Banning, in South Africa, an administrative action by which publications, organizations, or assemblies could be outlawed and suppressed and individual persons could be placed under severe restrictions of their freedom of travel, association, and speech. Banning was an important tool in the South African government’s suppression of those opposed to its policy of apartheid.

The power to ban publications lay with the minister of the interior under the Publications and Entertainments Act of 1963. Under the act a publication could be banned if it was found to be “undesirable” for any of many reasons, including obscenity, moral harmfulness, blasphemy, causing harm to relations between sections of the population, or being prejudicial to the safety, general welfare, peace, or order of the state. Thousands of books, newspapers, and other publications were banned in South Africa from 1950 to 1990.

The banning of organizations or of individuals was authorized by the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 (although precedents existed in the amended Riotous Assembly Act of 1929), with many subsequent amendments; these laws were superseded by the Internal Security Act of 1982, which retained nearly all their provisions. Under the older laws the minister of law and order could ban an organization found to be promoting or aiding the objects of communism or to be likely to promote such objects. The definitions of communism and of the objects of communism were very broad and included any activity allegedly promoting disturbances or disorder; promoting industrial, social, political, or economic change in South Africa; and encouraging hostility between whites and nonwhites so as to promote change or revolution. The power to label an organization or individual as communist or revolutionary rested with the minister. The main organizations banned under these laws were the Communist Party of South Africa (banned 1950) and the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (both banned in 1960).

The banning of individuals in South Africa was a practice virtually unique among nations with legal systems derived from Roman or common-law traditions. At the order of the minister, a person deemed a communist, a terrorist, a member of a banned organization, or otherwise a threat to the security and public order of the state could be confined to his home or immediate surroundings, prohibited from meeting with more than one person at a time (other than his family), forced to resign any offices in any organization, prohibited from speaking publicly or writing for any publication, and barred from certain areas, buildings, and institutions, such as law courts, schools, and newspaper offices. Moreover, the banned person could not be quoted in any publication. The effect was to render the banned person a public nonentity. Opponents of the apartheid regime could be banned on the whim of a minister or even a local police officer and be deprived of any legal safeguards in the event of their disappearance or death. From 1950 to 1990 more than 2,000 people were banned in South Africa, such as ANC leader Albert Luthuli, who was banned and confined to his home for lengthy periods of time in the 1950s.

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On Feb. 2, 1990, the South African government lifted its ban on the ANC and many other opposition groups, as well as on a large number of individual antiapartheid activists.