This test was used to determine racial identity in South Africa during the apartheid era, distinguishing whites from coloureds and blacks.
The Population Registration Act required the classification of South Africans into racial groups based on physical and socio-economic characteristics.
[3] As a result of the pencil test, combined with the vagueness of the Population Registration Act, communities were split apart on interpreted racial lines.
Her father passed a blood type paternity test, but the authorities refused to restore her white classification.
[4] Another South African commentator describing the same incidents called them "a gruesome re-creation of the infamous pencil test of the apartheid regime".