17 June should be commemorated as No More Race Laws Day, says IRR

Thirty-five years ago today, on 17 June 1991, Parliament repealed the Population Registration Act of 1950.

That moment has been largely forgotten. Yet the Act was the foundation stone of statutory racial rule. Before the apartheid state could control where South Africans lived, worked, studied, voted, traded, owned property, or whom they could marry, it first had to decide what race they were. The Population Registration Act gave the state that power.

Its repeal therefore represented more than another step in dismantling apartheid. It rejected the principle that government should classify citizens by race and use race as a tool of law and public policy. That promise was later entrenched in section 1(b) of the Constitution, which commits South Africa to non-racialism.

Yet thirty-five years later, the South African state still relies extensively on racial classification and racial preference. While the Population Registration Act is gone, the logic that animated it survives.

Says Hermann Pretorius, IRR head of strategic communications: “The repeal of the Population Registration Act was supposed to make race law impossible in South Africa. It was supposed to herald a constitutional order in which the state could no longer divide citizens into racial categories and govern them accordingly. Thirty-five years later, that promise lies broken.”

The IRR’s No More Race Laws Bill would complete the work begun on 17 June 1991 by removing racial classification and racial preference from South African law.

Pretorius adds: “South Africans have been sold two dangerous lies: that without race laws there can be no redress, and that those who oppose race-based redress oppose redress itself. After more than two decades of BEE, poverty and exclusion expose these lies.”

The IRR’s Value For Money Bill would replace cadre-rigged BEE deals and racial box-ticking with a single test: what delivers the best services and value to the people who depend on the state. The IRR’s Freedom From Poverty Bill would replace failed trickle-down empowerment with direct support for poor South Africans, regardless of race.

“South Africa does not have to choose between non-racialism and redress,” says Pretorius. “The real choice is between race laws that enrich the connected and needs-based laws that uplift those most in need.”

17 June should be commemorated annually as No More Race Laws Day.

Media contact: Hermann Pretorius IRR Head of Strategic Communications

Tel: 079 875 4290

Email: hermann@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris

Tel: 066 302 1968

Email: michael@irr.org.za