utterances, actions, and writings of Coloured people in which they evince their primary social identity. The inquiry is anchored in analyses of key texts produced by some of the most prominent organic intellectuals in the community, in which they give expression to their identity as Coloured people and reflect on its essence, qualities, and history. Emphasis is placed on serial publications, especially newspapers, written by Coloured people for a largely Coloured readership. The great advantage of this type of source material is that it addresses a specific constituency and needs to communicate in language that is broadly accessible and through ideas that resonate with its intended readers. Serial publications also allow one to track changing manifestations of the identity within a specific sector of the population over time.
A word about the terminology used in this study is necessary. For want of better alternatives and for the sake of adding some variety to the text, I use the terms petite bourgeoisie and elite interchangeably when referring to the upper strata of the Coloured community. Though the individuals in these strata did not comprise a petite bourgeoisie or an elite as conventionally understood, they can nevertheless be distinguished from the Coloured proletariat by their relative affuence, literacy, and adherence to the norms and values of white middle-class respectability. A general consciousness of their superior status within the Coloured community also set them apart from the Coloured laboring poor. Having an elite status only within the context of the Coloured community, this group in reality consisted of a combination of petite bourgeois and “respectable” working-class elements and would perhaps be more accurately referred to as an emergent petite bourgeoisie for much of the twentieth century. It is only toward the close of the period under discussion that a substantive petite bourgeoisie in the usual sense of the term can be observed within the Coloured community.4
The advent of the new South Africa has complicated the use of racial terminology, as both the racist and the politically correct conventions of the apartheid era break down. Old terms have taken on new meanings and are invested with changing values as people have greater freedom to give expression to social identities and ethnopolitical preferences. Thus, for example, it has become much more fashionable for whites to identify as African, if not de rigueur for those with high public profiles, and the term Coloured has been rehabilitated in public discourse since the rejectionist tide receded after 1990. In this study, the term black is used in its inclusive sense to refer to Coloured, Indian, and African people collectively, and African is used to refer to the indigenous Bantu-speaking peoples of South Africa. The use of the term Coloured is still complicated by a residual politically correct lobby that rejects this practice and argues for a broader black or South African identity.5 The emergence of a rejectionist voice within the Khoisan revivalist movement indicates that negative associations attached to Coloured identity still rankle with many. Given these and other sensitivities around the issue, I am driven to the tautology of stating that in this study, the term Coloured is used to refer to those people who regard themselves as Coloured. And wherever it is necessary to mention people who are generally regarded as being Coloured but who are known to reject the identity, this is indicated by placing the word between quotation marks if this is not apparent from the context of the discussion.
During the apartheid period and after, some scholars, myself included, refused to capitalize the first letter of the term Coloured in order to indicate both opposition to the enforced classification of people into racial and ethnic categories and distaste for ethnocentric values. The practice was further justified by the assertion that since the word was not derived from a proper noun, there was no need to capitalize it. In this study, however, I resort to the more normal practice of capitalizing the “C word,” except for quotations using the lower case. This is partly a response to the gradual normalization of South African society in the postapartheid period and partly in recognition of a growing grass-roots sentiment neatly expressed by journalist Paul Stober: “As a distinct ethnic group with over three million members, we deserve a capital letter.”6 It is also an indication of the rapid change the identity is experiencing in the postapartheid environment, as old sensitivities die down and as new concerns and agendas impinge on people’s consciousness.
Abbreviations
| AAC | All African Convention |
| ANB | Afrikaanse Nasionale Bond |
| ANC | African National Congress |
| APO | African Political Organization |
| BLAC | Black Literature, Art and Culture |
| CAC | Coloured Advisory Council |
| CAD | Coloured Affairs Department |
| CATA | Cape African Teachers’ Association |
| CPC | Coloured People’s Congress |
| CPNU | Coloured People’s National Union |
| CPSA | Communist Party of South Africa |
| CRC | Coloured Representative Council |
| FIOSA | Fourth International Organization of South Africa |
| ICU | Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union |
| NEUF | Non-European United Front |
| NEUM | Non-European Unity Movement |
| NLL | National Liberation League |
| SACPO | South African Coloured People’s Organization |
| SAIC | South African Indian Congress |
| TARC | Train Apartheid Resistance Committee |
| TLSA | Teachers’ League of South Africa |
| UCCA | Union Council of Coloured Affairs |
| UDF | United Democratic Front |
| UMSA | Unity Movement of South Africa |
1
Continuity and Context
An Overview of Coloured Identity in White Supremacist South Africa
There is a general lack of familiarity with the history of the Coloured community of South Africa, except perhaps for an awareness that it has generally been a story of racial oppression and that for nearly the whole of the twentieth century, it followed a discernible trend of intensifying segregationism and a continual erosion of Coloured people’s civil rights. This blind spot in South African historical knowledge, which is elaborated on in the next chapter, is a direct consequence of the marginality of the Coloured people. As one Coloured commentator put it, “We don’t know our own history and out there in the community and schools there is no information about it because we are not empowered.”1
A contexualizing opening chapter that sketches the social and historical background is thus a particular necessity. First, a thumbnail sketch of the history of the Coloured community is presented. This is followed by an elaboration of the core attributes that defined the manner in which Coloured identity
