South African pass laws began as work-control mandates in 1860

Evidence

In 1860, the South African Republic – following the British administration in Natal half a decade earlier – mandated passes for all African men seeking work in the territory. Boer republicans readily placed African women and children in indentured servitude, and rapacious imposition by boer men upon black women was not uncommon. Settler colonials par excellence, boers were not above the very bestiality they themselves projected onto “the natives,” though now in every sense of the term. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1430

Categorization

• SHARE: The boer projection irony — projecting bestiality onto those they themselves brutalized — is a sharp detail for someone writing on colonial psychology.