6

New Responses to Old Dilemmas

Coloured Identity in a Transforming South Africa

The overarching argument of the book has been that Coloured identity remained remarkably stable and experienced relatively little fundamental change in the way it operated throughout the era of white domination. The postapartheid period has, however, witnessed significant and swift changes in the ways Coloured identity manifests itself. The first part of this chapter analyzes a relatively short-lived perspective on Coloured identity and the community’s history that gained currency among “progressive,” especially ANC-supporting, elements within the Coloured community during the dying days of the apartheid order. The second part seeks to explain why Coloured identity is experiencing rapid change and an unusual degree of creativity in the ways it is finding expression in the postapartheid environment.

Resistance, Protest, and Accommodation: A Progressive Perspective at Apartheid’s End

This section will use Hein Willemse’s 1993 article on Straatpraatjes,¹ a newspaper column that appeared in the APO from its inception in 1909, as a case study. This scholarly article, written toward the end of white rule, analyzed a text that was not only produced during the formation of the South African state but also commented extensively on the process. The broader outlook represented by Willemse in this piece, usually characterized by an underlying tone of triumphalism in anticipation of a decisive victory over white supremacism, exaggerated Coloured people’s resistance to white supremacy as well as their association with the African majority by stressing their identity as black. Though rejectionist in spirit, this view grudgingly acknowledged the salience of Coloured identity, since outright denial was no longer tenable by the early 1990s.² In this case study, I will contest Willemse’s interpretation of Straatpraatjes as one of the earliest examples of a tradition of resistance to white domination and self-assertion among black Afrikaans-speakers.³ I will argue that it is misleading to characterize Straatpraatjes as the product of black Afrikaans-speakers or to suggest that it was aimed at a black readership. On the contrary, the column confirmed the existence of profound ambiguities in Coloured identity and cannot simply be construed as an expression of black or even Coloured resistance to white domination.⁴

Straatpraatjes was a satirical column that appeared in the Dutch-Afrikaans section of the APO newspaper between May 1909 and February 1922. It was written in a variety of Cape Vernacular Afrikaans that was spoken in particular by the Coloured working classes residing in the inner-city areas of Cape Town.⁵ It was narrated by Piet Uithalder, a fictitious character, and told of the social experiences and the political encounters of Piet and his friend, Stoffel Francis. Piet and Stoffel were former shepherds from the Kat River Settlement who had managed to acquire some education and had become politicized as a result. They had migrated to Cape Town, where they joined the APO and Uithalder attached himself to the organization’s head office staff as a voluntary worker. Piet, who was portrayed as socially unsophisticated and somewhat naive, could speak only Afrikaans. He relied on Stoffel, who had a rudimentary grasp of the English language and some knowledge of middle-class social etiquette, to act as his guide and interpreter.⁶ Using this vernacular with wit and ingenuity, Uithalder brought some humor to a newspaper otherwise given to high seriousness.

Among other things, Piet related his experiences at dinner parties, picnics along Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard, and a wide variety of APO functions. He also gave his impression of public events, such as the celebration of the king’s birthday, election meetings, and the Stellenbosch Agricultural Show. Uithalder often inveighed against white racism and took particular delight in ridiculing uncouth whites, especially boere (Afrikaners) from the backveld. In addition, he chided Coloured people for being too color-conscious and poked fun at the social pretensions of the Coloured petite bourgeoisie. Straatpraatjes, at one time or another, also delivered commentary on all of the key political issues confronting the Coloured community during that period. Lampooning rival Coloured political organizations was one of Uithalder’s main preoccupations. He was relentless in his ridicule of their leaders and his parodying of their meetings. Piet and Stoffel, moreover, regularly visited parliament and satirized the racist attitudes of parliamentarians and the passage of segregationist legislation.⁷

Straatpraatjes was one of the most effective weapons in the APO’s journalistic arsenal. The combination of Uithalder’s razor-sharp wit and the novelty of writing in colloquial language gave the column a popularity and political punch not matched by the rest of the paper. From the time it appeared in the APO’s first issue, Straatpraatjes was an integral part of the newspaper’s agenda of furthering the aims of the APO and articulating the interests of the Coloured community. Piet clearly saw himself as a spokesman for the Coloured community as a whole and did not shy away from sensitive or controversial issues. If anything, Straatpraatjes had the virtue of allowing Uithalder to say in jest what the APO did not feel comfortable articulating in its normal reporting.⁸ Although the newspaper never revealed the identities of the authors of Straatpraatjes, the evidence suggests Abdullah Abdurahman wrote nearly all of the columns.⁹

The name Uithalder had meanings that resonated with the readership of the column at several levels. Most simply, uithalder meant “clever” or “smart,” and Piet Uithalder, being the equivalent of Smart Alec, was an eminently suitable pseudonym for the author of a column of this nature. But as Hein Willemse points out, the term can also mean “excellent” or “the best” and could thus be construed as a conscious challenge to the stereotyping of Coloured people as intellectually limited and socially inferior.¹⁰ Most significantly, however, the name held strong connotations of black resistance to white domination for politicized Coloured people during the early twentieth century. Willem Uithalder was a prominent leader of the Kat River Rebellion of 1851, and Piet was presumably a descendant of the rebel leader.¹¹

The Kat River Settlement had a special place in the hearts and minds of the Coloured petite bourgeoisie of the early twentieth century because they saw the land grant of 1828 on which the settlement was founded as emblematic of Britain’s recognition of their loyalty to the empire and their claim to full citizenship rights. Its symbolic importance was evident from the way Uithalder equated Kat River with equal rights when describing his first encounter with W. P. Schreiner, the former prime minister of the Cape Colony and the most noted liberal politician of his day: “After Stoffel introduced me the discussion really got going. Mr. Schreiner told me about the Kat River equal rights. Slavery, excise, rebellion, Botha and so forth.” The loss of this land, however, was attributed to settler greed and racism of the sort with which they still had to contend. The Kat River Rebellion has faded from present-day popular memory, but at that time, it was recalled with pride within the Coloured elite. At one point, Piet thus warned racists that “Kat River Hottentots … know how to remove a boer from behind a rock.”¹²

Although it is not clear how the idea of writing Straatpraatjes originated, it appears to have been partly prompted by the Parlementse Praatjes (Parliamentary Talk) column in De Zuid Afrikaan, the leading Dutch daily newspaper in Cape Town at the time.¹³ Written in an urbane, lightly humorous vein, Parlementse Praatjes reported on the doings of parliament in language that is best described as an educated, white, middle-class version of Afrikaans, in contrast to the formal Dutch used in the rest of the newspaper. Thus, the APO established Straatpraatjes to voice Coloured interests in the language of the Coloured community in the same way that Parlementse Praatjes represented the white supremacist interests of the Afrikaner in the language of the Afrikaner. As the title of the column indicated, it was the intention of Uithalder to contrast his Afrikaans of the street and kitchen with that of white speakers of the language, which he associated with parliament and parlor. By writing in the language of the Coloured working classes, Piet consciously identified with the Coloured people and used the vernacular to appeal to their identity as Coloured. Resorting to this highly expressive vernacular heightened the comic effect of Uithalder’s satire, and hitting out at their opponents in a code recognizably their own clearly added to readers’ pleasure. Despite their Anglophilia, the APO leaders nevertheless recognized that this stigmatized vernacular had deep emotional appeal to their constituency.

Straatpraatjes, unlike other examples of this patois in early Afrikaans literature, was as authentic a replication of the Afrikaans vernacular spoken within the urban Coloured community of the western Cape as one could hope to find in print. The authors of the column were clearly native-speakers of the dialect, and because there were no formal spelling and grammatical rules to follow, they wrote the language as they themselves spoke it. In addition, the monologic format of the column meant that Piet Uithalder addressed the readers directly, as if he were speaking to them. In nearly all instances where this patois occurred in early Afrikaans literature, it was used by white authors to caricature blacks, their language being distorted for comic effect and reinforcing negative racial stereotypes.¹⁴ In Straatpraatjes, however, Piet addressed his readers in the distinctive code of his community in order to demonstrate that he was one of them. He wanted to create an emotional bond and gain their confidence. It was therefore important that Uithalder’s language come across as genuine. The popularity of Straatpraatjes and the enthusiastic response from readers clearly testified to its success in this regard. Thus, in Straatpraatjes, Coloured people were invested with a dignity and the language they spoke was accorded a propriety not found elsewhere in early Afrikaans writing.

Although both the authors and the majority of the column’s readers were members of the Coloured elite, it is clear that they were intimately familiar with the social practices and the language of the Coloured laboring poor, for, as indicated earlier, there was no great social distance between the Coloured petite bourgeoisie and the Coloured working classes. People such as Uithalder, who aspired to middle-class status, and other Straatpraatjes characters, including Mrs. Janewari and Mrs. Shepherd, who were described as being pertikelaar (particular),¹⁵ continued to socialize with working-class friends and relatives and were fluent in Cape Vernacular Afrikaans. Nonetheless, this elite’s preference for English and the connotations of social inferiority they attached to Afrikaans were clearly evident in Straatpraatjes. Uithalder’s humble origins were, for example, signaled by the variant of Afrikaans he spoke, whereas Stoffel’s social aspirations were evident from his determination to speak English even though he was hardly proficient in the language. Similarly, on numerous occasions, Uithalder caused rouwe boere (raw boers) to betray their lack of refinement through their broken English or by conversing in kombuis Hollans (kitchen Dutch).¹⁶ The identification with English culture was also reflected in the anglicized personal names adopted by characters in Straatpraatjes. Thus, the Gedults preferred the surname Patience, Miss November tried to disguise her Afrikaans background by calling herself Miss Wember, and Mrs. Margaret Shepherd would have been mortified to be called “ta Grietjie Skawagter,” as she was known back in Kat River. Uithalder himself preferred the name Outholder when in refined company.¹⁷

Straatpraatjes was a very successful column and remained one of the APO’s most popular features. Piet Uithalder’s perceptive observations and his penchant for broaching sensitive issues in a forthright manner provided unique insights into the social identity and political attitudes within the Coloured community during the early years of Union. Published at a time when the direct testimony of Coloured people was relatively sparse, Straatpraatjes added nuance and texture not found elsewhere in the historical record. What is more, Uithalder was a pioneer of satirical writing in Afrikaans, employing satirical techniques thought to have been introduced into the language in the mid-1920s by C. J. Langenhoven, a leading Afrikaner literary figure.¹⁸ Indeed, Straatpraatjes was so successful that it spawned an English equivalent, The Office Boy’s Reflections, authored by Johnny, the APO’s “office boy.” The S.A. Clarion, the mouthpiece of the rival United Afrikaner League and its National Party sponsors and so often at the receiving end of Piet Uithalder’s invective, paid Straatpraatjes the ultimate compliment by copying the idea and publishing its own Straatpraatjes column.¹⁹

In a September 1993 article published in Stilet, the journal of the Afrikaans Literature Association, Hein Willemse, who would be regarded as Coloured in the context of the South African racial system, explored the weltanschauung of Piet Uithalder’s Straatpraatjes column, focusing in particular on the implications his discourse held for the racial stereotyping of black Afrikaans-speakers.²⁰ In this article, Willemse, at the time a lecturer in the Afrikaans Department of the University of the Western Cape, presented Uithalder’s writings as an unequivocal challenge to white cultural hegemony and the perception of black people as inferior, especially within the Afrikaans-speaking sector of the ruling minority. He also argued that Uithalder’s discourse represented a form of intellectual resistance to colonial domination that laid the basis for later, more effective means of resisting white supremacism.

Willemse prefaced his analysis of the column by explaining that Afrikaans language and literature are, on the whole, elite, white-centered cultural constructions produced by generations of Afrikaner culture brokers. Voices raised in opposition to these ruling perceptions, he argued, were either absent as a result of illiteracy and social domination or, when they arose, were effectively silenced by being marginalized or ignored. To restore Afrikaans to its rightful status as a multivocal medium, it was necessary to resurrect these silenced voices. Piet Uithalder, Willemse asserted, represented one such voice, with his choice of a Coloured working-class variant of Afrikaans being a conscious act of resistance to white domination. Straatpraatjes therefore provided a rare opportunity to explore an early counter-hegemonic voice from within the community of black Afrikaans-speakers. Willemse contended that Uithalder’s column challenged fundamental assumptions underpinning the colonial order and white supremacist ideology in South Africa. He focused on four aspects of Uithalder’s discourse, namely, the significance he attached to education, his deprecation of the consumption of alcohol among Coloured people, the status he assumed as traveler and independent observer, and his attitude toward whites. All four, Willemse maintained, defined the relationship between oppressed and oppressor in significant ways and were effectively used by Uithalder to undermine colonial categorizations.²¹

First, Willemse pointed out that Uithalder often railed against discrimination in the education system because it impeded Coloured people’s access to skilled employment and social advancement. Besides educational attainment in itself being a status symbol, Uithalder recognized that education was a fundamental source of power because literacy and the access it provided to advanced technologies underpinned colonial domination. Second, Willemse held that Uithalder’s antiliquor campaign was largely motivated by his perception that alcoholic abuse among Coloured people was symbolic of their subjection. Not only did whites induce alcoholic addiction through the tot system of paying labourers part of their wages in daily rations of cheap wine to ensure a docile labor force, they also used liquor to manipulate Coloured voters. Third, Willemse claimed that through his incisive observations and independent reportage during his travels in South Africa and England, Uithalder broke the stereotype of blacks as intellectually inferior to whites, fit only for subservient roles. By presenting Uithalder as an autonomous, reflective individual, Straatpraatjes challenged the deeply entrenched assumption of Afrikaner paternalist ideology that it was the destiny of Coloured people to be subservient to the Afrikaner. Most significant of all, in Willemse’s view, was Uithalder’s attitude to whites in general. In addition to being highly critical of racially prejudiced whites, he demanded “equal rights” and portrayed boere and poor whites as socially inferior to middle-class blacks, which further subverted the stereotyping of black people as inferior, degenerate beings incapable of civilization. Willemse concluded by arguing that notwithstanding his identification with English culture, Uithalder’s writings represented the beginnings of the intellectual liberation of black Afrikaans-speakers, his assimilationism being part of the creation of a worthy self-image.²²

Willemse’s interpretation of Straatpraatjes is open to challenge on a wide front. Given the racial exclusivity of the APO, there can be no doubt that Uithalder did not see himself as black but self-consciously identified himself as a Coloured person and wrote specifically for a Coloured readership. After all, the first thing Uithalder did was to introduce himself as een van de ras (a member of the race) to stress that he was Coloured.²³ He characterized himself as a bruine mens (brown person) and often voiced opinions about and on behalf of onse bruin mense (our brown people) and onse ras (our race).²⁴ Indeed, not only was he comfortable with his racially exclusive identity as Coloured, he also appeared to accept prevailing racial categories as natural. He thus, for example, freely used racial terms such as boer, hotnot (Hottentot), half-naatje (half-breed), and slams (Muslim) to describe people.²⁵ And although he clearly had sympathy for Africans as fellow sufferers under an unjust racial system, Uithalder had no compunction about using the pejorative kaffer ²⁶—or even rouwe kaffer (raw kaffir)²⁷—when referring to Africans. Uithalder also, as a matter of course, drew distinctions between kleurling (Coloured) and swartling (African); bruine en kaffer; bruine en swart (black); and kaffers and hotnots.²⁸

Willemse’s description of Uithalder as a swart rubriekskrywer (black columnist) and as representative of black Afrikaans-speakers is thus misleading.²⁹ Uithalder certainly did not have a racially dichotomous view of South African society, and the distinctions he drew between white English-speakers, Afrikaners, Coloured people, and Africans were central to his political outlook and his understanding of South African society. What is more, at no point did Uithalder evince allegiance to a wider black identity, nor did he ever describe himself as black in this sense. It also needs to be noted that his assimilationism, though it may have aided in the making of a positive self-image, also functioned to associate Uihalder with the dominant society and thereby distance himself from Africans.

Thus, although Piet abhorred racial discrimination and castigated white supremacists, he was not able to rise fully above the racist ideology that so powerfully shaped the worldview of his society. The resultant ambiguities were abundantly evident in Straatpraatjes. Despite his frequent challenges to the ruling order with assertions of the sort that “we are all South Africans” and “colour does not give one a good character,”³⁰ Uithalder just as often displayed acceptance of the racial categorizations imposed by the dominant society. Given the dilemmas that came with Coloured marginality and trying to capitalize on their status of privilege relative to Africans, as argued earlier, the APO continually vacillated between protest and accommodation, on the one hand, and between assimilationism and Coloured separatism, on the other. Continually modulating its responses to white supremacism to strike a balance between these competing interests, the APO was inevitably inconsistent and ambivalent in its political outlook, and this was clearly reflected in Straatpraatjes.

Uithalder’s choice of language also did not represent an uncomplicated act of defiance by a black Afrikaans-speaker intent on asserting the worth of his particular code of Afrikaans, as Willemse seemed to think. The use of colloquial Afrikaans in Straatpraatjes was fraught with tensions and ambiguities, not least because it was written by authors—and for a readership—that preferred English even though Afrikaans may have been their mother tongue. As demonstrated earlier, Afrikaans was associated with social inferiority, cultural backwardness, and Afrikaner racism in the minds of the Coloured elite, whereas English was revered as the language of culture, civilization, and progress. Rather than simply being an act of resistance, the decision to write in colloquial Afrikaans was, in part, also a grudging concession to the prevalence and deep emotional appeal of the language among its constituency by a modernizing elite that wanted to distance itself from “barbarous Cape Dutch.” Thus, despite its appropriation of the Coloured working-class patois and despite providing true-to-life descriptions of their popular culture, Straatpraatjes largely embodied the values and aspirations of the Coloured elite.³¹

Published over a period of thirteen years—albeit with a break of six years between 1913 and 1919—the 102 surviving Straatpraatjes columns inevitably reflected the changing social and political context in which it operated. It also mirrored the changing fortunes of the APO, from the optimism and vigor that marked its protest campaign of 1909 and 1910 through the steady decline after Union and the revival of the organization in 1919, as outlined earlier. Willemse failed to recognize the critical changes in Uithalder’s social and political outlook over that period. Instead, he presented a static and oversimplified picture of uncompromising resistance on the part of Uithalder.

Straatpraatjes came into being at a time of heightened concern among Coloured people about the erosion of their civil rights and the implementation of segregationist measures. The assimilationist overtures of the Coloured petite bourgeoisie had been firmly rejected by the dominant society, and the elite experienced a hardening of racial barriers in the years following the Anglo-Boer War. Avenues for social advancement, particularly in education and employment, were being closed, and their civil rights were under serious threat. Frustrated by the deterioration in their social status, the Coloured elite rallied behind the APO, which grew rapidly under the dynamic leadership of Abdurahman.³² Riding the wave of Coloured anger and apprehension at the imposition of a racially exclusive political settlement on South Africa with the making of Union, the APO was at its most vigorous and Straatpraatjes at its most spirited during that period. The pressures of intensifying segregationism thus pervaded the Straatpraatjes column, and each new discriminatory measure drew ascerbic commentary from Uithalder, who displayed a remarkably creative impulse both in his use of the vernacular as well as in conjuring up images and scenes of great hilarity. This was also the time when Piet was at his most defiant and his satire at its most trenchant.

Not long after Union, though, a subtle change was observable, as Uithalder’s satire started losing some of its bite. This was largely the result of a demoralized APO having changed its strategy and its political outlook in the aftermath of Union. Enervated by its inability to stem the tide of segregation, the APO slowly declined, falling into a state of dormancy by the beginning of 1914. This decline was reflected in Straatpraatjes, for although Uithalder managed to retain a tone of strident protest throughout, after 1912 he seldom wrote with the flair and humor that marked the earlier episodes. Also, the column appeared less regularly, and a hint of despondency crept into the writing. At one point, Uithalder lamented that “the good days are gone. All that one can do now is to sit and wait to hear what Hertzog or one of the greybelly farmers have to say. Sometimes I get so depressed I feel like taking a drink just to keep up my spirits.”³³ In October 1913, the “Straapraatjes” column was discontinued for six years without any reason being offered to the readers.

The stresses and strains on the APO and its leadership in the post–World War I period, as detailed earlier, were clearly manifest in the revived Straatpraatjes column. By the time he took up the pen again in August 1919, Piet Uithalder had lost his sense of humor and assumed a hectoring tone. His creative impulse and resourcefulness with the vernacular had deserted him. The column became repetitious and perfunctory, and it appeared less regularly. During that period, Piet Uithalder was almost exclusively concerned with discrediting its main rival, the United Afrikaner League, which was allied to the Cape National Party.

A measure of the change in the APO’s political outlook that had occurred in the meantime was demonstrated by Uithalder’s retreat from the defiant challenge he issued to the white supremacist establishment in 1912: “We have for long enough crawled like animals to the white man. It is now time that we stood up straight … and no longer with hat in hand and on bended knee saying ‘please master’ and ‘yes master.’” By 1922, this defiance had changed to frustrated resignation: “We are always tardy when we have to do something for ourselves…. When are we going to take an example out of the white man’s book?”³⁴ Even more striking was the about-face in Uithalder’s attitude toward the South African Party, which governed until its defeat in the 1924 elections. Whereas the likes of Jan Smuts and Louis Botha were given short shrift in earlier columns and were characterized as “greybellies” and “the enemy,” Uithalder praised Smuts as “a smart man” and “a brave leader” in the revived column.³⁵ On Smuts’s return to South Africa after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Uithalder even went so far as to welcome him home with a fawning “Yes Smuts … we missed you a lot.”³⁶

This volte-face on the part of Uithalder was very much a consequence of the dilemma faced by Coloured people in the party political arena due to their marginality. The APO had little option but to back the political party that best served Coloured interests, especially at election time. In effect, this meant that the APO was forced to choose the lesser evil among various racist parties. The APO’s predicament in this regard was abundantly clear in the very first episode of Straatpraatjes, when Uithalder gave vent to his disappointment at the Unionist Party’s support of the draft South Africa Act. As the political home of Cape liberalism, the APO had depended on Unionists to defend Coloured civil rights. After 1920, when the Unionist Party disbanded and most of its members joined the South African Party, the APO found itself with little choice but to switch its allegiance to the party of Botha and Smuts, which it had formerly castigated as racist and unprogressive. The only alternatives were to support the even more racist National Party or Labour Party or to pursue a policy of boycott, which it regarded as utterly futile.

The oppositional element of Uithalder’s writing cannot, therefore, be characterized as resistance—verset, in Willemse’s parlance.³⁷ In this regard, a distinction needs to be drawn between the concepts of protest and resistance. At the very least, the concept of resistance, whether violent or passive, implies rejection of the ruling order and the desire to embrace a social and political system informed by alternative norms and values. Given their assimilationism and the degree to which they were prepared to come to an accommodation with the South African racial system, the APO’s political strategy and, by extension, that of Straatpraatjes can hardly be described as resistance. The political strategy of the APO, of which the column was an integral part, conformed much more closely to the concept of protest, the essential features of which were outlined by Donald Crummey: “Protest assumes some common social and political order linking protesters and those to whom the protesters appeal. Protesters tend to direct their energy to the redressing of grievances arising from that order.”³⁸ It is abundantly clear that Uithalder did not want to overthrow the system he was satirizing; he merely wanted to change it sufficiently for Coloured people to share fully in its benefits.

Although there was a dimension of defiance in the Straatpraatjes column, it is clear that Piet Uithalder’s response to white domination was something more complex than resistance per se. As this examination of Straatpraatjes and of the APO newspaper earlier on has demonstrated, the response of Uithalder—as, indeed, of most politicized Coloured people of the time—was characterized by a profound ambiguity in its racial perceptions, in its attitude toward the white ruling establishment, and in the political strategy it deployed. Though he opposed white supremacism and helped to undermine it in many ways, Uithalder had come to an accommodation with the South African racial order in other ways, and he attempted both to work within the system and to work the system for the benefit of Coloured people. Uithalder’s growing conservatism and his chastisement of Coloured people for not taking “an example out of the white man’s book” in the last column he wrote demonstrated that the impetus for assimilation and accommodation in his discourse came to overshadow his impulse to resist.

The argument presented by Willemse and the sentiment underpinning it typified opinion within the “progressive,” largely ANCsupporting minority faction of the Coloured community that, at the close of the apartheid period, entertained exaggerated notions of Coloured resistance to white rule and their identification with Africans as comrades in oppression. The subtext of Willemse’s argument was that this tradition of resistance—of which Straatpraatjes was held to be one of the earliest examples, if not the first, to be expressed in Afrikaans—was to grow from strength to strength through the twentieth century, culminating in an important contribution by Coloured people to the impending victory of the nonracial democratic movement over apartheid in the mid-1990s. Not only is it ahistoric to read such assumptions back into Coloured responses to white supremacism during the early decades of the twentieth century, but there is very little evidence to support such an interpretation. There is no identifiable tradition of resistance, intellectual or political, of this sort dating back to the early twentieth century. Such an outlook can first be observed in very tenuous form from the mid-1930s onwards with the emergence of the radical movement in Coloured politics and then more substantively from the late 1970s onward within the nonracial democratic movement. On the contrary, as the present analysis has shown, Straatpraatjes provides evidence of a tradition of ambiguity between the egalitarian values of nonracism and assimilationism, on the one hand, and racial exclusivity driven by a desire to protect a position of relative privilege, on the other.

The romanticized and transient perspective that informed Willemse’s analysis was rudely shattered when the majority of Coloured people gave expression to their alienation from the new order by voting for the National Party in the April 1994 elections. Many Coloured people on the progressive Left whose wishful thinking had blinded them to the extent of Coloured racial chauvinism were shocked and shamed into more realistic appraisals of sentiment within the Coloured community generally. Despite preelection surveys indicating heavy defeat for the ANC in the Western Cape, the prominent activist who became premier of the Western Cape in 2004, Ebrahim Rasool, confirms that the response of left-wing activists was nevertheless one of disbelief: “We were shell-shocked … we somehow didn’t believe that the [Coloured] community of the Western Cape would in the worst days be able to vote for the National Party.”³⁹ Emille Jansen (aka Emille YX), cultural activist and leader of the Cape Town hip-hop group Black Noise, which actively supported the ANC, most notably by performing at preelection rallies, expressed his disappointment with the 1994 election results more candidly: “I couldn’t fucken believe it, my bra [my brother], like yoh! … I was kak [shit] upset!”⁴⁰ Rasool correctly diagnosed the activists’ misreading of the situation as largely stemming from their conflation of the defeat of apartheid with a change in mind-set within the Coloured community as well as from an assumption that popular support for the UDF was evidence of growing nonracism among Coloureds and would automatically translate into approval of the ANC.⁴¹

“Not Black Enough”: Coloured Identity in Postapartheid South Africa

In contrast to its stability under white supremacy, expressions of Coloured identity have undergone rapid transformation in the postapartheid environment. The period since 1994 has been a time of flux and of unprecedented change in the way Colouredness has operated and, indeed, has needed to operate as a social identity. The new democratic dispensation has brought with it a degree of freedom of association and possibilites for ethnic mobilization that were inconceivable under white domination. It has also undermined, even invalidated, some of the most basic assumptions and practices that were at the foundation of Coloured identity from the time it crystallized in the late nineteenth century. And with the racial hierarchy that had regulated social relations in white-ruled South Africa having broken down in important respects, intergroup relations have become more complex and expressions of social identity more fluid. This has, on the one hand, compounded the confusion and controversy that have dogged the identity in recent decades, but on the other hand, it has opened up opportunities for new ways of conceptualizing Colouredness and brought forth more varied and creative responses to questions about the nature of Coloured identity and its role in South African society. It is thus not surprising that the new political paradigm and ongoing, swift social transformation have stimulated innovative attempts at marshaling Coloured ethnic resources. This section seeks to explain why Coloured identity, given its prior history of relative stability, has experienced fast-paced and, in some respects, thoroughgoing change from the early 1990s. The new social and political dynamics informing these shifts will also be explored.

Despite the emergence of a vocal, Coloured rejectionist voice within the nonracial democratic movement of the 1980s, the subsequent period has witnessed a resurgence of Colouredism, with many people who had rejected the identity reembracing it. Fear of African majority rule, perceptions that Coloureds were being marginalized, a desire to counter pervasive negative stereotyping of Coloured people, and attempts at capitalizing on the newly democratic environment in pursuit of political agendas have all played a role in fueling Coloured assertiveness in the new South Africa.⁴² It has become commonplace for Coloured people disaffected with the new South Africa to express their disgruntlement by lamenting that “first we were not white enough and now we are not black enough.” This claim has very rapidly become clichéd because it reflects popular sentiment within the greater part of the Coloured community and highlights key dilemmas Coloured people face in coming to grips with the postapartheid environment. Besides accentuating their interstitial position within a transforming South African racial hierarchy, the phrase very neatly captures Coloured people’s perennial predicament of marginality. Though the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same” rings true for many Coloured people regarding their position in the new South Africa, few will deny that their lives have been profoundly affected by changes since the transition to democracy. Though the responses of the majority are still informed by apartheid-style thinking, elements within the Coloured community have nevertheless been creative about the manner in which they express their social identity.

The most obvious reason why expressions of Coloured identity have shifted rapidly in postapartheid South Africa is because change was forced on the Coloured community with the sudden and drastic alteration of the political environment after de Klerk’s landmark speech of 2 February 1990. A radical reordering of the political landscape during the transition to democracy compelled a reassessment of allegiances and a realignment of priorities throughout South African society. The swift pace of social and economic transformation has ensured a fluid milieu, conducive to the remolding of all social identities, not least of all Coloured identity.

Importantly in the case of Coloured identity, political reform brought with it a significant increase in the political clout of the Coloured people, which heightened the salience of the identity. For the first time, democratic government gave the Coloured community voting power commensurate with its demographic profile. This influence came into play well before 1994, in that soon after the unbanning of the ANC, leaders and organizations across the political spectrum started lobbying with increasing urgency for support within the Coloured community, in anticipation of the need to strengthen their hands in negotiations and in expectation of having to mobilize for forthcoming elections. Because Coloureds were concentrated in the western third of the country, where they formed a majority of the population, it was clear to all from the start of negotiations for a new dispensation that Coloured support was essential to political success in those areas that were later to become the provinces of the Western and Northern Cape.⁴³ Nelson Mandela’s 1992 urging of the ANC to recognize “Coloured ethnicity” as a political reality was an important step in the public acknowledgment of the existence of Coloured identity by the radical Left.⁴⁴ These appeals to Coloured group consciousness had the effect of reinforcing Coloured exclusivity because they contributed to the reification of Coloured identity, undermined the nonracial stance of the rejectionist movement that had developed during the 1970s and 1980s, and promoted the expression of political interests along racial lines. Strenuous attempts to win the Coloured vote and hand-wringing responses to Coloured voting patterns have subsequently served only to accentuate Coloured exceptionalism and reify the identity further.

The use of overtly racialized political tactics has declined since the mid-1990s. Most political parties in the new South Africa claim to be nonracial, but they are more accurately described as multiracial in that they work with essentialist concepts of race and often openly try to exploit racial identifications. The black peril tactics of the National Party during the 1990s, particularly in the run-up to the 1994 elections, were undoubtedly instrumental in heightening race consciousness within the Coloured community. More recently, Democratic Alliance strategies for winning Coloured support have openly played on fears of African domination. The ANC clearly also contributed to this process both by sidelining the UDF-affiliated antiracist lobby of the western Cape soon after its unbanning and by directly soliciting Coloured support. Given the continued prevalence of racial thinking in postapartheid South Africa, no political party aspiring to mass support could afford to ignore the popular mind-set in this regard.

A concomitant influence promoting innovation in the expression of Coloured identity stems from the abolition of apartheid and the advent of the democratic order having provided Coloured people with a degree of personal liberty and freedom of association never before enjoyed. One aspect of this newfound freedom is that people now have the option of expressing their social identities and ethnic preferences in any way they please. A few organic intellectuals within the community have, for example, sought to mobilize Coloured opinion primarily through an identification with a slave past, others are trying to reinvent a Khoisan ethnic identity, and yet others retreat into a laager of Coloured exclusivism. Some Coloured people have sought to promote an identification with Africa, others identify with various forms of rainbow nationalism, and a few adhere to an antiracist universalism. Since 1994, a motley marketplace with distinctly idiosyncratic elements has developed for ideas and movements related to Coloured identity. It includes the eccentric claims of “Chief” Joseph Little to the chieftainship of the Hamcumqua Khoi tribe; the suggestion that a “ganster party” be formed;⁴⁵ the emergence of the provocatively named Kleurling Weerstandbeweging (Coloured Resistance Movement),⁴⁶ which drew most of its support in the Coloured townships of Gauteng; and the solitary effort of maverick Peter Abrahams, who styles himself as “Instigator” of the Movement for the Expulsion of Non-Blacks. However, the majority of Coloured people, particularly within the working classes, have continued to adhere to a racialized conception of Colouredness, with strong affinities to whiteness and a defensive racism toward Africans that draws heavily on apartheid-style values. This new creativity in manifestations of Coloured identity is part of a wider flowering of cultural expression encouraged by the tolerant atmosphere of postapartheid South Africa that self-consciously celebrates racial and cultural diversity.

It is ironic that with the abolition of legally binding race classification, as enshrined in the Population Registration Act and other apartheid legislation,⁴⁷ Coloured identity has gained even greater salience in South African public life than it had in the latter phases of the apartheid era. Now that those who had forcibly been classified as Coloured are at liberty to identify socially and politically in whichever way they desire, the majority have chosen to emphasize their Colouredness, and many have done so in ways that are hostile to Africans and even, at times, flagrantly racist. Such anti-African sentiment has surfaced most strongly at election time, fanned by opposition party rhetoric and a voyeuristic press. The oft-heard dismissal of Nelson Mandela as “just another kaffir” during the first years of democratic rule captures the racially motivated contempt and alienation felt within large swaths of the Coloured working classes toward the new order. The subsequent emergence of the colloquial acronym JACK, an abbreviation for “just another confused Kaffir”—usually reserved for the scornful dismissal of prominent Africans, particularly politicians or government spokespeople—is an indication that these sentiments are still common.

A principal cause for Coloured dissatisfaction with the new order and thus an important determinant of the way the identity has found expression is that members of the Coloured community, especially the working classes, see themselves as having gained little, if any, tangible benefit from the new dispensation. Although the skilled and well-educated Coloured middle classes have profited from the extension of civil liberties and many have been able to take advantage of opportunities that have become available to formerly disadvantaged people through affirmative action and black economic empowerment initiatives, the Coloured working classes have been victims of jobless economic growth and an increasing desire among employers in the formal sector to hire Africans in order to have a more racially representative workforce. In the Western Cape, the unwinding of distortions caused by the Coloured Labour Preference Policy is not only affecting the Coloured community adversely but is also perceived to be the result of government policy unfairly advantaging Africans. Civil rights such as the franchise and freedoms of expression and association, which have clearly enhanced the lives of the Coloured middle classes, have meant little to their working-class counterparts, who remain mired in poverty and feel marginalized. Having the right to live where you want, marry whom you want, and send your children to the school of your choice is of little consequence to the laboring poor of the Coloured townships.

Furthermore, although large sections of the African poor have benefited from the provision of basic services such as electricity, sanitation, and running water since the mid-1990s, only a relatively small section of the Coloured proletariat has experienced any improvement in living standards that can be attributed to the coming of the new order. Because of Coloured people’s status of relative privilege under white domination, the apartheid regime had, by and large, provided these services to Coloured communities and in the sub-economic housing estates erected to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people relocated under the Group Areas Act. Very importantly, because social services and welfare payments have now been extended to the African masses that were neglected under apartheid, the benefits received by Coloureds have, in most cases, been diluted, dropping below the relatively privileged levels of the past. This has caused real hardship within the Coloured proletariat and is generally seen to be the result of inequitable government policies favoring Africans. Some have even chosen to interpret government policy in this regard as a way of punishing Coloured people for not supporting the ANC. Though such claims are clearly unfounded, they nevertheless feed Coloured suspicion of the ANC government, as well as resentment toward Africans in general.

Indeed, a very common perception within the Coloured working classes, as well as among elements within the lower-middle-income group, is that they are worse off under the new dispensation than they were under apartheid. They cite shrinking employment opportunities especially as a result of affirmative action, escalating crime, deteriorating social services, and the rapaciousness of corrupt government officials, among other reasons, to support the view that they were “better off under the white man.” There is a strong feeling that the Coloured people have traded one set of oppressors under apartheid for a larger, even more unscrupulous set of oppressors since 1994. Relying on apartheid-style reasoning, disaffected Coloured people often present themselves as victims of inherent racial traits of Africans, be it their propensity for violence, their innate corruptness, or their in-born tendency to favor their own kind. Award-winning Coloured actor Anthony Wilson recently captured popular sentiment within the Coloured community when he claimed that “the Boers stole, but at least they budgeted and did not steal everything. They stole the cream, but the darkies are stealing the cream, the milk and the bucket…. We [Coloureds] are being victimized. We are being turned into the new slaves of our country…. We swapped five million farmers for 34 million blacks [as our oppressors].”⁴⁸

Although it is all too easy to dismiss such negativity toward the new South Africa as a product of irrational racism, there is a growing body of evidence that the living standards of the Coloured proletariat have suffered significantly since the early 1990s. A study by Stellenbosch University economists Servaas van der Berg and Megan Louw found that even though the poverty headcount ratios of all other race groups declined between 1990 and 2000, only among Coloureds did it increase during that period.⁴⁹ Their growing impoverishment has manifested itself in various ways within the Coloured working class. Not surprisingly, more and more people in this social category have found it increasingly difficult to keep up with escalations in the cost of municipal services since apartheid-era subsidies were phased out and the ANC government implemented a policy of full cost recovery for such services. On the basis of a national survey conducted in collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council, David McDonald, director of the Development Studies Programme at Queens University, Canada, found that 20 percent of Coloured respondents were regularly unable to pay for basic services such as water and electricity and that many had suffered service cutoffs or even evictions as a result. Even people in lower-middle-income groups were not immune to service delivery cutoffs. Having committed a large slice of their income to mortagage or rent payments, they were unable to afford all the services they needed.⁵⁰ Another important indicator of social stress is that crime statistics show a hugely disproportionate rise in the homicide rate among Coloured people from the early 1990s onward. Recent studies claim that Coloured people are more than twice as likely to be murdered than people from other race groups. Although this is partly a legacy of the breakdown of communal and family bonds as a result of forced removals, the violence has been exacerbated in recent years by rising unemployment, increasing drug and alcohol abuse, and a growing prevalence of gangsterism and criminal activity in working-class Coloured areas.⁵¹ Whatever else one may read into these studies and statistics, it is clear that there is some material basis to Coloured people’s disenchantment with the new order and thus to their racial antagonisms toward Africans.

In the wake of the 1994 elections, a stereotype of Coloured people as being particularly prone to racist behavior has emerged. Given the continued prevalence of racial thinking and stereotyping and of interracial hostility between various groups in South African society, there is no justification for singling out Coloured people in this regard, and any suggestion that their attitude is somehow inherent is indefensible. What can be said, however, is that members of the Coloured community are highly sensitive to issues of race. This sensitivity emanates, first of all, from their marginality, which has made them vulnerable in a society in which race remains the primary form of social identification and therefore of social and political solidarity. Second, their intermediate position in the racial hierarchy has helped sharpen Coloured people’s awareness of racial issues that affect them both personally and as a group. It needs to be stressed, though, that Coloured racial hostility toward Africans is essentially defensive in nature and arises from their position of weakness and feelings of vulnerability. This is a key reason why these antagonisms have not yet erupted in a single instance of serious interracial violence perpetrated by Coloureds against Africans. This racial animosity has hitherto been restricted to the trading of verbal insults and at worst has resulted in tense standoffs over African squatter invasions of land that a particular Coloured community regarded as its own or over government allocation of housing to Africans to which Coloured people felt they had a prior claim.⁵²

Coloured feelings of marginality—and of betrayal among some disillusioned former supporters of the antiapartheid movement—have been deepened by a perceived loss of status in the new South Africa. Coloured people had enjoyed a position of relative privilege in the past, but many now regard Coloureds as the lowest in the pecking order of the new South Africa because the African-dominated government advantages its own racial constituency; meanwhile, whites, who continue to dominate the economy, increasingly favor Africans in order to ingratiate themselves with the political elite. Of course, this highly selective view ignores the impoverished mass of Africans and instead finds justification by focusing on high-profile African individuals and a rapidly growing and conspicuous African middle class. There can be little doubt that Coloured anxieties have been exacerbated by ongoing African racial chauvism toward Coloured people and an African triumphalism that, on occasion, emanates from within the ranks of the ANC itself. Coloured unease has also not been calmed by the shift in emphasis from reconciliation under the Mandela presidency to the more Africanist tone of Thabo Mbeki’s administration.⁵³

Perhaps the most fundamental reason why Coloured identity needs to be expressed in new forms is that the discrediting of racist ideologies and the abolition of apartheid have undermined the racial basis on which the identity has operated from the time of its late-nineteenthcentury genesis. Colouredness has always been constructed as a racial identity in the popular mind—and in much of academic writing, one might add—and was sustained by racist ideology. There can be little doubt that the driving force behind Coloured exclusivism under white rule was the promotion and protection of the relative privilege enjoyed by Coloured people in the South African racial hierarchy. Coloureds’ assertion of a separate identity was originally founded on their claim to higher social status and better treatment relative to Africans, since they were assimilated to Western culture and were partly descended from European colonists. Unable to win first prize of assimilating into the dominant society because of white racism, they laid claim to an intermediate status in the racial system, which in turn underpinned their espousal of a separate Coloured identity. By and large, the white supremacist state and the ruling establishment sanctioned this claim to relative privilege because it resonated strongly with the dominant society’s perception of what the social order should be, whether viewed as God-given or natural. Privileging Coloureds above Africans was also useful as part of a broader divide-and-rule strategy.

The precipitate change in the political and moral climate in which Colouredness has to operate in the new South Africa has been deeply disconcerting to many of the political, communal, and intellectual leaders of the Coloured community. These individuals have been wrestling with the unenviable problem of reorienting and rearticulating a profoundly racialized identity, a task complicated by a widely-held perception of Coloured complicity in maintaining white supremacy in the past. The new order, with its emphasis on multiculturalism, nation building, and the egalitarian values enshrined in its proudly progressive constitution, has invalidated what had all along been the principal strategy behind the espousal of a separate Coloured identity in white supremacist South Africa. With the Coloured community’s racially based claim to relative privilege no longer acceptable, there has been an urgent need for politicians, community leaders, and organic intellectuals to find a new basis for the espousal of the identity and new strategies for fostering Coloured group interests.

One possible response to the postapartheid situation has been the assertion of nonracism. The popularity of this option in its purist, antiracist form has declined markedly from its apogee in the heady days of the late 1980s, when the antiapartheid movement, most notably the UDF, had considerable success in promoting it to counter apartheid ideology. In the polarized world of apartheid South Africa, it was relatively easy to promote nonracism as an ideal. Fostering nonracism has become much more difficult in the postapartheid environment, where racial and ethnic identities have greater legitimacy and are a potent means for marshalling support. Despite the political correctness and rainbow rhetoric that veneers much of South African public life, the reality of racial politics in day-to-day living and the pervasiveness of racial forms of thinking have made nonracism an impractical option for those seeking to mobilize a popular following. In the new South Africa, the terrain of antiracism appears largely to have been abandoned to intellectuals and to some former antiapartheid activists who continue to reject Colouredness as a form of false consciousness or white-imposed identification.⁵⁴

Since the reality of Coloured identity cannot be wished away or ignored in the political arena or other areas of public life, a more practical alternative to the strictly nonracial position has become necessary for those hoping to steer expressions of Coloured identity in a more progressive direction. The most common response in this regard has been for organic intellectuals, community leaders, and activists within the Coloured community to espouse a rainbowist position that accepts the reality of racial and ethnic distinctions and their identity as Coloured but embraces the multiculturalist precepts that all communities be accorded respect and receive equal treatment. Support of the ANC, generally viewed as the most representative and progressive party, appears to be the most popular political option among those who have adopted this stance.

An early example of an attempt to affirm Coloured identity and realign it within a progressive, multiculturalist framework is provided by the December 1st Movement that came into being in Cape Town in the latter months of 1996. The movement, which drew its name from the freeing of slaves on 1 December 1834, sought to invigorate a despondent and disunited Coloured community by kindling within it an identification with a common slave past. Finding little resonance among the mass of Coloured people and widely criticized for fostering Coloured separatism, the movement was allowed to lapse after its first commemorative gathering on 1 December 1996. This initiative foundered on the contradiction of its desire to maintain a politically progressive approach while mobilizing under the aegis of a discredited racial identity.⁵⁵ A personal and more subtle attempt to come to terms with the racial baggage of Coloured identity is furnished by Zimitri Erasmus’s introduction to the edited collection of essays Coloured by History, Shaped by Place, published in 2001. Erasmus argues that the only way to rupture the racialized modes of thought in which the identity is mired is to confront the reality of Coloured racism and its complicity with white supremacism head on. Any form of denial or resort to essentialist notions of identity, as has been the case since the advent of democracy, will only perpetuate Coloured marginality and discomfort with the new dispensation. Most important, not only the Coloured community but also the whole of South African society will need to develop a new mind-set and a new kind of “reflexive political practice” to relieve itself of the burden of the apartheid past. According to Erasmus all South Africans need to recognize “racist sentiments and practices as part of our everyday reality and the shaping of all our selves” and Coloured identity as part of a “shifting texture of broader black experience.”⁵⁶

For the greater majority of Coloured people, however, there are serious drawbacks to broadly South Africanist approaches of the sort proposed by Erasmus or the December 1st Movement. For many, racial thinking is so deeply entrenched that racially unifying approaches to politics or intergroup relations are automatically discounted as unrealistic or even delusional. Because of continued and deep-seated antipathy toward Africans within the Coloured community and perceptions of being victimized by an African-dominated government, South African political and economic life is seen as necessarily adversarial, with cleavages drawn along racial lines. Even among those who profess to subscribe to multicultural values, there is a fear that Coloured interests and needs will be overlooked within any broadly South Africanist or nonracial approach. Indeed, for many, the marginalization of Coloured people in the new South Africa is already a reality. Rainbow nationalism has proven to be an arid ideology that is long on rhetoric but short on practical solutions to racially defined problems of South African political life. It has already become something of a cliché among Coloured people to dismiss rainbowism with the protestation that “there is no brown in the rainbow.”

Under these circumstances, one might have expected Coloured separatism to have had strong appeal and for some organization or movement professing Coloured exclusivist ideals to have gained widespread popularity. The reality is that initiatives such as the Kleurling Weerstandbeweging, the Brown Nationalist Front, the Brown Democratic Party, and the Coloured Forum have remained completely marginal or have existed in name only. The only separatist movement to have struck a chord within the Coloured community—and a relatively feeble one at that—is Khoisan revivalism, the first prominent example being the 1994 decision of the Pan Africanist Congress’ former secretary-general, Benny Alexander, to renounce his conventional name in favor of Khoisan X. The revivalist movement reached its apogee when over 440 delegates representing 36 Khoisan communities and organizations came together at the National Khoisan Consultative Conference in Oudtshoorn between 29 March and 1 April 2001. Since then, however, the movement has found scant support among the mass of Coloured people, and there has been little evidence of formal organization between various Khoisan groupings. Apart from the small number of people, largely in the Northern Cape, who have always regarded themselves as being of Khoisan descent, manifestations of Khoisan identity have been episodic and mainly in evidence on festive and symbolic occasions, such as Heritage Day celebrations and on the return of the remains of Sarah Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus, from the Musée de l’Homme in Paris where her remains had been on display for the greater part of two centuries.

Khoisan revivalism is a movement only in the broadest sense of the term, as a profusion of groups and individuals with a variety of agendas have claimed Khoisan identity since the mid-1990s. There also appears to be a good deal of mutual antagonism between various revivalist groups and self-proclaimed leaders, or “chiefs,” who vie with each other for recognition and ascendancy. Khoisan revivalism is, in essence, both exclusionist and Coloured rejectionist. It is rejectionist in that Khoisan identity is proudly affirmed as an authentic culture of ancient pedigree in place of Colouredness, which is repudiated as the colonizer’s perverted caricature of the colonized. It is exclusionist in that the Khoisans’ claim to being the true indigenes of South Africa, even when not articulated as a demand for first-nation status, nevertheless represents a new argument for a position of relative privilege. It is exclusionist in another sense as well, in that at the Khoisan Consultative Conference, there was general agreement that Muslims and Malays did not qualify as being Khoisan.⁵⁷

The overall sense one has regarding Coloured identity in the new South Africa is one of fragmentation, uncertainty, and confusion. For the greater part of its existence, Coloured identity was accepted as given by its bearers, and in the latter phases of the apartheid era, the emergence of a rejectionist movement created a schism between those who accepted and those who eschewed it. But the new South Africa has witnessed the emergence of a wide spectrum of positions on the nature of Colouredness and a plethora of initiatives to change or influence the ways in which it is expressed. Such attempts have thus far failed to have much of a popular impact because they lack resonance with the Coloured masses and are driven by small groups of intellectuals and community activists with limited influence. The evidence indicates that many people who have gone beyond simply accepting racial categories as given are wrestling with questions about the extent to which they should express their identity as black, as African, as South African, as Coloured, as Khoisan, as descendants of slaves or whether they should make a stand on the principle of nonracism. There is often confusion about whether Colouredness is inherent or imposed from outside, whether it is something negative to be discarded or something positive to be embraced and affirmed. Today, Coloured identity remains in flux and is experiencing a degree of change unparalleled since its emergence in the late nineteenth century.