Dugmore Boetie was a one-legged con-man who wrote Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost, a book about his life experiences as someone on the outskirts of society, in and out of jail, never missing a chance to make a quick buck or trick the authorities. It just so happened that Boetie was doing all this while the foundations of Apartheid were being laid. While it is a book full of comic scenes in which Boetie becomes a serious ‘headache’ to the institutions of a racist state, it also draws attention to the way prejudice infected every aspect of daily life.

This extract describes the struggles he encountered as a black man trying to get a pass to work in the city, and how the experience of having to carry and apply for a pass stripped black people of their dignity. The story shows that, while getting work in the city allowed people to survive, work was not itself a sign of economic freedom but rather a form of control. It helped prop up a racist social order in which black people would remain poor, and only those black people with jobs would be allowed in the city. It shows the impossible situation the black working class faced: people had to take low-paying jobs in order for them and their families to survive.