After that meeting we all went back to our places. I went back to Port Elizabeth. Then we started to organize the women more strongly. It was easier now because the women didn't want to take these passes and they wanted to do something about it. We still had this trouble sometimes with the husbands, and the women had to look after the children too. But now some of the husbands were better because at the time of the Defiance Campaign the women had gone to jail with their husbands and they fought with the men. So now when the women were fighting against the passes a lot of men understood about them going to jail rather than, take a pass because they had done the same thing during the Defiance Campaign. Also the men knew what the passes meant; they knew what it was like to carry a pass, and they thought that maybe: he women could do something so that there were no more passes 'or anyone, not even the men.

We had all seen how every day our boys were caught because they didn't have their passes, and put in trucks and sent to Bethel. They used to make the boys work on the farms in Bethel when they caught them without their passes. They had to dig potatoes there. I understand there were some implements there but when there were so many boys there were not enough to go round and so the boys had to use their fingers to dig the potatoes. The ground was very hard and they had to use their fingers. The children would come back with bleeding fingers, and they told us terrible things about the passes, and our men too. We decided that -shjoo! - if we women had to do the same thing it will-be terrible for us and for our families so we better fight now.

When we started fighting against these passes, of course on the other side the government was fighting that the women should have them. The government was very clever. They started giving the passes to the women in the country and in the small towns where they were.not organized and so they did not know to resist these things. They tried to give the passes to the women in the little places like Walmer and Despatch. As soon as we hear they are doing this, then we in Port Elizabeth quickly go to that place and talk to the women so they will not take the passes. But it was very difficult for us to go, to all these little places and organize the women.

In the towns they gave them to the domestic workers first because they were not well organized because they were alone - one, one, one in the white people's houses. So there were some women who had already taken the passes because they did not understand, but when we started fighting and we explained to the women what we were going to do to fight the passes and not take them, many of those women burnt their passes. Some of them were arrested because that was against the law, but it didn't stop us because we knew that those passes were bad things and we must not take them.

We knew that you would be carrying a child, or have your child on your back, and the police will be coming behind you wanting your pass and you won't be able to run away and jump over that fence there and that will be the time the police will get you, or else your child will fall and get hurt because you are trying to run away from the police. And then who is going to look after the children when they take you to jail because you haven't got your pass, or your pass is not right? We explained to the women what would happen if we accepted these passes, and so no one wanted them.