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"In the 1960s, a room in what is now the High Court Annex was the scene of formal hearings of the most bizarre and humiliating kind as ordinary people came before an appeal panel to argue about what 'race' they should be labelled. Between 1950 and 1991, apartheid's Population Registration Act classified every South African as belonging to one of at least seven 'races' and accordingly granted or denied them citizenship rights on a sliding scale from 'White'(full rights) to 'Bantu' (with the fewest). The classification was subjective, and families were split apart when paler or darker skinned children or parents--or those with curlier hair, or different features--were placed in separate categories."


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