Coloured: Encyclopedia - Coloured

Coloured

In the South African and Namibian context, the term Coloured (also known as Bruinmense, Kleurlinge or Bruine Afrikaners) refers to a rather heterogenous group of people of mixed Khoisan and white European descent. Many also have some degree of Malay, Malagasy, Black (Bantu) and South Indian ancestry, especially in the Western Cape. Some racially pure Khoisans with a European-rooted culture and identity are might also identify as and be considered as Coloureds. During the apartheid era, in order to keep divisions and maintain a race-focused society, the term Coloureds was used as one of the four main racial groups identified by law: Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Indians. (The terms are capitalised in apartheid era law.) Coloured people constitute a majority of the population in Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces. Most Coloureds speak Afrikaans.

Coloured - The Coloureds

The Oxford Dictionary of South African English reveals that the word "Coloured" has been used since the 1840s to refer specifically to South Africans of mixed race, while the term Cape Coloureds came into use around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. During the 19th century the people of Griqualand, who would now be known as Coloured, were known by the Afrikaans term Baastards. An offshoot of the Cape Coloureds now make up a separate ethnic group in south-central Namibia, known as the Rehoboth Basters, migrated to their current location in pre-German times. They have subsequently migrated to the urban centers.

Apartheid-era legal categories aside, there are three features that set the rural core (i.e. those outside of Cape Town) of the Coloured population aside as an ethnic group in the anthropological sense:

1. Khoikhoi family lineage and racial features
2. traditional association with the Afrikaans language and the Dutch Reformed Church
3. a historically complicated and ambivalent relationship with the related ethnic group the Afrikaners

The Coloureds form a number of racially and culturally distinct subgroups (including Cape Malays, Cape Coloureds, Basters and Griqua; some would also include the Namaqua into this group) and were legally considered a separate group under Apartheid's racial classification legislation. Most speak Afrikaans as their mother tongue, and are Protestants, belonging to a local offshoot of the Dutch Reformed Church. In the 1950s and 1960s, laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage, the proclamation of separate residential areas, the provision of separate schooling etc attempted to make the so called "Coloureds" appear to be far more of a unified identifiable ethnic group than they were in reality. Indeed, many sub-classifications were required in the law to include all those that the government categorised Coloured.

Coloureds are spread across the country but the largest and perhaps most distinctive subgroup is that of the Griqua, numbering more than 300,000 individuals, with that of the Cape Coloureds (located in the Western Cape where there was strong influence from Malay slaves brought by Dutch colonists) being second largest, with an estimated population of 180,000. During the Dutch rule thousands of people were bought, tricked or kidnapped from various coastal regions around the Indian Ocean and brought to the Cape Colony to work as slaves, mostly originating in Java, southern India, Mozambique and Madagascar. The Asian influence had led to a slightly different language use and a strongly Muslim heritage among Cape Malays. The Apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was Coloured. Minor officials would administer tests such as the so-called pencil test (testing the curliness of hair) to determine if someone should be categorised Coloured or Black, or Coloured or White. Different members of the same family found themselves in different race groups. Further tests determined membership of the various sub-racial groups of the Coloureds.

The most common language of South African Coloured people is Afrikaans, followed by English.

Not all Coloured people do not much like the term Coloured to describe their community, but it continues in use for lack of a satisfactory alternative. Alternative expressions like "so-called Coloureds" (Afrikaans sogenaamde Kleurlinge) and "brown people" (bruinmense) and "brown Afrikaners" (bruine Afrikaners) or "brown South Africans (bruine Suid-Afrikaners) have acquired a some popularity in recent years.

However, the term Coloured is still widely used in South Africa, including by some organisations which opposed apartheid e.g. the Congress of South African Trade Unions. In London problems have arisen when teachers have been been imported from South Africa, some of who define themselves as Coloured, and prefer this term to "mixed race", but some British people consider the term Coloured to be pejorative. Some Coloureds reject the term "mixed race" on the grounds that it implies that they do not have a race.

Coloured - Apartheid and beyond

Discriminated against by apartheid, Coloureds were as a matter of state policy forced to live in segregated townships - in some cases leaving homes their families had occupied for generations - and received an inferior education, though better than that provided to Black South Africans. They played an important role in the struggle against apartheid: for example the African Political Organisation established in 1902 had an exclusively Coloured membership. To note their segregation and demonstrate their identity, they held an annual Coon Carnival in Cape Town.

The political rights of Coloureds 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. 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 Coloureds of their remaining voting powers, and led to a constutional crisis between the Government and the Supreme Court over entrenched clauses of the constitution. Coloureds lost their votes largely in the 1950s, with the last municipal votes being removed in 1972.

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.

During the 1994 all-race elections, Coloureds tended to vote for the white National Party, which had formerly oppressed them. This trend has continued, and Coloured identity politics has become important in the Western Cape, with the white-led New National Party and Democratic Alliance vying for the Coloured vote. There is also substantial Coloured support for the African National Congress: Ebrahim Rasool, Dipuo Peters, Beatrice Marshoff, Manne Dipico, and Allan Hendrickse have been noteworthy Coloured politicians affiliated with the ANC. The firebrand Peter Marais (formerly a provincial leader of the New Nationalists) has also sought to portray his New Labour Party as the political voice for Coloured people.

Coloured - 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 is also used in Zimbabwe, where, unlike South Africa and Namibia, most people of mixed race have Bantu 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 Eurafrican is used.

Coloured - Other usage

The American English term (spelt as colored) had a related, but different meaning and was primarily used to refer to African Americans. The use of term in this way is now considered archaic and mildly 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 color" is currently used more frequently than "colored", but its usage is also not the norm. In a British context "coloured" has also been used to refer to black people, although this is now regarded as an old-fashioned and somewhat offensive usage.

See also

• List of terms for multiraciality
• Culture of South Africa
• Griqua
• Basters
• Burghers
• Anglo-Indian
• Anglo-Burmese

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Coloured", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki