Felicia Kentridge

Felicia Kentridge (1930 – 2015) was a South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist. She co-founded the Legal Resources Centre and established the Wits Law Clinic. Quotes “Furthermore, ‘migrant labour’ is a sociological term rather than a legal one and I am led to address you only in a legal fashion. In its older usage, migrant labour meant perhaps seasonal labour or labour coming from another place for a specific and limited purpose and then presumably returning whence it came. This older concept lingers on in the thinking of those concerned governmentally with the administration of African labour — so many enactments provide that Africans must on certain conditions return ‘home’. But there is also now official realization that there are in fact Africans who have no hinterland ‘home’. When these Africans are deprived of their permission to remain in a White area they are required to go to an African area, as though it were their home. For such people such compulsory movement is not a ‘return home’, it is an exiling from what was in fact their home.” The Black Sash “Immobility caused by fear of the consequences of moving is not the equivalent of stability arising from satisfaction with freely chosen employment. And supplementary control such as control of employment contracts and control on the entry of families in fact reduce considerably the apparent freedom of those so qualifying to remain in permanent employment in the areas of their choice.” The Black Sash “Since 1948, the administration and direction of African labour have become increasingly comprehensive and rigorous. With the amendments contained in the 1964 Act, the two principal Acts now provide a structure whereby it is theoretically possible to control administratively the entire life of all Africans living in South Africa outside African areas, and the Acts have been so designed that the control shall be uniformly in accordance with Government policy and subject to supervision by the central government.” The Black Sash “Even though it is an inescapable fact of South African life that Africans live and are needed in the White areas, these Acts ensure that no African may with any complacency contemplate his future and that of his family in a White area. His presence there is always dependent upon good behaviour and upon the needs of the White population. And it is these conditions, which are operative in the case of all Africans outside released or scheduled areas, which make the whole pattern of African labour migratory in the sense referred to earlier.” The Black Sash External links Category:South African women Category:Anti-apartheid activists Category:South African lawyers Category:1930 births Category:2015 deaths