The Politics of Passes: Control and Change in South Africa

The ability of technological advancement to diversify the means of political control available to the state is a distinctive feature of modern life. Today, with the exception of the most underdeveloped and brutal régimes, the overt use of state force is complemented by a variety of control techniques, some so oblique as to defy detection even by the groups they are designed to regulate or repress. South Africa's stalled revolution, the subject of considerable concern to many analysts, is clearly not attributable to black acceptance of the present system, nor for that matter is it simply the result of the effectiveness with which the white minority has applied the more blatantly violent and directly coercive means of domination. 1