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Coloured
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In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured (also known as Bruinmense, Kleurlinge or Bruin Afrikaners in Afrikaans) refers or referred to an ethnic group of people who possess sub-Saharan African ancestry, but not enough to be considered Black under the law of South Africa. They are technically mixed race and often possess substantial ancestry from Europe, Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Malaya, Mozambique, Mauritius, St. Helena and Southern Africa.
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In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured (also known as Bruinmense, Kleurlinge or Bruin Afrikaners in Afrikaans) refers or referred to an ethnic group of people who possess sub-Saharan African ancestry, but not enough to be considered Black under the law of South Africa. They are technically mixed race and often possess substantial ancestry from Europe, Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Malaya, Mozambique, Mauritius, St. Helena and Southern Africa. Besides the extensive combining of these diverse heritages in the Western Cape – in which a distinctive 'Cape Coloured' and affiliated Cape Malay culture developed – in other parts of southern Africa, their development has usually been the result of the meeting of two distinct groups. Thus, in KwaZulu-Natal, most coloureds come from British and Zulu heritage, while Zimbabwean coloureds come from Shona or Ndebele mixing with British and Afrikaner settlers. Griqua, on the other hand, are descendants of Khoisan and Afrikaner trekboers. Despite these major differences, the fact that they draw parentage from more than one 'naturalised' racial group means that they are 'coloured' in the southern African context. This is not to say that they necessarily identified themselves as such – with some preferring to call themselves 'black' or 'Khoisan' or just 'South African' – but the history of racial segregation and labelling has placed all such 'mixed race' people in a certain relationship together by virtue of the fact that the imperial and apartheid governments categorized them as Coloureds and because, for the most part, other groups continue to view them through such a lens.
During the apartheid era, in order to keep divisions and maintain a race-focused society, the term Coloured was used to describe one of the four main racial groups identified by law: Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Indians. (All four terms were capitalised in apartheid era law.) Coloured people constitute a majority of the population in Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces. Most speak Afrikaans, while about ten percent of Coloureds speak English as their mother tongue, mostly in the Eastern Cape and Natal. However, virtually all Cape Town coloureds are bilingual, and some of them can comfortably codeswitch between 'Kaapse taal' (a creolized dialect of Afrikaans spoken mostly in the Cape Flats), 'suiwer Afrikaans' (formal Afrikaans, as taught at school), and English.
Politics in the pre-apartheid and apartheid eras
Coloured people played an important role in the struggle against apartheid and its predecessor policies. The African Political Organisation, established in 1902, had an exclusively Coloured membership; its leader Abdullah Abdurahman rallied Coloured political efforts for many years. Many Coloured people later joined the African National Congress and the United Democratic Front and whether in these organisations or others, many Coloured people were active in the fight against apartheid.
The political rights of Coloured people varied by location and over time. In the 19th century they theoretically had similar rights to Whites in the Cape Colony (though income and property qualifications affected them disproportionately) but had few or no political rights in the Transvaal Republic or the Orange Free State. There were Coloured members elected to Cape Town's municipal authority (including, for many years, Abdurahman). The establishment of the Union of South Africa gave them the franchise, though by 1930 they were restricted to electing White representatives, and there were frequent voting boycotts in protest. This may have helped the election of the National Party in 1948 with an apartheid programme aimed at stripping Coloured people of their remaining voting powers.
Coloured people were also subject to forced relocation; for instance, the multicultural Cape Town area of District Six was bulldozed and its inhabitants moved to racially-designated sections of the metropolitan area on the Cape Flats. Additionally, apartheid meant that Coloured people received an inferior education, albeit better than that provided to Black South Africans.
Measures taken by Strijdom to remove the coloured vote
Malan's replacement, J. G. Strijdom, known as 'The Lion of the North' was even more passionate about the issue. His egg was boiled harder, and he continued vigorously the process of removing the coloured vote.
The Senate Act
Strijdom expanded the Senate's numbers from 48 to 89. All of the additional 41 members hailed from the NP, enabling it to increase its representation in the Senate to 77 in total. The ruling party was criticised for being unconstitutional.
The Appellate Division Quorum Bill
The Appellate Division Quorum Bill increased the number of judges necessary for constitutional decisions in the Appeal Court from five to eleven. Many of the new judges were NP supporters .
The South African Act Amendment Act
Strijdom, knowing that he now had his two-thirds majority, held a joint sitting of parliament in May 1956. The entrenchment clause regarding the coloured vote, known as the South African Act, was amended (174 being for the decision and only 68 against it).
The Separate Representation of Voters Act
Coloureds were placed on a separate voters' roll, which could elect four whites to represent them in the House of Assembly. Two whites would be elected to the Cape Provincial Council, and the Governor General could appoint one senator.
Opposition to the removal of the coloured vote
There was a great deal of opposition, both black and white, to this. The Torch Commando was again very prominent, while the Black Sash (white women, uniformly dressed, standing on street corners with placards) also made themselves heard. The ANC spoke out in strong terms, too.
Many coloureds refused to register for the new voters' roll, and the number of coloured voters dropped dramatically. In the next election, only 50.2 per cent of them voted. They had no interest in voting for white representatives -- an activity which they saw as pointless.
1956-1983
In 1958, the Department of Coloured Affairs was established, followed in 1959 by the Union for Coloured Affairs. This comprised 27 members and served as an advisory link between the government and the coloured people. The 1964 Coloured Peoples' Representative Council turned out to be a constitutional hitch which never really got going. In 1969, the coloureds elected forty onto the council, to supplement the twenty nominated by the government, taking the total number to sixty.
In 1983, the Constitution was reformed to allow the Coloured and Asian minorities a limited participation in separate and subordinate Houses in a tricameral Parliament, a development which enjoyed limited support. The theory was that the Coloured minority could be allowed limited rights, but the Black majority were to become citizens of independent homelands. These separate arrangements were removed by the negotiations which took place from 1990 to provide all South Africans with the vote.
Post-apartheid politics and Identity politics
During the 1994 all-race elections, many Coloured people voted for the white National Party, which had formerly oppressed them; and the National Party recast itself as the New National Party partly to woo non-White voters. This political alliance, often befuddling to outsiders, has sometimes been explained in terms of the common Afrikaans language of White and Coloured NNP members, opposition to affirmative action programs that might give preference to non-Coloured Black people, or old privileges (e.g., municipal jobs) that Coloured people feared giving up under African National Congress leadership.
Since then, coloured identity politics has continued to be important in the Western Cape, particularly for opposition parties which see the Western Cape, in particular, as a place where they might gain ground against the dominant ANC. The Democratic Alliance wooed away some former NNP voters as the NNP collapsed in the 2004 elections, winning considerable coloured support; this support played a role in the DA's victory in the 2006 Cape Town municipal elections. Patricia de Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats, does not use the label Coloured to describe herself but would be recognised as a so-called Coloured person by many; the ID party has also sought the Coloured vote and gained significant ground in the municipal and local elections in 2006, particularly in districts with heavily Coloured constituencies in the Western Cape. The firebrand Peter Marais (formerly a provincial leader of the New National Party) has also sought to portray his New Labour Party as the political voice for Coloured people.
The ambitions of the opposition parties aside, however, there is also substantial Coloured support for and membership in the African National Congress before, during and after the apartheid era: Ebrahim Rasool (now Western Cape premier), Dipuo Peters, Beatrice Marshoff, Manne Dipico, and Allan Hendrickse have been noteworthy Coloured politicians affiliated with the ANC, and the ANC is now the strongest political force in the Western Cape. The ANC has had some success in winning Coloured votes, particularly among labour-affiliated and middle-class Coloured voters, but there is also distrust of the ANC, reflected in the comment ‘not white enough under apartheid, and not black enough under the ANC’.
Voter apathy was high in historically Coloured areas in the 2004 election.
Southern Africa
The term Coloured is also used to describe persons of mixed race in Namibia, to refer to those of part Khoisan, part white descent. The Basters of Namibia constitute a separate ethnic group that are sometimes considered a sub-group of the Coloured population of that country. Under South African rule, the policies and laws of apartheid were extended to what was then called South West Africa, and the treatment of Namibian Coloureds was comparable to that of South African Coloureds.
The term Coloured or 'Goffal' is also used in Zimbabwe, where, unlike South Africa and Namibia, most people of mixed race have African and European ancestry, being descended from the offspring of European men and Shona and Ndebele women; under white minority rule in the then Rhodesia, Coloureds had more privileges than black Africans, including full voting rights, but still faced serious discrimination. In Swaziland, the term Coloured is also used.
Other usage
The American English term (spelled as colored) had a related, but different meaning and was primarily used to refer to African Americans - except in the State of Louisiana, where it legally denoted people of mixed European and sub-Saharan African ancestry. The use of term in this way is now considered archaic and offensive in most contexts; nonetheless it remains part of the title of the NAACP, a prominent African-American organisation, and has been employed by some members of the African-American community as a legitimate ethnic/racial label when intentionally self-chosen and used in a respectful manner. 'People of colour' is currently used more frequently than 'coloured', but in the American usage, the phrase refers more generally to all people who do not describe themselves as 'white', including people of Asian, Native American and African descent. In Britain 'coloured' has also been used to refer to anyone who could not describe themselves as white, although this is now regarded as an old-fashioned and somewhat offensive usage.
For the main article, see colored.
See also
External links
- a blog about mixed race, multiracial people from South Africa
- - Die ding ruk mal. A coloured community portal.
- - A lifestyle portal for in South Africa
- Trying to understand the complicated genetic history of the coloured community.
- - The Foundation for Empowerment through Afrikaans (SBA) is a progressive and dynamic nongovernmental organisation which focuses on the empowerment of destitute first and second Afrikaans speaking rural and urban people, with no or low levels of literacy, skills and knowledge.
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