relive that experience, if only in her sleep.

Victims of nightly house raids often experienced physical abuse at the hands of the police. The Waaihoek resident who wrote the letter to De Express in 1897 complained about police “… going into houses, dragging old women out”. It seems as if this behaviour persisted under apartheid because Nomathamsanqa S. Thebe (b. 1961) testified how she was also dragged out of her Batho house. Nomathamsanqa explained how the platkeps entered her house early one Saturday morning: first she heard a loud knock on the front door and then they forced it open. Frightened by the unannounced intruders, she tried to hide under the bed, but the police spotted her there. “They dragged me out by the leg and put me in the bakkie [police van]”, she recalled.

The nightly house raid became an effective tool for the platkeps, who served as ‘storm troops’ for the apartheid state, to intimidate and terrorise black people. By combining the element of surprise with an abrupt intrusion on vulnerable people’s privacy, the police suppressed Batho’s residents with nothing short of an iron fist. The sight of a police van with a revolving spotlight on its roof driving around Batho late at night became a symbol of fear for many. Even today the sight and sound of such a vehicle trigger unpleasant memories of the platkeps.

During the 1970s and 1980s, house raids became more frequent; in fact, the raids went beyond merely targeting people without lodger’s permits. By then South Africa had effectively become a police state. House raids were performed by the security police (members of the Security Branch of the South African Police) to search for and arrest suspected enemies of the apartheid regime and to confiscate prohibited material that belonged to political activists who appeared on the Security Branch’s ‘most wanted’ list. Galetsenwe E. Molema (b. 1924) testified how the police raided her house in search of her student activist son. Blinded by the policemen’s torches and paralysed with fear, Galetsenwe asked them what they were looking for. “They [policemen] told me it was none of my business”, she remembered.

Galetsenwe Molema, 2010. (Photo: National Museum)

Sources

Brewer, J.D. 1994. Black and blue: policing in South Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

De Express, 6 July 1897, 2.

Dlamini, J. 2020. The terrorist album: apartheid’s insurgents, collaborators, and the security police. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Du Bruyn, D. 2024. Memories and testimonies of passbooks, permits and platkeps in apartheid-era Batho, Mangaung. New Contree 91, Art. a254 [1-19]. https://doi.org/10.4102/nc.v91i0.254

Free State Provincial Archives: MBL 1/2/4/1/6, Location Regulations framed by the Town Council, Bloemfontein under section 23(3) of the Natives (Urban Areas) Act no. 21 of 1923, 7.

National Museum Oral History Collection: S.E. Maphatsoane, 9 May 2013; M.D. Modiroa, 9 March 2015; G.E. Molema, 13 May 2010; H.S. Nonqo, 11 January 2012; N.S. Thebe, 13 June 2014.

Simpson, T. 2021. History of South Africa: from 1902 to the present. Cape Town: Penguin Books.

Comments are closed.