Definition of ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘Coloured’, ‘Indian’ and other groups as used in the text
In 1993 South Africa’s population was guestimated to be 41 million, of whom 76 per cent were black, 13 per cent white, 8.5 per cent Coloured and 2.5 per cent Indian.
It is politically correct to describe as ‘black’ all South Africans who are not white. This usage is understandable, in reaction to the Population Registration Act and all that went with it, yet for the sake of clarity I have eschewed it. South Africa’s Indian citizens are South Africans as the white citizens are South Africans. But they are not blacks. Nor are the Cape Coloureds, to whom I refer as ‘Coloureds’. Their ancestry is no more than one-third African, the other components being Asian and European. The Griquas are also mixed, the result of Boer/San or Boer/Khoikhoi interbreeding in centuries past. The copper-skinned San (or Bushmen) and Khoikhoi (or Hottentots) were the original inhabitants of the southern regions of Africa, and the only inhabitants of the Cape and its hinterland when the first Dutch settlers arrived in 1652.
In general, South Africa’s whites are either Afrikaners (formerly known as Boers) or English-speakers. Afrikaners are descended from the earliest European settlers: Dutch, French Huguenot, German. Most English-speakers are descended from the British who settled in the Cape Colony and Natal in the nineteenth century. However, this category by now includes Jews from Russia and Central Europe, southern Europeans who were encouraged to migrate – to increase the white population – during the 1950s, and some 150,000 Portuguese ‘refugees’ from Angola and Mozambique who were welcomed by the apartheid state when their degenerate ‘empire’ abruptly collapsed in 1974.
I have revived the obsolete term ‘Boer’ to describe Afrikaner farmers, a dwindling breed for many of whom I developed – much to my surprise – a great affection. The urbanized Afrikaners are very different from their rural cousins; the use of ‘Boer’ (which simply means ‘farmer’) is my way of emphasizing the difference.
Another difference in need of emphasizing is that between South Africa’s so-called Communists and all other Communists. The apartheid regime, set up at the start of the Cold War, immediately jumped on the West’s anti-Communist bandwagon. For the next forty-five years many opponents of apartheid, however impeccable their Christian/liberal/capitalist credentials, were defined as ‘Communists’ and treated as criminals.
Glossary
Acronyms are usually spelled out in full on first mention. All are listed in the Glossary, as are Afrikaans and other local words.