Cape Coloureds

Cape Coloureds

ETHNONYMS: Basters (mixed), Bruinmense (brown people), Cape Coloured People, Coloureds

Orientation

Identification. The term "Cape Coloureds" generally refers to those South Africans of mixed cultural and racial stock whose ancestors include Europeans, Khoi and other indigenous African people, and Asians. The Coloureds were complexly and artificially defined for political convenience by the South African state in the Population Registration Act No. 30 of 1950 (as amended) on the premise that they occupied a middle political estate between Whites and indigenous Blacks, a designation that entrenched still further that structural position and the varying attendant feelings of marginality among individuals. The legal definition distinguished seven subcategories, only one of which was designated the "Cape Coloured group." The remaining six were listed as "Malay," "Griqua," "Chinese" (sic), "Indian," "other Asiatic," and "other Coloured."

Location. Historically, the ethnonym "Cape Coloureds" alluded specifically to their origin in and around what is now the city of Cape Town and, more generally, in the Cape Colony (Province). Today their descendants are found throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, and the term "Coloured" is often used indiscriminately for all people of mixed racial origin.

Demography. In 1988 the total Coloured population in South Africa, excluding Asians, was 3,127,000, representing about 8.7 percent of the total population of that country. Roughly 75 percent of the Coloured population live in urban areas. In neighboring Namibia, 42,241 people were classified as Coloureds in 1981. The 25,181 Rehoboth Basters, who physically resemble the Namibian Coloured people, regard themselves as a separate "nation" because of their historical and political position in that country. The various Baster groups in South Africa tend to maintain a similar ethnic aloofness.

Linguistic Affiliation. By and large, Coloured people speak either or both of the official state languages, Afrikaans and English. In 1980, 83.3 percent claimed Afrikaans as their home language, as opposed to the 10.3 percent who spoke English. Only 4.5 percent of all Coloured families reported that they were bilingual. Various dialects of both English and Afrikaans are also spoken, especially in Cape Town. Some families in rural areas speak Khoe or a Bantu language (nearly 2 percent in 1980).

History and Cultural Relations

The history of the Coloured people is coemergent with the first permanent European settlement on the Cape Peninsula, which was established in 1652. Intermarriage and cohabitation between settlers and Khoi was common and, at that time, often encouraged by all parties. When slaves were introduced from East Africa, India, Ceylon, and Malaysia, the process was repeated. The heterogeneity of the Coloured people intensified with the continuing arrival of diverse immigrant populations throughout the history of South Africa. In 1950 Parliament enacted two laws designed to prevent both intermarriage and miscegenation; this legislation was repealed thirty-five years later, having proved unenforceable. The history of the Coloureds has thus always been inextricably bound up with both Whites and people of color. Many Whites resemble Coloureds and vice versa, a reality that inspired the South African state to enforce a rigid color bar through the Population Registration Act.

The culture of the Coloured frontiersmen of the northwestern Cape and Namibia, known as the Basters, is similar to that of their White counterparts in other parts of southern Africa. It is often impossible to distinguish between the institutions of the White and Brown Voortrekkers. The special place of the Cape Malays (who are Muslims) in the culture of the urban Cape Coloureds must also be noted.

Settlements

In both rural and urban areas, few differences between Coloured and White settlements exist, other than those imposed by the government policies of racial segregation. Thus, the large number of Coloureds living in shantytowns and low-cost housing schemes in South African cities and small towns is essentially a reflection of the wider stratified society, not one of choice or the product of culture. Similarly, Coloured people living on reserves and on European farms must be seen against the background of their sociopolitical and economic referents. The architecture of many attractive rural cottages built by Cape Coloureds exhibits Dutch and Malaysian influence. It is only in the district of Namaqualand that traditional Khoi mat houses are found; many White people in the area chose to build in similar architectural designs.

Economy

One could speculate that had it not been for the growth of race prejudice, the Coloured population would scarcely differ from South African Whites in terms of their occupational profiles. In practice, although there are Coloured physicians, professors, teachers, entrepreneurs, civil servants, and skilled artisans, the majority are semiskilled and unskilled workers and laborers. Coloureds living on reserves and mission stations rarely make ends meet as farmers, and most domestic families are involved in the migratory labor force in one way or another. The success of the White farmers in Western Cape Province has, over the years, largely been made possible by the employment of poorly paid Coloured labor. Many members of the Cape Malay population enjoy a high economic status, related in part to their historical position as skilled artisans, professional fishers, and petty commodity producers.

Kinship, Marriage, and Family

The generally heterogeneous nature of Coloured culture is also reflected in patterns of family life, kinship, and marriage. Thus, on the Namaqualand reserves, a number of families follow practices regarding descent, generation, age, and sex that are recognizably Nama Khoi, whereas most middle-class families in the major urban areas hardly differ from Western middle-class families generally. Meaningful analysis of kinship and marriage can therefore be carried out only within a particular community or a specific regional context. It is quite erroneous to suggest that where matricentric families are found, evidence of pre-Emancipation slave culture is still evident.

An important aspect of Coloured kinship and marriage lies in people's preoccupation with class, status, and color, reflecting the extent to which Coloured people are enmeshed in the structure of South African society and their preoccupation with White values in particular. In the reserve communities of the district of Namaqualand, people distinguish four lineage categories. Marriages within and between these categories are guided by various preferential rules of status endogamy based on such criteria as skin color, hair form, ethnic origin, and so forth. Similar patterns are found in urban areas, where the emphasis on biological characteristics and ethnicity is complicated by indexes of association, educational achievement, political and religious affiliation, occupation, and the like. Some light-skinned Coloured individuals were able to change their official race classification to White. The process was a complex one and could only be undertaken successfully by higher-status people with established social networks among people in the White estate.

Sociopolitical Organization

Like other non-White people in South Africa prior to 1994, the Coloured population has never enjoyed equal political rights with those regarded as White. With the advent of the Union of South Africa in 1909, for example, the franchise was given to Coloured males in the Cape Province only, subject to specified property and income qualifications. In 1951 those rights were removed, and voters were placed on a separate Coloured roll. In 1984 the government introduced a tricameral parliamentary system that made provision for the election of representatives to be responsible for the administration of so-called Coloured affairs. In the pre-1951 system, White political parties hoped to lure Coloured voters, and in certain urban areas the more liberal parties considered the Coloured vote crucial to their success. One of the reasons for removing the Coloureds from the voter roll was to reduce their political power as the number of qualified voters increased.

Coloured involvement in political protest in White-dominated South Africa changed radically after 1951, and, by the mid-1970s, many Coloureds began to identify themselves with national struggles against apartheid, reflecting their disillusionment with White liberalism.

Various segments of those people who came to be known as the Basters formed, with the assistance of missionaries, largely autonomous political communities and cultivated their marginal ethnic identity. These included the Grigua, the various Baster groups of Little Namaqualand, and the Rehoboth Basters, who established a republic in what is now Namibia in 1870. All these Baster nations developed formal written constitutions after they had lived for a period under customary law during their seminomadic pastoral stage, as did the White Voortrekkers. The constitutions of the Basters resembled very closely those of their White counterparts (cf. the thirty-three articles of the constitution of the South African Republic of 1844 with the sixty-four articles of that of the Rehoboth Baster nation of 1874).

The Coloured reserves of Little Namaqualand have similar histories to that of the Rehoboth nation of Namibia, although the former never enjoyed full political autonomy.

Religion

Apart from the Muslim Cape Malays (6.7 percent), the Coloured people are by and large nominal Christians (26 percent Dutch Reformed, 10.7 percent Anglican, 5.7 percent Methodist, 7 percent Congregationalist, 10 percent Catholic), a pattern very similar to that of Whites. Compared with the Bantu-speaking peoples, the Coloureds have engaged in relatively few minor schismatic movements in reaction to White domination in religion.

On the Coloured reserves and mission stations, the churches and the Christian religion stand at the core of communal and political life. Some residents have retained aspects of traditional Khoi religion, magic, and sorcery, and they hold these beliefs together with their articulation of Christianity. In urban areas, varieties of magico-medical traditions persist. Many of these, notably divination and the prescription of "home remedies" for illness, are often associated with people of Cape Malay background.

Bibliography

Carstens, Peter (1966). The Social Structure of Cape Coloured Reserve. Cape Town and New York: Oxford University Press.

Carstens, Peter (1983-1984). Opting Out of Colonial Rule: The Brown Voortrekkers of South Africa and Their Constitutions." African Studies 42(2): 135-152; 43(1): 19-30.

Goldin, Ian (1987). Making Race: The Politics and Economics of Coloured Identity in South Africa. London and New York: Longman.

Marais, J. S. (1939). The Cape Coloured People, 1652-1937. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

Patterson, Sheila (1953). Colour and Culture in South Africa. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Van der Ross, R. E. (1979). Myths and Attitudes: An Inside Look at the Coloured People. Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers.

Venter, Al J. (1974). Coloured: A Profile of Two Million South Africans. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau.

PETER CARSTENS