The various Coloured communities in southern Africa developed out by events of the Dutch colonization of South Africa. In 1652 a small company of employees of the Dutch East India Company were settled on the southern tip of Africa in order to establish a refreshment station for the Company’s ships en route to the Far East. As groups of settlers moved away from the Cape settlement to develop farms, they needed workers. The Dutch government forbade enslaving indigenous people of southern Africa. They did allow the importation of slaves or indentured servants from the Malay peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia, in the Dutch East Indies. The first Malay slaves arrived in 1657, the first of what became the Cape Malay.
There were some mixed offspring of Malay and Dutch, who were called Coloured. The settlers or soldiers also had mixed offspring with the indigenous people, the Khoikhoi, the San and later the Xhosa. An additional contribution to the gene pool were the slaves imported from West Africa. The various other Coloured peoples also intermarried with the Khoikhoi, the indigenous people of the cape, until they have largely been absorbed into the Coloureds. The term Coloured came to be applied to all mixed people. One group of Coloureds escaped to the bush and lived as an African tribe, but became fearsome warriors on horses. These were the Griqua, who are still an Afrikaans-speaking tribe today. (One group of less than 200 Griqua also speak a Khoikhoi language called Xiri.) After the introduction of Indians into South Africa, they contributed to the mix of Coloureds.
The form of Dutch spoken in the Cape gradually changed significantly from that spoken in Holland. The Cape dialect came to be called Afrikaans (”the African language”). In the church, the law courts, educational institutions and official government circles, the official language was Dutch. But the common language of the people was increasingly Afrikaans. The Coloureds share the same language and religion as the “white” Afrikaners, although separated from them by strong social and class distinctions. Today over half of the 7 million Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa are “Coloured” people.
Identity: The “Coloured” peoples represent a wide range of genetic backgrounds. They commonly have lighter brown or yellow skin with somewhat Negroid features. But skin color and features vary considerably, showing the broad gene pool re presented. The Coloureds are usually involved in business, some in farming, but commonly work in domestic jobs in homes or hotels. The tribal or racial identity of Coloureds has been basically imposed upon them by the social attitude of Europeans, both British and Afrikaner, who have considered them inferior. Their rights were legally limited under apartheid, 1948-1990. The Cape Malay group of Coloureds number only about 200,000. Coloureds as a whole make up 9% of the population of South Africa.