ID documents

[Guest guest]

Evan wrote:

>In Australia we are to have the introduction of ID cards that have to be

carried and will be the first time in our history that this will be so.

Rory replies:

I have carried an ID card for decades. It doesn't bother me and there are

distinct advantages. At least I know no one else can collect my parcels or

sign for my passport or collect my cheque book from the bank. How do you

prove your identity when you need to if you don't carry an ID book? Another

form of ID? A passport, credit card, etc etc. If so, is this any different

from carrying an ID?

Carrying an ID book protects my interests. Admittedly the original purpose

of the ID in South Africa was a lot more sinister and it benefited one group

more than another. In fact, it was the protests against carrying a 'Passbook

' (ID document) that led to the Sharpeville shootings in 1961 and the start

of real protest in South Africa (I think even before there was serious

protest about racial issues in the USA?) The ID document for whites was

introduced to pacify blacks and say - see the whites also carry ID

documents.

I do however, seriously object to some information on IDs, such as race.

Originally there was very complex system for race classification in SA. So

those of mixed descent were classified as 'coloured' on the basis of whether

a pencil would stay fixed in place if inserted in the curls of a persons

hair - really ridiculous !!! It seems that the word race has ceased to have

any scientific validity.

I was at a conference in England and met a person from the USA who called

himself 'black'. Although South Africans are, because of their heritage,

supposedly more sensitive to minute and subtle difference in skin colour

etc., I could not actually understand why this person called himself

'black'

although he was out to gain from such an identification. (Raising funds for

the disadvantaged etc.) All quite bizarre from my view point (i.e., racial

classification).

So the issue is also, what information will there be on an ID if one is

carried? Will it include a driver's licence? Gender? Marital status? Race?

Etc. etc,. Once officialdom starts with this short of thing, they go

overboard - next they want to know the name of your uncle's second cousin (a

joke) but you get my meaning. It was on the basis of a very detailed census

that

the Germans were able to identify autistics (not using that terminology) and

their relatives, and set them off for extermination or sterilisation during

the Second World War.

Rory