From late 1949 to the spring of 1950, photographer Margaret Bourke-White travelled through South Africa. TIME's account of her LIFE magazine photographs states that she photographed Black men queuing for passbooks. These internal documents were used under white rule to control where Black South Africans could move and work.
They were not waiting for a convenience. They were waiting for papers demanded by a system that restricted movement within their own country. Everyone faced the same administrative process, but the burden of waiting had been created by unequal law. This article stays with the documented passbook queue and does not speculate about the individual men's lives afterward.