dompas, noun

Forms:
Also with initial capital.
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, dom stupid + pas pass.
historical, colloquial
1. A contemptuous name for a pass (sense 3). Also attributive, and transferred sense. See also hamba dompas (hamba sense 5).
1961 M.A. Wall (title)The Dominee and the Dom-Pas or, The Padre and the Passes.
1970 M.P. Gwala in Ophir Apr. 2Dompas! I looked back. Dompas! I went through my pockets. Not there.
1974 Daily Dispatch 20 July 8The dompas, or pass, or reference book, has long been the most resented example of racial discrimination.
1982 E. Prov. Herald 9 Aug. 9On August 9, 1956, a huge, silent crowd came to protest against the Government’s intention of extending the hated ‘dompas’ to black women.
1985 Probe Oct. 8The card could..give officials instant computerised access to information about all South African residents. In this way, the pass law system could go and the plastic Dompas for all may well come in.
1986 Drum Aug. 55Now that the euphoria about the death of the old dompas has waned and in its wake comes the new Book of Life..I pay a silent requiem and give a mighty voertsek to a document known in the Pretoria files as NIN 1890222.
1989 New Nation 15 June 8Imagine a dompas in the form of a magnetically-coded plastic ID card, that the police could put into a computer to find out what records they have on you.
1990 K. Mkhize Natal Witness 12 Apr. (Echo) 7It is a fight to restore apartheid and postpone..our liberation and freedom from the dompas syndrome.
1993 H. Tyler in Weekly Mail 9 July 29One huge exhibit consists of a dozen or more old ‘reference’ books, the obligatory dompas Africans once had to carry at all times.
2. combination
dompas system, the system of controlling the rights of black people through the use of the dompas; cf. pass system (see pass sense 4).
1979 Daily Dispatch 8 May 1The Minister..said last night he intensely disliked the ‘dompas’ system for blacks and that his department felt the same.
1981 Rand Daily Mail 24 June 1The recommendations could include...Doing away with the ‘dompas’ system by which blacks are stopped on the street and asked for their reference books.
1985 Probe Oct. 8The controversial Dompas system which has resulted in the arrest of about 18 million black people since 1916, and the equally controversial section 10 practice which has kept black people out of South Africa’s cities, seem to be on the way out.
1988 F. Khashane in Pace June 86Huge sums of money were lost in running the old dompas system, revoking it and processing the so-called ‘new ID for all’.
A contemptuous name for a pass (sense 3). Also attributive, and transferred sense.
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19611993

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