Some media forms work better than others for different things. For instance, it is difficult to describe a song in writing because one can only appreciate its nuances when one is listening to it.
In the same way, it is probably impossible to try to have a debate about something as complex as “coloured identity” in five minutes on television. This debate is probably best suited to a documentary, a radio programme, a newspaper or magazine article, or a book.
Yet last Sunday, I tried to have this debate with two other studio guests on Weekend Live on SABC2. Apart from a host of mess-ups, like us not being able to link to the guest in Tshwane and my connection from Cape Town being lost when I was trying to make a crucial point about why I call myself black as opposed to coloured, it was also difficult to have this debate in the limited time available.
As it was, we were not treated to any of the views of the representative of a website called Bruin-ou.com and I would have loved to have debated his views. Maybe somebody involved in another media form will take up the challenge and get us together to debate this issue once again.
I have never considered myself to be a coloured and prefer to describe myself as black, in line with the definitions explained by Steve Biko in the 1970s. At the time, the apartheid regime called us non-whites and Biko questioned why “white” had to be the standard against which everything was judged. He asked why “black” could not be this standard. He argued that we should all call ourselves black (Africans, coloureds and Indians), and whites should be called non-blacks.
These definitions have, of course, been entrenched in our law and our Constitution, so I can legally call myself black.
The issue of whether there is a coloured identity is not new, but it surfaces every now and then. It seems to surface more every time we are heading for another election.
At first I used to reject the notion of coloured identity out of hand; recently I have become much more sensitive towards it, but I still cannot see myself adopting this identity. However, I understand completely why some people say they are coloured and proud of it, like I believe the singer Vicky Sampson said on the same programme on Sunday.
Now, Vicky is my home girl. We grew up together in Hanover Park on the Cape Flats and belonged to political youth organisations in the early 1980s, so she has a consciousness of non-racialism and how important this was to our struggle.
At some point she, like me, called herself “black”. But she would not be the only one who now suddenly seeks solace in being a “coloured”.
Like I said, I have no problem with people identifying themselves as “coloured”, but then they must afford me the right to assert my human identity, my South African identity or my black identity.
I think the resurgence in people identifying themselves as coloureds could be laid at the door of short-sighted politicians who failed to make people who could potentially identify themselves as coloureds feel welcome in the new South Africa.
But it also has to do with economics, where people who identify themselves as coloureds have to fight for a small piece of the economic pie along with Africans.
If you speak to Africans, especially in the Western Cape, they will tell you that coloureds are favoured. If you speak to coloureds in the Western Cape, they will tell you that Africans are being favoured. The truth is probably that neither of the two is being favoured.
I try to deal with the issue of coloured identity in my book and I ask how one identifies a coloured. There are certain markers to identity and, of all the markers that I could think of, it is difficult to find any great commonality among the group roughly called “coloureds”.
I still believe that the only definition of “coloureds” is people who could not be fitted into any of the other apartheid-era definitions.
And isn’t it amazing how our democratic government has just adopted all the apartheid-era terminology? But that is probably the subject of another blog.
All the arguments above are based on issues of observation. Here is the dilema. How do you not discriminate against someone who has no choice but to be here. They were born here and live here. They never made the choice to be here. They have never left this country for another country. Their ancestors come from various places.
There is no way to treat this person faily except to emprace him as a citizen of the country of his/her birth.
By clasifying the person by race is just perpetuating the apartheid legacy.
The whole race issue in South Africa is nothing more than a smoke screen for the ANC’s true agenda. Get into power and stay there no matter what the cost.
Reggie,
“race” is a myth.
There is no pure “race”
What would/should be the ground rules in the upcoming elections, regarding politicians who utilise racial spin and jingoism.
Rylan,
I fully agree with you that originally within the south african contest we never had a coloured.way back in the Eastern cape you would here lod people talking about Umtwa(Bushmen or hottentots) and amalawu(currently called coloured). I think these word is ochestrated by white regime to further divide people,making the so called coloured to feel more better and close to the white ethnicity
group, to a greater extent they did successed.Coloured was more of an economic tool for preferential treatment and further dividing the political course of the time.
Yeah, definitely I think you see too much of Oprah shows…
Forget this issue… discuss the BIG ISSUE behind it: EDUCATION
Education ? Yes, education makes people wash their hands after toilet; education makes people taking prevent HIV besides taking showers…
Education makes people accept peacefully what they are, and discover that everybody has an identity, and an history, and a past, sometimes glorious, other times inteligent, other times plainly common, just like everybody in the world… Otherwise we would belong to the universe of dummies, robots, etc.
Thank you for your article. I was always offended by the the word ‘coloured’ and found it shocking that there were people who call themselves proudly coloured because that who/what they are. Till now I have always succesfully avoided using/saying it. On identity:
I went to Zimbabwe a few years ago and gave birth to a beutiful baby girl, who had to travel (is it back home?) at 2 weeks old is she Zimbambwean? if so, then if she was born in China would she be Chinese? Is Charlize Theron African -American? As we’re trying to analyse our differences like we really have to, “for our identity” which always come down to race/skin pigmentation. I think we’ll all sleep at night when use our languages as our point of difference which it actaully is.eg. People from Angola, Tanzania and Portugal are all Portogees. Swahili:Kenya, Namibia and some parts of Congo, all Swahilis. Afrikaans: Windhoek and some parts of South Africa, then Africans.Zulu – Zulu. People from India,from Israel and a Xhosa young lady from Eastern Cape speaking English only (other-wise known as coconut)all English. So Mr. Grant, that’ll make you English and not African as you thought. Ryland, Chris, The Engineer and all the “Coloured” community are Africans.
Finish!
“In the United States, the term is in official use in the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino, defined as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.” from Wikipedia on the all encompassing term Latino: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino
Therefore this term refers to ANYONE who’s roots are South of the US itself: Latin America. and when in Latin America there’s a distinction between White, Black and Mixed (or “Mulatto” as someone noted above) Latino is not a racial term. Some Latinosare “white” (pure European descent), some black/African, some are Mulatto (mix of African and European ancestry) and some Latinos are Mestizzo (of “American Native” descent(guess the meaning of native!) plus European)
Arg, well who is Falas? is that reference to me? it’s Felix not Falas incase you cannot see it.
Sello thanks for seeing what native really is. Tony and the rest of the deranged Afrikaners and others will always feel native even if not native to this land. having birth to a place means nothing. perhaps we can all that genetic test to see if whites are native to Australia, that would be funny because they are not native to that area at all, and I never hear whites wanting to claim nativeness to HongKong, India or Asian, yet there are so many characters or Aryanism in those regions (ie India). It seems we whites have something inferior and complex within ourselves to want to claim anything black by origin. This is why I will not even try to procreate, I see myself as a large part of the problem of racism and entitlement. I cannot stand to read or see more disrepect we place to people all for the sake of an argument. As I said, nothing like this by whites happens in Asia, so why do we feel the need to talk about 350 or 400 year on this continent as if we are natives to it? I do not think this progressive South African dictionary does anything for anyone. We are not natives of South Africa.
Also, what where Joseph Conrad and his contemporaries along with anthropologists talk about when they spoke of natives here or anywhere? If they spoke of natives, I do not ever remember reading any reference of natives with non-black skin or afronoid kinky hair. Seriously, cannot we just give into the solution not the problem of our entitlement issues?
Thanks, Felix
@ XNM: I am from EL in the EC. Where we were taught to respect your elders and embrace cultural diversity. Even while living in PTA, I felt proud of my identity. We made no excuses of our past to distract us from our goals and ambitions. I moved to CT where I was slapped by “Jannie Jammer Bal”. Ambition and respect for parents and elders lacked in many and a double-blow: people trapped in the past and instilling those narrow-minded thoughts into the youth in their communities. After reading some of the above, esp. Leon de Bruyn’s opening sentence, I am actually embarrassed at some of those denying their heritage. Proudly Coloured, Proudly South African.
I am not mixed, I’m black and once my boss in the UK called me coloured – I found it HIGHLY offensive. I have nothing against mixed people but being called coloured, aren’t we all some sort of colour?
I think we should all first accept that one day in the future all people on this planet will be “coloured”. Just like at one time in our primordial past all people were “coloured” – races being the product of isolation and in-breeding over millenia. In the modern global-village the few pure races (if they still exist at all) are a dying breed as different peoples come into contact as never before. Some day people will look back at Rylands question and smile because the question of coloured identity is unanswerable as there are too many possible permutations of coloured geneology. A child from a Norwegian and a Nigerian/ Chinese union is coloured. A coloured from Durban does not have the same genetic or cultural identity as a coloured from Cape Town, etc. The only genetic similarity is that there was a white and non-white admixture somewhere in his ancestry. As a Capetonian the only thing I have in common with a coloured from the Beaufort- Wes is this genetic mixture and the fact that I was born on the wrong side of the privilege divide (white/non-white) in the good old SA. For affirmative action purposes I am therefore on the same side of the previously -privileged divide as my “Black African” and “Indian/Asian” compatriots even though culturally – Capetonian coloureds always having been part of mainstream Western culture – I probably have more in common with my white brethren (same religion, same languages,food etc). That said I have no problem with SA legislation that places “Coloured” as a sub-group of “Black” for AA purposes as we are a previously disadvantaged grouping. We ARE still living with Apartheids socio-economic legacies and AA IS still neccessary so it is probably too soon for it now, but I long for the day when we will not be identified by racial epithets but purely by nationality – if we need any “identity” at all.
Amazing! I left South Africa during the apartheid era because of wanting to be classified as a South African and not the colour label given to us as either White, Coloured or Black.
Going into fifteen years of democracy and the mainstay of the legacy of colour apartheid has not been sorted out yet. Reading these comments makes me wonder if any of you know whats happening in the the outside world or if you are in a world of your own making.
I was born and bred in South Africa amongst Europeans, Africans, Cape Coloureds, Malays, Indians and Chinese, and the only difference I saw in them was that they were different nationalities.
There are more nationalities now than then and numerically greater than all those combined the various Bantu nationals. So isn’t it about time to erase the colours of black, white and coloured that are not in a rainbow as a rainbow nation.
I’m proud now to be known as an Australian as we all are no matter our former nationalities. Except for the First Australians and their descendants who as their right prefer the name of Aborigine but are still Australians.
Now as I see it maybe a similar adaptation could be implemented in South Africa. The First South Africans could be called Africans instead of blacks and still be South Africans, and the rest of the nationalities should just be called South Africans.