Visual Impersonation — Population Registration, Reference Books and Identification in the Eastern Cape, 1950s–1960s

Abstract

The paper looks at the population registration and issuing of reference books in the Transkei in the 1950s and 1960s. The dompas became the iconic object of apartheid policing within the logic of urban racial segregation and capitalist labour exploitation. The analysis proposed here investigates population registration through the lens of materiality and visuality. It sketches the visual economies that facilitated the scheme in a rural area and explores the role of photography in one of apartheid’s most notorious administrative schemes. Along the lines of Walter Benjamin’s reflections on technological mediation the paper retraces how the dompas as an image/object oscillated between panoptic surveillance and subaltern contestation.

Lives “on hold”

“…Prior to liberation, black South Africans, who were not citizens, were required to carry the dompas, an official document which enabled the control of the movement of black people in and out of whiteonly locales. The dompas was essentially a passport that stated where and when the black bearer was allowed to enter restricted areas; to be caught without it was a criminal offence (Breckenridge, 2005a;Rizzo, 2014;Sher, 1985). The current green Identity Document, which is currently held by all South African citizens and permanent residents, is now being slowly replaced by a smartcard that digitally records and stores individual biometrics (Breckenridge, 2005b).…”