The Evolution of Coloured South Africa

In Africa the indigenous people divided into tribes and developed naturally with varying and different cultural, political, religious, social norms, customs and languages or dialects. Inter-tribal marriages took place and the women would be obliged to take residence in the husband’s culture, clan or tribe. A bastard race slowly and silently shattered, littered across the length and breath of Africa. This story does not end here it is merely the beginning, control drama as this bastard race exits the world over, occurring within the white and black landscape of humanity aside from the cases where white and black blood has been mixed forging more unique individuals. With certainty this more unique individuals, these half-breeds were scorned, scourged, discriminated and ineptly labeled, eventually marginalized.

Throughout the colorful history of South Africa, various concepts and ideologies has been used to label, enforce, enslave and segregate. One such label, word is ‘hot-not‘  and ‘bastar‘, being of sound birth in the days of Jan van Riebeeck and his cronies, when they were unable to resist the alluring appeal of a fine native ass under an inviting African sky. And magically, as if some African voodoo played a part, the first coloured being of European and native Khoisan (Khoi-khoi and San) decent sprung forth from the Cape shores around the fortress. Growing defiance towards the British Empire and the discovery of gold in Transvaal and the Orange Free State, some European colonialists trekked through the length and breadth of South Africa, coming into close contact with the native blacks. Once again the African voodoo sang an enchanting lullaby under an African sky, yet again, another mix-breed being of European and native Black (Xhosa, Zulu, etc) decent – sprung forth from the Highveld and Lowveld earth.

As South Africa became an important vestige and halfway house of trade between Europe and Asia, Africa also suffered the grunt of the slave trade. Firstly, the exporting of Africans as slaves to the America’s. During these days blacks were reduced to commodities and slaves. Secondly, the importing of Malayans as cheap and forced labor – as the natives was seen as lazy, untrustworthy and ignorant (to the ways of the European colonialists). The chanting of some foreign religious mantra to the drums of the African plateau lingered again spawning another masala-mix of European and Malayan decent.

This inter-pollination of genes was not only confined to fornicating, forced or with permission, to the whim of the European colonialists with the natives or the Malayans, but between all people of different ethnicity and cultures visiting South African shores, fueling the growing numbers of an ethnic hybridization. Alas the number of the bastard offspring rose steadily; as these mix-breeds procreated among themselves naturally. Through the times and forces of urbanization, declining imperialism of the British Empire, the Boer war, the First and Second World Wars and the establishment of Boer Nationalism in South Africa, the mix breed grew significantly. In time and with certainty these more unique individuals, these half-breeds were scorned, scourged, discriminated and ineptly labeled, eventually marginalized. Offset with the introduction and legitimizing of apartheid by the national party in 1948 ‘Separate but equal‘ policy and further entrenched with the group areas act, segregation, re-classification as coloreds (kleurling) and forcible grouped together.

This term, concept and construct of colored was and still is very tenuous. Tenuous in the sense that the heritage of coloureds is shrouded in a veil of different languages, beliefs, cultures, prejudices, religious and social affiliations. Roughly this relates to the (in)visible hierarchy of imposed social class distinction between coloured people based on feature discrimination, economy, misplaced sense of class, religion/beliefs and ignorance; fostered and maintained by the Apartheid Republic. A social and people bigotry illuminated in the form of demeaning slurs as ‘hot-not’, ‘bushie‘, ‘gam‘ and ‘bastar‘ imposing a humanistic heresy that people are inferior to others.

A shared culture, defined as a shared heritage, tradition, socially entrenched customs, beliefs, language, and vision, between coloureds have been forged through the Union Years, the PACT years, the Apartheid years, the Equality years in the guise of a shared rejection, oppression, discrimination, poverty and escalating social issues like gangsterism, alcoholism, abuse and affirmative action. An unique feature of a coloured culture is that it is not based in conventional and traditional (Western, if you like) precepts, definition or description of culture. A broad definition of colored culture is based on a stereotype that coloured people are untrustworthy, lazy, drunkards, thieves, gangsters, murderers, drug peddlers, abusers, con artist, you name it still ring through the corridors of society.

The presumed nature and defined characteristics, ‘the commandments‘, of life as a coloured is based on stereotypical assertions maintained by political, social and economic exclusion. Either colored people have failed to rise above their conditions or circumstances created and maintained by the Apartheid government of which their identity as an insular group have be traumatized and is in state of paralysis or in denial; or the present government has failed to make significant contributions to alleviate the plight of the so called colored people; or the present government and coloured leadership has inadvertently embarked to maintain and sustain the racial landscape immorally legitimized by the Apartheid government; or simply we as people have failed to see and meet each as people. By law we are free and equal but still, in shackles and chains mentally. Servants and subordinates to the ‘Separate but equal’ Apartheid government premise.

>> Ross Rayners