Tonight - Nov 20
presented by Cape Cultural Collective featuring Jitsvinger; Colony; Isaac Sikhakhane; Paula Akugizibwe; Khadija Heeger; Hannah Botsis; Baystars Entertainers; Ihlumelo Youth Organisation; Rustum August; Kurt Langeveld; Melody Shevlane; Nadia Petersen; Ikapa Dance Theatre; The Generics; Bienvenue Mambote & Sibhonda Wood
at the District Six Museum, 25A Buitenkant St, CBD. 7pm. Tel: 021 466 7200.
“It is my view that those who continue to call themselves ‘Afrikaners’ must realise the only way this sub-national identity could ever be accepted by all South Africans is if it were to be stripped of its anti-black historical baggage and rebuilt on the essential theme of anti-imperialism in which it was constructed as a conscious strategy…. Afrikaans, the language, does not belong to the Afrikaner; it belongs to all who speak it, especially mother tongue speakers.”
The birth of the white Afrikaner nationalist movement was marked by the establishment of Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) in 1875. This was some 200 odd years after the language had been evolving as a bridging language amongst the European, mainly Dutch settlers, and the imported Malay, Indonesian and Malagasi slave population, as well as the local indigenous Khoi and Hottentot populations. At the start there was some resistance to the establishment of GRA from both English and Dutch speaking settlers, the latter taking particular offense to the abandonment of high Dutch as an official language as they considered Afrikaans to be a ‘hotnotstaal‘ - a ‘pidgin language’ reserved for communicating with the slaves and the lower classes.
There is a side to the Afrikaans language, the creole birth and coloured connection that has been overlooked in our collective South African consciousness. While the Dutch heritage cannot ever be denied in Afrikaans, it must be acknowledged that it was also shaped and molded by the influences of the Khoi and Malay slaves. An immense amount of research exists by scholars like Vernie February and Achmat Dawids on the specific contributions of early inhabitants of the Cape to the development of what we generally don’t know as Afrikaans. Important facts, such as the first Afrikaans school ever established was at a madrassa at 37 Dorpstraat in 1806, and that the first books ever written in Afrikaans were transcriptions of the Koran, one of the best examples is Uiteensetting van die Godsdiens, by a Kurdish imam, Abu Bakr Effendi in 1869.
The role of indigenous cultures and the slave population in forging the Afrikaans language has generally been excluded from our history books. The Apartheid era not only historically excluded brown Afrikaners, but also left the language with the stigma of being used as a tool of oppression by the former white minority regime. This has compounded the identity of brown Afrikaans speakers who to some degree are historically dispossessed from their own language.
Mohamed Adhikari. Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community. Africa Series. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. xvii + 252 pp. $24.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-89680-244-5.
Reviewed by Sean H. Jacobs (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Published on H-SAfrica (May, 2007)
Coloured Categories
What are “Coloureds”? For most South Africans and others familiar with South Africa the answer will be “people of mixed race.” This invocation of “mixing” inevitably links to a racial binary that relies on two opposing and ossified (primordial) identities of black and white. Linked to this view is of course the persistence of the stereotype of “tragic mulattoes”–long a trope in South African writing–in which the “products of miscegenation” can never be “true” South Africans. These were the views of apartheid’s planners and retain their resonance for most South Africans today, including many whom self-identify as Coloured.[1]
Mohamed Adhikari’s work attempts a corrective to this kind of de-contextualized portrayal and assessment of Coloured politics and identity. In Not White Enough, Not Black Enough–a slim volume of 187 pages–Adhikari attempts to place Colouredness as a product, not of any biological process such as “mixture,” but rather as one of the politics of the last century or so. For him, Coloured identity is, in fact, both a product of apartheid category-making and of vigorous identity-building on the part of Coloured political actors themselves. That is, Adhikari also targets attempts to “do away” with Coloured identity, as by proclaiming it a species of false consciousness. The book’s main focus is on attempts by Coloureds themselves to construct identity and history. While much of the material he covers is useful and interesting, it is not clear that Adhikari has quite managed to get out from under the weight of inherited categories and analytic frames in quite the way he sets out to do.
Coloureds make up 4.1 million of South Africa’s 46.9 million people.[2] Mostly working class and concentrated in (but not restricted to) the Western Cape Province (where they comprise 53.9 percent of the total population) and the more rural Northern Cape, they, along with Africans–despite some changes at the apex of the class pyramid–account for most of South Africa’s urban and rural poor.
Renewed interest by academics and journalists in Coloured identity and politics was triggered by the results of the inaugural democratic elections in 1994.[3] In those elections, the votes of a plurality of Coloureds (alongside the majority of whites) ensured that the National Party (NP)–the party of apartheid–won the right to govern the Western Cape. The result also secured for the NP a prominent position in the first “government of national unity” with F. W. de Klerk as one of two deputy-presidents and prevented the African National Congress (ANC) from gaining a two-thirds electoral majority nationally.
But during the next two election cycles–1999 and 2004–the ANC first ousted the NP and then consolidated its hold over the Western Cape provincial government, with the help of Coloured voters. It might be true that lower turnout among Coloureds as well as an expanding African population in the province had much to do with the latter two election results. But growing support for the ANC among more rural-based Coloureds and the actions of a range of Coloured politicians who abandoned the NP for the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA), also clearly had significant effects on the respective outcomes. That the NP would eventually disband in 2005 was also largely hastened by these developments.
Since then Coloured voters have been central to the resurgence of the increasingly right-wing DA (the DA is erroneously labeled as “liberal” in South Africa, a relic of its position relative to the NP within a very limited white public discourse under apartheid). While the DA is largely led by whites, Coloured support is central to its newfound dominance in controlling the more significant local government administrations (such as the Cape Town metropolitan city council) in the Western Cape.
Throughout this period most observers wondered why in contrast with other “races” in South Africa among whom post-apartheid voting patterns are more “stable,” Coloured voting patterns are so unpredictable: For much of the twentieth century–when Coloured identity solidified–the most visible political organizations, either led by Coloureds or with significant Coloured membership or support, were either closely aligned or identified with broader black resistance. They are well covered by Adhikari. These included the African Political Organisation or APO (during the first half of the twentieth century), the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union or ICWU (the 1920s and 1930s), Non-European Unity Movement (1940s), South African Coloured People’s Organisation or SACPO (mid-1950s until it was banned in 1960), the Black Consciousness Movement (in its original incarnation in the 1970s), and the United Democratic Front or UDF (1983-1990).
Of these the APO, NEUM and SACPO were either exclusive to or dominated by Coloureds, the Black Consciousness Movement had a number of Coloureds in key leadership positions, and Coloured activists and communities were central to the formation of the UDF, the mainstay of anti-apartheid opposition in the 1980s in the absence of the long-banned ANC. Coloured communities were especially central to the success of the UDF’s various rent and service boycotts and school disruptions. The largely Coloured textile worker base was also behind the growing worker militancy at the heart of the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions in 1985. The ANC (and some observers) thus seemed justified in expecting overwhelming Coloured support for the organization in 1994.
One explanation for post-1994 Coloured political behavior lies in the different regimes of domination that the colonial and apartheid regimes maintained for its subject “races;” regimes that in turn highlighted and cemented differences in the way people experienced apartheid oppression or enjoyed degrees of “relative privilege.” (The term “privilege” should be used cautiously, however; relative oppression might be more apt.)
In 1948, when the NP came into power on its electoral platform of Apartheid, it quickly introduced a slew of laws on residential segregation, classifying of the “races,” employment, and education. For some Coloured elites it meant that the limited franchise rights they enjoyed (as a function of property ownership), were now abolished. The Group Areas Act that enforced residential segregation had profound effects on the city life of Coloureds. However, in contrast to Africans, Coloureds were never subject to the system of pass books, nor deported to “homelands.” Significantly, the Western Cape was declared a “Coloured Labour Preference Area” meaning basically that in the absence of white job candidates, Coloureds would be considered to the exclusion of Africans.
In the wake of its “self-determination” policy (that introduced the “independent states” model for Africans in the 1960s), the NP government established a Coloured Representative Council in 1968. In the 1980s, the NP regime eager to maintain apartheid by other means, worked with some success to co-opt more moderate Coloured leaders (mainly clergy, traders and teachers) to legitimize its 1983 “Constitutional reforms” (alongside its ever-expanding security state). These reforms established separate “houses of parliament” for whites, Coloureds, and Indians. Whites would retain control over “national” affairs such as defense, finance and foreign policy, while Coloureds (and Indians) would retain “control” over “own affairs” such as education, health, and social welfare. However, whites could override any decisions of the two other houses even on the latter set of issues. Africans were excluded from these reforms.
The reforms were rejected by the majority of Coloureds and “Coloured elections” for the House of Representatives (as the Coloured chamber was named), drew average polls of less than 20 percent of registered voters in 1983 and in 1989. But significantly, Coloured organizations that emerged in the wake of the reforms provided a crucial basis for the later political organization in Coloured areas by the NP.
A second explanation for recent Coloured political behavior and identity traces it to the transition of the early 1990s, a period that would witness the fundamental reordering of South Africa’s political landscape. Then the major political actors–both the ANC and the NP–openly courted Coloureds as Coloureds; not as so-called Coloureds. (For a long time being Coloured was associated with stigma both by whites and blacks, including Coloureds themselves, hence the prefix “so-called”).
The NP, led by an invigorated De Klerk (soon to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and aided by white commentators in the media, began to play up the supposed close affinity of whites (especially Afrikaners) with Coloureds. This was of course totally at odds with the public ideology and policies of the NP for much of the preceding fifty years. But it proved effective nonetheless as De Klerk “apologized” for apartheid and the NP emphasized its Christian roots, something that played well with a large section of the Coloured community. Finally, the NP also played on fears that working-class Coloureds had of competition from Africans for dwindling resources.
The ANC, in the wake of its unbanning, also tried “Coloured politics,” but with less success. Mandela famously publicly re-introduced the idea of “four races” (at the center of antiapartheid politics in the 1950s) and of “Coloured ethnicity” into the ANC’s lexicon. As Adhikari reports, around the same time, however, Winnie Mandela, still then a very senior figure in the organization, commented that Coloured people are the result of white men raping black women (p. 28). The NP and conservative Coloured leaders pounced on this gaffe as a sign of the ANC’s insincerity to Coloureds, and ANC activists had a hard time defending the outburst. More generally the ANC appeared either unable to counter the NP’s very effective propaganda or unaware of its importance.
Despite the evident power of these top-down explanations, Adhikari’s study of Coloured identity tries to show them insufficient to make sense of Coloured racial and political identity both under apartheid and particularly since 1994. A former high-school teacher (he taught in the Bonteheuwel Coloured township on the Cape Flats in the 1970s), Adhikari spent his recent work-life affiliated to the University of Cape Town. Currently he is an associate professor in historical studies at that university. The bulk of his research and publishing has revolved around documenting the history of progressive, mainly anti-colonial and anti-apartheid Coloured politics in the first half of the twentieth century in Cape Town, and includes studies of the APO and its leader Abdullah Abdurahman, along with the Teacher’s League of South Africa (TLSA) and the NEUM.
The central thesis of the present book is that Coloured political identity must be understood in light of four “enduring characteristics rooted in the historical experience and social situation of the Coloured community that regulated the way Colouredness functioned as a social identity under white domination.” These include an assimilationist tendency, with the goal of acceptance into the dominant society; the intermediate status of Coloureds in the racial hierarchy, which raised fears that that they might “lose their position of relative privilege and be relegated to the status of Africans”; the shame associated with “mixed” origins; and finally, political marginalization, “which caused them a great deal of frustration.” For Adhikari, Coloureds’ marginal status is the most important of these attributes “as it placed severe limitations on possibilities for social and political action” (p. xii).
Not White Enough, Not Black Enough consists of four sets of case studies, prefaced by a review of writing by Coloureds that is supposed to represent “the entire historical spectrum of opinion” (p. 64). Adhikari classifies these works into three broad categories or “contending historiographical paradigms.” The first of these is the “essentialist school” that associates Coloured identity with miscegenation going back to the earliest days of European settlement. This is an inherently racialized approach, assigning racial origins and characteristics to Colouredness. Much of popular writing and earlier academic writing is cast in this mold. The second approach to Colouredness is “instrumentalist.” Broadly, this tendency regards Coloured identity as artificial, imposed by the white state in a deliberate attempt to divide and rule the black majority.
A third approach is “social constructionism,” with which, not surprisingly, Adhikari identifies himself. Emerging in the 1980s as a response to the first two “paradigms,” social constructionism “criticizes both these approaches for their tendency to accept coloured identity as given and to portray it as fixed.” In reifying identity, Adhikari argues, the first two approaches fail to “recognize fluidities in processes of coloured self-identification or ambiguities in the expression of the identity.” Essentialists are blinded by their Eurocentrism and/or racism, while instrumentalists narrowly focus on Coloured protest politics in a way that exaggerates “the resistance of coloured people to white supremacism and plays down their accommodation with the South African racial system.” According to Adhikari, “the overall result has been an oversimplification of the phenomenon [of coloured identity]” (p. 35).
Adhikari reviews the small body of book-length studies of Coloured identity produced by Coloureds between 1936 (when two Coloured teachers, Dorothy Viljoen and Christian Viljoen, published a history textbook, The Student Teacher’s History Course: For the Use in Coloured Training Colleges) and 1994 (when Roy de Pre, a historian then based at the University of Transkei, published his Separate, But Unequal: The Coloured People of South Africa_). For Adhikari, all these books exhibit traces of both essentialist and instrumental understandings of Colouredness.
To contrast this “oversimplification,” Adhikari constructs his own account based on the journalistic and literary production by Coloureds in the twentieth century. He begins with a combined study of the APO Newsletter (started in 1902) and the Education Journal, the publication of the TLSA. Neither organization organized for broader black political demands, instead insisting on working for Coloured demands only, at the same time reflecting and fostered an acceptance of the racial order among the Coloured petty bourgeoisie.
Next comes the Torch newspaper published by the NEUM between 1943 and 1963 and the writings of the novelist and ANC political activist Alex La Guma (basically a close reading of his novel A Walk in the Night [1962]). These are examined as examples of the main Communist and Trotskyist strands of the “radical movement” among Coloureds in the mid-20th century. This is followed by a textual analysis of on the one hand, the work of the Cape Town poet and publisher James Matthews, a fairly prominent figure in the black consciousness movement during the 1970s and the popular resistance of the 1980s, and on the other, the “alternative” newspapers Grassroots and South, published in Cape Town throughout the 1980s until 1994 by a mainly Coloured and UDF-affiliated editorial staff.
While all of these individuals and publications explicitly rejected Coloured identity and racial categories more generally, Adhikari argues that they, too, share essentialist assumptions. For him, this illustrates an essential “stability” of Coloured identity in the twentieth century.
The final chapter is an evaluation of the post-apartheid period. This contains probably the most interesting parts of the book as not much useful work has been written by academics about Coloured identity after apartheid. Adhikari lists some of the movements and tendencies that have emerged since 1994–from the right-wing Coloured Liberation Movement, a Khoisan “Revivalist” Movement (whose members premise their claims for rights on a primordial link to the first inhabitants of modern-day South Africa) to the ANC-derived December First Movement, among others.
This book has much going for it. Its “counterintuitive argument” that Coloured identity was stable (rather than evolved gradually over time or changed abruptly) is not original (it is a common refrain among some activists and political operatives), but is certainly bold as a scholarly argument. So is Adhikari’s use of a range of texts and approaches from content analysis and literary approaches. The same can be said for the book’s broad historical sweep–an approach absent in most studies of identity in South Africa.
However, the easy categorizations into which he slots Coloured writing and writing on Colouredness may be due at least in part to a bias in his selection of texts to examine. For example, it is not entirely clear what Adhikari wanted to achieve with his review of “historical writing.” For one, judging a teacher’s training manual, partisan newsletters and pamphlets, novels as well as a smattering of mostly obscure monographs, by a seemingly narrow set of historical criteria seems odd. Also, this reader at least, remains unconvinced that these texts represent the “entire ideological spectrum of opinion within the coloured community on the nature of coloured identity,” or even a representative sample. For example, one of the texts he cites, a political science dissertation published in Canada by expatriate Maurice Hommel, was certainly never widely available inside or outside South Africa and as such could not have much impact on debates about Coloured identity and politics.
Adhikari’s literature review also omits some important works, most notably Vernon February’s incisive study of Afrikaans literature and Coloureds, Mind Your Colour: The Coloured Stereotype in South African Literature (1981).
With the exception of the APO Newsletter, and the more recent Grassroots and South, the bulk of Adhikari’s case studies are about publications and individuals, whose work–despite its wide reach among elites and outside the country–were in fact very marginal to what Adhikari is concerned with here: Coloured public discourse (if such a public sphere can be said to exist).
Harassed and hounded by the apartheid regime, Alex La Guma, for example, spent the bulk of his most productive years in enforced exile outside South Africa–apart from his vocation as a writer, he was longtime ANC representative in the Caribbean. His writings were banned inside the country, and as a result were neither easily attainable nor widely read, even less so among Coloured elites. In fact, as Adhikari’s discussion of La Guma demonstrates, his work had a much greater international impact as a “third world” or continental writer and intellectual. Similarly James Matthews, a more popular figure than La Guma inside South Africa, had a more limited impact among Coloureds than Adhikari would want us believe. In Matthews’ case, talent did not necessarily translate into influence. When poetry reached that genre’s most popular phase (at political rallies in the 1980s), Matthews was already winding down his career. Matthews’ work enjoyed a brief revival after apartheid, but cannot necessarily be treated as representative.
Adhikari, to his detriment, focuses mainly on intellectual work done in English and Coloured communities based in the Western Cape. This may hold for intellectual life before the Second World War, but is less convincing for the period after 1960, when writers such as S. V. Peterson, P. J. Philander and Adam Small, writing mainly in Afrikaans, had a much larger impact on popular Coloured consciousness and intellectual politics than either La Guma or Matthews could ever achieve, and which receives no attention from Adhikari. (February covered this ground excellently in his book Mind Your Colour.)
A poet and playwright, Small was one of the first black faculty members of the University of the Western Cape, where he taught first philosophy and later social work. In both his written work–written in the Afrikaans spoken in working-class Coloured neighborhoods in Cape Town (what Small coined “Kaaps”)–and political activism, he maintained an ambiguous relationship to both the official Afrikaans literature establishment and the black consciousness movement. The important thing to note about Small is that because his work was prescribed in Coloured schools, his opinions appeared in newspapers, and his plays (which explicitly dealt with Coloured identity and politics) were widely performed in venues in the townships, he had significant impact on political ideas and consciousness among Coloureds.[4]
Similarly, no mention is made of the “Alternatiewe Afrikaans” movement of a younger generation of Coloured language teachers and writer-activists (as distinct from the cultural movement among young white Afrikaners in the mid-1980s), who in the wake of the 1976 student uprising (caused directly by the state’s policy to enforce Afrikaans as a language of instruction in African schools) sought to divorce their first language from its association with the oppressor,[5] but also to present new interpretations of Coloured identity and history.[6] This line of thinking had wide resonance in the fairly moderate Cape Teacher’s Professional Organisation (that had replaced the TLSA as the premier organization of Coloured teachers) led by Franklin Sonn (later the first black ambassador of South Africa to the United States) or the later, more outspokenly ANC-orientated South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (through its leader Randall van den Heever, a school principal in Cape Town and later ANC member of Parliament). The Alternatiewe Afrikaans movement had a major impact on the teaching of Afrikaans in Coloured schools, particularly in the Western Cape (p. 7). Alongside this group one could also mention the establishment and success of the Swart Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging (the Black Afrikaans Writers’ Association), led by writers with links to popular movements and trade unions such as Leonard Koza and the late Patrick Peterson in the late 1980s .
Also given short shrift is the impact of religious institutions in forming political identity among Coloureds. Along with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, with its overt opposition to apartheid, the Dutch Reform Mission Church (”the Sendingkerk”) had considerable influence among Coloureds, maintaining high membership levels among Coloureds throughout apartheid and after. What impact the “Sendingkerk,” or other more conservative churches such as the growing evangelical movement or the Apostolic sect had on Coloured identity still needs to be explored by scholars.
Adhikari includes case studies of newspapers, but by any criteria all the newspapers or newsletters that he cites (with the exception of the APO Newsletter) were hardly at the center of Coloured political life. There is no substantive discussion of newspapers with a bigger impact under apartheid such as the Cape Herald published by the Argus Group (at the time, part of the mining corporation Anglo-American) or the Afrikaans-language Rapport-Ekstra and Die Burger-Ekstra, published as racially exclusive editions by the Nasionale Pers group, which were closely allied to the National Party.
Both these sets of newspapers, despite their compromised ownership, were widely read by Coloureds since the 1970s, much more than the newspapers Adhikari focuses on. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the main (whites-only) editorial and news sections of Rapport or Die Burger covered white news and its editors supported extreme segregation or the policies of successive NP governments, while at the same time the separate edition for Coloureds often reflected various positions of left (including the leading Charterist and Trotskyist opposition to apartheid) opposition groups.
Moreover, a strange logic underlies Adhikari’s assessment of the APO Newsletter through to the newspapers South and Grassroots as well as what he considers the leading Coloured intellectuals of that time. Adhikari works with the idea that confronting racism as a Coloured in a social setting that demands, even more so forces you to do so, is in some ways an acceptance of a conservative Coloured identity and therefore of the South African racial hierarchy. So for example, when discussing La Guma he claims that because La Guma “appealed to people’s identity as Coloured to mobilize resistance to apartheid and had no qualms about being an officer of an organization, SACPO, that explicitly identified itself as Coloured,” there can be little doubt that La Guma identified himself as Coloured and “accepted Coloured identity as given” (p. 123). Apart from being an oversimplified view of La Guma’s politics, there is no clear evidence for this charge–in fact Adhikari writes in the same section that “this is never made explicit in A Walk in the Night.” We just have to trust Adhikari’s judgment. Similarly, in the case of the news weekly South, he argues that because the newspaper’s founders claimed their main objective was “to articulate the needs and aspirations of the oppressed and exploited in the Cape and in so doing serve the interests of the working-class people,” there was therefore “no question of South identifying itself as a Coloured newspaper or following a narrowly racial agenda” (p. 150). He writes about James Matthews in the same vein.
Before World War Two Coloured political life, with few exceptions, was largely limited to a few “elite” families, schools, trade unions, teacher training colleges and neighborhoods around the center of Cape Town. This is the terrain that is covered well by Adhikari for the first half of this book and in his previous work. But that pre-eminence ended after the mid-1950s and early 1960s. As a result of a number of factors, migration, urbanization, greater access to education, and political factors as diverse as the emergence of Black Consciousness and the establishment of the Coloured Representative Council, resulted in Coloured intellectual and identity politics–up to then highly centralized–becoming more dispersed and reorganized in the process.
In the aftermath of the state’s clampdown on popular movements and intellectual and resistance political culture in the mid- to late 1950s and early 1960s, many of the movements associated with Coloured political action were decimated with activists forced into exile, house arrest, or either intimidated or simply discouraged enough to leave politics behind. New faces and organizations emerged often to take their place, with the result of multiple centers of Coloured identity formation over time.
So for example, much of the impetus for the reactionary politics of the Labour Party that entered the Tricameral Parliament in 1983 came from politicians and leaders based in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng. Resistance politics in the Western Cape came increasingly from the “Cape Flats,” to where most Coloureds were forcefully removed from the mid-1950s onwards. On the flats, “rejectionism” had to vie with radical youth politics, either closely allied to the remnants of the Trotskyists and the black consciousness movement on the one hand, or on the other hand the ANC’s internal ally, the UDF.
Since the early 1970s Coloured resistance politics and intellectualism came from mainly Afrikaans-speaking, formerly rural Coloureds who had come to Cape Town for education–among them university students and professors–as well as unionists allied to the Congress of South African Trade Unions. These people’s politics were not always explicitly Coloured nor did they necessarily revolve around Coloured identity, but they were deeply concerned with the social, economic, and political conditions of this part of the population. (They include people such as Jakes Gerwel, at the time an Afrikaans professor and later president of the University of the Western Cape; Allan Boesak, a leading cleric; the trade unionist Johnny Issel, and the activist-intellectuals of the Call of Islam).
Finally, in writing of more recent political events and the present, Adhikari rightly points to the fact that the UDF’s relationship to Coloured people has been romanticized, but he does not offer an alternative account. He does not engage with the utterances or writings of those figures who were at the initially doomed foray into the tricameral parliament, but who because of clever politics would become central to post-apartheid power politics in the Western Cape and elsewhere after apartheid. These include Peter Marais, who served both as Premier of the Western Cape and later as Mayor of Cape Town. The same goes nationally for Allan Hendrickse, who would in a long political life, be associated with both the black consciousness movement and later with the recently deceased apartheid dictator P. W. Botha. On the one hand, he was at the lead of the Labour Party as it made compromises with the NP government, while later he would broker the Labour Party’s partial restoration under the ANC. Also problematic is the fact that many of the organizations Adhikari writes about–the December the First Movement or the Khoisan Resistance Movement–had more or less disintegrated at least four years before the book’s 2003 publication date. Which is perhaps why–oddly, given the emphasis on “stability” throughout the book–Adhikari argues on the last two pages of the book that Coloured identity is characterized by “fragmentation, uncertainty, and confusion” (p. 186), “remain[ing] in flux” as well as “experiencing a degree of change unparalleled since its emergence in the late nineteenth century” (p. 187).
Notes
[1]. See Gomolemo Mokae, Robert McBride: A Coloured Life (South Africa History Online and Vista University, 2004). In the foreword to this biography of a leading African National Congress (ANC) guerrilla and former death-row inmate, the newspaper columnist Sipho Seepe wrote: “Would the so-called Coloured people ever find an accommodation in South Africa?” Seepe followed the book’s author, Gomolemo Mokae (at one time a leading Black Consciousness activist under apartheid), who later speculates that McBride’s decision to join the ANC’s military wing and some of his subsequent political choices were for the most part influenced by his desire “to be blacker than black.”
[2]. According to the official statistical service, Statistics South Africa (see South African Yearbook 2006, p. 2). The yearbook also reports that according to the last official census in 2003, Coloureds make up 8.9 percent of South Africa’s 44.8 million people.
[3]. Some of the more lasting works on Coloured identity, apart from the ones referenced in this review, include Ian Goldin, The Politics and Economics of Making Coloured Identity in South Africa (London: Longman, 1987); Gavin Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African “Coloured” Politics (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987); and Zoe Wicomb, “Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa” in Writing South Africa, ed. David Attridge and Rosemary Jolly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). More recently published is Zimitri Erasmus, ed., Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town (Cape Town: Kwela Books; South African History Online, 2001).
[4]. For more on Small, see Steward van Wyk, “Die Groot Small–oor die lewe en werk van Adam Small,” Woordfees, March 7, 2006.
[5]. Zoe Wicomb, “Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa,” Woordfees, March 7, 2006.
[6]. See Randall van den Heever, ed., Tree na Vryheid: ‘n Studie in Alternatiewe Afrikaans (Kasselsvlei: CPTA, 1987).
this review first appeared here
Picture a society where men, women and children were bought, mortgaged, sold, transferred, bequeathed, or rented out as commodities. Such was the situation at the Cape in the early 1800s for those that were born into bondage or captured to become slaves.
In the 1820s a Cape Town newspaper called the South African Chronicle and Mercantile Advertiser carried English and Dutch adver¬tisements for items as diverse as ponies, properties, casks of butter, flannel shirts, tallow candles, hymn books - and slaves. The columns for 1825 and 1826 provide a taste of what it was like to be a human chattel.
Adverts.JPG
Mrs Sleigh informs the public that among her slaves who are to be sold, she can recommend to any genteel English or Dutch family, two African female slaves: one named Martha (good tempered), aged 23, who is a capital nurse[maid], milliner, lady’s maid, pleats and irons well, and can do housework in general; the other, named Lea (good tempered, and perfectly white), who is a wet nurse, with three fine children, the eldest seven years old. She is also a capital nurse[maid], lady’s maid, milliner, laundress, and can do house work in general; both are cooks. They have excellent characters, and having served Mrs Sleigh attentively and obediently, it is hoped they may be disposed of to a genteel and kind family.
For private sale, some clever baker boys; also a clever gardener and coachman -ot parted with on account of any fault, but because their master has no further employment for them.’
Ran away, about 14 days ago, an old Malay slave named April, about sixty ears of age, and turns his large toes inwards. Whoever apprehends said slave, and will lodge him in the Tronk, shall receive 15 Rixdollars reward. Those harbouring him will be prosecuted.’
Wanted to hire, a slave girl of good character, who understands plain needle¬work and getting up linen.’
Ran away, from the house No 58, Loop-street, a male slave, dressed in a blue jersey jacket, nankeen trowsers, and had a red hand-kerchief round his head. It is supposed he may have gone to the country with a false pass, which he has done twice before.’
To let, a healthy wet nurse. Apply to JJ Steytler, Green Point.’
For sale, a clever housemaid, with her three male children, the eldest of whom is about 15, one 11, the other 9 years old. The first has been employed for welve months as a mason.’
Sale by the Sequestrator to this Government … the slaves July, Fytje of Mozambique, Sabina, Rosina, Fytje, Delia, Rachel, and Fortuin of the Cape … Said slaves, comprising one family, will first be put up separately, and afterwards as one lot, when in the event of their yielding more at the separate bidding, the persons making that offer will become the purchasers.’
Jek of Mosambique, aged about 27 years, is for sale, owing to his disobedience: a farmer will have the preference.’
For sale, the slave maid Regina of the Cape … She is an excellent washer, ironer, cook, and housemaid, and would be found very useful on a farm. The purchase money may remain 3 years on interest if required.’
A Mozambique slave boy, about 30 years of age, well worthy of the attention of any gentleman requiring a very fine wholesome young man, in perfect good health, will be sold at Mr Reeve’s Commission Sales… He is a plain cook and a house servant, and a complete master of all agricultural business.
Prior to the opening of the first savings bank at the Cape in 1837, people with modest amounts of capital often lived off their investment in human bondage. Elderly people and widows would hire slaves out to other people by the month and use the money to buy the necessities of life. Artisans and wet nurses commanded good wages and were always in demand, but girls of 14 were sent out to care for children and do plain needlework, and slave children were farmed out to save their owners the expense of maintaining them.
Quotations from Echoes of Slavery by Jackie Loos - David Philip publishers 2004
this article first appeared here
DISTRICT SIX MUSEUM - Buitenkant Street, Cape Town SAT 6 JUNE 2009 @ 6pm
Khoi Khonnexion (Jethro Louw - poetry, Glen Arendse and Garth Erasmus - indigenous instruments) has been performing in Cape Town for ten years, during which time they have risen to the forefront of the First Nation arts movement in South Africa. Their live performances feature trance-inducing improvisations on homemade instruments inspired by indigenous models, and dramatic recitations of original poetry by “The Ghetto Poet,” Jethro Louw.
In their workshops, they have worked with at-risk youth and adults from all backgrounds to find a source of healing in the musical heritage of Southern Africa. Now, with their first full-length album release, Kalahari Waits, they explore new creative territory while raising funds for the Basarwa San in the Kalahari Desert, who were trampled and pushed aside when diamonds were found in their government-sanctioned homeland in Botswana.
The self-released album, a collaboration with American producer Nate May, follows the sun across the sky with indigenous sounds, loops, field recordings, and poetry that wrestles with Khoisan identity in the modern world.
The release party, on Saturday, 6 June at 18h00 in the District Six Museum in Cape Town, will feature a performance by the group and a guest artist. CDs will be on sale [R100], as will handmade T-Shirts by the prominent visual artist and Khoi Khonnexion member Garth Erasmus.
Die Erfenisdagvure is tot ‘n groot mate gedemp deur die chaos in ANC geledere. Baie wonder natuurlik, so rondom die braaivleisvure, wat lê nou voor. Miskien is die tydsberekening van Erfenis dag, ‘n blessing in disguise vir ons om weer te luister na ons stories, so om die vuur.
Een substorie is uiteraard die Afrikaanse storie. Dis nie die tyd en plek om weer na te gaan wie se taal dit is nie. Taal, so lyk dit vir my, is anyway nie die eiendom van individue, of groepe of die elite in society nie. Taal groei, gryp aan en kleef aan ‘n mens; ‘n mens sou eerder kon waag dat ons plek-plek die eiendom van ‘n taal word. Jy probeer weghardloop, maar dan haal jou skaduwee jou in. Jy hoor ‘n uitdrukking, lees iets en jy ruik jou ouma se kombuis, die rook van die koolstoof en bakbrood, of jy hoor die hoederhaan vroeg in die oggend. Op daai moment weet jy: dis die huis, dis waar ek hoort.
‘n Ander angle sou wees om tog ter wille van perspektief, doodeenvoudig vir Herman Gilliomee aan te haal as hy skryf oor die onstaan van Afrikaans: ‘Gedurende die eerste sewentig jaar van die nedersetting het slawe en Khoi-khoi-bediendes waarskynlik die grootste rol in die ontwikkeling van die taal gespeel’ (2004:42)
of
‘Afrikaans is die eerste keer in gedrukte vorm gebruik in Arabiese gebedeboeke wat in die 1840s en 1850s vir die Moslemgemeenskap in Kaapstad opgestel is’ (:176)
Gilliomee haal verder vir J.H.H. de Waal aan wat aandui dat destyds, ‘n seker elite koloniste Afrikaans beskou het as ‘n verarmde dialek, ontaarde Hollands, ‘n onverstaanbare Kreoolse taal en les bes, ‘n ‘Hotnotstaal’ sonder enige toekoms.
Interessant hoedat ons stories, dit wat ons ge-erf het, ‘n mens nie net kan terugvat nie, maar ook vorentoe.
Bron:
Giliomee, H. Die Afrikaners: ‘n Biografie. Tafelberg Uitgewers. Kaapstad. 2004.
this article first appeared on the bruindevelopment.blogspot
Many runaway slaves, known as Drosters, were given refuge by San, Khoi, and Xhosa communities. Research shows that the San and Khoi had familial unions with the Xhosa, Europeans, Slaves and other African peoples, of which children were born, and thus have had an indelible affect on us all. Most particularly Coloured and Xhosa people have a strong relationship and shared bloodlines with the San and the Khoi which ought to be celebrated. Many Coloured people and Xhosa people are a strong part San and Khoi.
Heritage however, is not just about bloodlines, the past or ancient. It is also about the here and now. We cannot fully celebrate our Khoi and San heritage if we do not open our ears to the direct voice of the surviving San and Khoi people free of the array of interpreters. We also need to take cognisance of the painful history of the San and Khoi. History clearly demonstrates that the San and the Khoi were persecuted, exploited and raped by every other group in South Africa and this has had a devastating effect on the direct descendant clans who are part of our South African nation-in-the-making today. We need to set aside the mythologies that we labour under and the filters through which we see the San and Khoi. We need to recognise and respect the role of indigenous knowledge passed on by the San and Khoi. For those of us who have amongst our forbears, San and Khoi, though not part of the surviving clans, we ought to show pride of recognition.
Much has been written about the San and the Khoi (Quena) from the perspectives of archaeology, anthropology, ethnology and museology. In recent years some of these external perspectives have shifted in emphasis to the spirituality and shamanism of the San in particular.
The general tendency of all of these external approaches over the years, conservative and liberal, has been to create overlays on San and Khoi culture based on European understanding and processing of information. Regardless of intentions this has resulted in a tendency to impose interpretation, objectify, antiquate, ridicule, and at other times to romanticise, make exotic and create a curiosity out of this important South African ancestral heritage. The San and Khoi are artificially separated from other African peoples almost as if they were alien to the latter simply because of different histories and modes of living. Historically the halls of learning placed emphasis on the aggression shown to the San and Khoi by other African peoples, to bolster arguments of white possession of the land on the Southern tip of Africa. This also in a perverted manner allowed the papering over of a number of periods of wanton genocide by settler militias and the great scourge of smallpox introduced by European ships.
It is important that all South Africans, black and white, acknowledge all of our historic interactions with each other including roles in the violence meted out against the San and Khoi. We also need to recognise that there has been little mention or exploration of eras of successful coexistence and integration between the San, Khoi and other African peoples. For many South Africans the San and the Khoi should occupy pride of place as our most respected heritage line, and for this to occur, we all need to be able to reconnect.
In popular discourse the San are often thought of as a Cape-based people or amongst others they are thought of as having just been a people that lived in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. However hundreds of sites of San habitation can be found as far as northern Angola in the West, Kenya in the East and throughout Southern Africa. The San or abaThwa and the Khoi or Quena, also referred to as Bushmen and Hottentots, have many wonderful clan names that most South Africans do not know. The names that we use are those given to the San and Khoi by others. There is so much to discover about this ancestral heritage that many of us share. There is also much pain that can be uncovered that continues to be visited upon the direct surviving descendant clans of the San and Khoi today. Spread over a number of Southern African countries the San component now number less than 100,000 people many of whom have emerged from a long state of ‘living underground’ within other communities.Perhaps the greatest thing that we can do is open our ears and hearts to listen to their tales.
There are those who question the ‘purity’ of such clans. To them I say that concepts of ‘purity’ are utter tripe. San group survival passed through many fires and assimilation into other groups was one of these fires, yet the identity was kept alive and it is the right of all descendants to express their identity preference and the cultural activity they hold dear. Some will express that San and Khoi identity is part of their identity and others will express that it is their whole identity. Those who have expressed themselves in the latter have continued to have a distinct experience which in modern times is still hallmarked by abuse and pain inflicted by others. Today these communities are standing up and saying that they refuse to accept continued victimisation nor to be defined simply in terms of victimisation or external curiosity.
The pain of the past and present calls on us all to give attention to the required healing, which could start by celebrating the ‘ties that bind us’. This means that we need to look at the San and Khoi through different eyes. Much of what we know, comes to us from European and academic voices, some opinionated and others facilitative and interpretative. The oral histories of black South Africa and most particularly of the direct descendants of the San and Khoi should also be heard as these will make a major impact on our perspectives of the past and present. There is now a new generation of literatures that amplifies these voices and the many untold stories which expose us to the links that we have with each other. More importantly is the voices of the San and Khoi clans who are still crying out to be heard.
What then are the Xhosa bonds with the San and Khoi?
The san and Khoi have a special place in Xhosa heritage for the Xhosa are part San and Khoi themselves. The name Xhosa is the name ‘//kosa’ meaning ‘angry men’ given originally to a small Nguni clan by the San some time in the 1500s. From the lineage of Mnguni and Xhosa came King Cirha who was overthrown by Tshawe. In the time of King Tshawe a process was set in motion whereby the amaTshawe would spread the Xhosa kingdom by bringing San, Khoi and other independent Nguni clans under a loose confederal Tshawe authority.
In this process the clicks of the Khoi languages were introduced into the Xhosa language and many inter-marriages took place. The Xhosa word for the Christian God, uThixo is a Khoi word which originates from a folk hero of the Namaquas who was said to have extraordinary powers. Intermarriage and a sharing of cultures with the San and Khoi were widespread amongst the Xhosa with many Royals intermarrying. The Gonaqua, Damaqua and Hoengiqua Khoi were not displaced from their ancient homes but simply were incorporated into ‘Xhosadom’ with full rights. Together with the Xhosa, the Khoi and San fought colonial expansion during the frontier wars. Their efforts were joined by runaway slaves and even a few non-conformist European settlers who assimilated into Xhosa society.
History books were silent on the non-conformist Boers, Free Slaves and Khoi clans who fought on the side of the Xhosa during the Frontier Wars which raged for over a century.
patric tariq mellet
for more articles and information about slavery in the cape check out http://cape-slavery-heritage.iblog.co.za/contact/
“Hier skud ek die nipples van Afrika/ Met Afrikaanse lyrics op die maksimum/ Hie’s vir jou aanlokkend!/ Staan op en wapper soos/ My rhyme storm as ek die Kaapse Dokter personify”.
-Jitsvinger, Kaapse Dokter
At the thought of Afrikaans music, what imagery comes to mind? I would assume you are thinking of Patricia Lewis and her hair implants, Bokjol Treffers Sewe, or Johan Stemmet’s multi-coloured waistcoats wiggling on our screens on SABC 2. With the recent creation of the Afrikaans indie rock subculture a la Fokofpolisiekar, you may be thinking of skinny jeans, hipster haircuts and slick videos. However, there is a side to the Afrikaans language, the creole birth and coloured connection that has been overlooked in our collective South African consciousness. Out of this side of Afrikaans has grown a new genre, Afrikaans hip hop. From the early days of Prophets of da City’s first album to Brasse Vannie Kaap’s boundary breaking shows, to exciting artists like Jitsvinger today; Afrikaans hip hop is making its mark on South Africa’s musical scene. But is it being given the coverage it deserves? Where does Afrikaans hip hop fit into our complex cultural landscape? The role of the Khoi, the Malay and other native populations in forging the language has been systematically excluded from our history books. Similarly, Afrikaans hip hop has traditionally been excluded from the mainstream Afrikaans Music scene.
The history of Afrikaans goes back to the 18th century. Cape Town’s port- city status made it a melting pot of people and influences, thanks to the inter-continental slave trade and the Dutch East India Company. Afrikaans developed as a bridging language to ease communication between the indigenous people, imported slaves and their masters. But contempt was expressed for this new language by both the Boers (who spoke “High” Afrikaans and Dutch) and the English upper classes who referred to Afrikaans as ‘Bastard Dutch’ and as a ‘mongrel language’ reserved for communicating with the slaves and lower classes.
So what makes an Afrikaner? We know now that in the mid 19th century, emancipated slaves, and slaves born in the Cape Colony were known as Afrikaners, whereas the settlers of Dutch descent referred to themselves as ‘Boere’, ‘Christene’ and ‘Nederlanders’. The myth that Afrikaans is a West European language was born in 1875 with the forced Europeanization of Afrikaans that started as an ideological project by the group “Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners” (The association of True Afrikaners). This group sought to nationalize the language after it was found that fewer people of Dutch descent were speaking pure Dutch, and were speaking Afrikaans in increasing numbers.
While Afrikaans’ Dutch heritage cannot be denied, it must be acknowledged that it was shaped and molded away from Dutch by the Khoi and Malay slaves. Words central to the Afrikaans language like ‘eitsa’, ‘eina’, ‘ai’, ‘kamtig’, and ‘arrie’ are Khoi-derived words, while ‘nooi’, ‘baadjie’, ‘bladsy’, ‘baklei’ and ‘kapok’ are derived from Malay languages. Perhaps most significantly, the ‘dubbele nie’ or the double negative, a language rule distinct to Afrikaans, is inherited from the Khoi.
The nationalisation of Afrikaans in 1875 meant that history books omitted the Creole formation of the language, and the Creole Afrikaner identity was stolen and altered to mean something different. The term Afrikaner soon became a name for the “white” Afrikaans speaking people of Dutch descent. Soon Afrikaans, originally a language of the free slaves and the Khoi inhabitants of the Cape, became a tool used by the oppressor.
Fastforward to 1976: youths were massacred during the Soweto Uprising, after protests against the Nationalist Government policy which demanded that all black pupils were to receive compulsory instruction in Afrikaans for all subjects, despite it rarely being the first language of black families. The language had by then become a symbol of Apartheid’s white rule and oppression. The irony is that while black students in Soweto were protesting against the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction, Afrikaans-speaking coloured youth joined in the fight against the government, and used their Afrikaans to mobilize communities to fight against the injustices of the day. Members of the UDF, Ashley Kriel, Allan Boesak and Cheryl Carolus come to mind as some of the youth who were at the forefront of resistance politics in Cape Town in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Today in 2009 there are not many signs of the coloured Afrikaans in mainstream media with the exception of patronizing TV commercials or articles in the local Cape Town tabloid - ‘Die Son’. It seems that the version of Afrikaans spoken in the coloured community is seen as a colloquial version of ‘pure’ Afrikaans and is almost always represented as being comical and never taken seriously. Afrikaans Hip hop is a genre challenging these misconceptions, and the main players in the movement are actively trying to reclaim and evolve the language and its identity.
Hip hop, like Afrikaans, was born of a creole, mixed history. Hip hop in the United States is influenced by the griot music and storytelling traditions of West Africa. Other influences include African American blues and jazz music while a Jamaican DJ, Kool Herc is credited with being the godfather of hip hop.
Hip hoppers in Cape Town have been active in the movement since 1982, when B-boying (break dancing) and graffiti became popular after films like Break and Beatstreet became popular. The first recorded Afrikaans hip hop song, Dallah Flet, was recorded in 1990 by hip hop pioneers Prophets of da City, including in its line- up, the enigmatic DJ Ready D. The album was named Our World, and while the rest of the songs were in English, it was a first for South Africa nonetheless; being the first South African hip hop album ever recorded and released.
Prophets of da City thus paved the way for many others to come, including Brasse Vannie Kaap (BVK), the seminal Afrikaans hip hop group (also including Ready D), that would cross the colour divide and perform at rock (and thus “white”) festivals such as Oppikoppi during the 2000 to 2002 period. They would perform to predominantly white audiences, gaining instant popularity and generating interest from a generation of Afrikaners who were rethinking what it meant to be white, Afrikaans, and South African. BVK thus became the poster child for a “coloured” identity that white people could identify with. Their ability to cross boundaries through Afrikaans also spilled onto the small screen, on SABC 2’s flagship Afrikaans soap opera, Sewende Laan. We must keep in mind that it would be short-sighted to suggest that this was merely crossing boundaries. BVK used Afrikaans as a tool, as a way to publicly reclaim Afrikaans back from its national reputation as the language of systemic oppression, to the language of the people, of all who spoke it, and created it.
BVK were starting to scratch at the surface of Afrikaner identity itself. Was there now a space for coloured people to be considered as Afrikaners, or was this just too presumptuous? Jitsvinger says this about Afrikaans and identity: “Language forms part of an individual’s cultural heritage which, in my case, also forms part of our oral tradition. For me language calculates a cultural society’s position in the entire universe through sound formulation and vibration…oppression divides.” When thinking along these lines, is it not absurd to divide “white” Afrikaners and coloured Afrikaans speakers? In his essay on Cape Town as a creolised city, Creole Cape Town, Jeremy Cronin mentions what modern science is now confirming: that we are all “coloured”. We are all the carriers of a mixed masala genetic code; everyone is essentially “mixed race”. He also muses on the impact of Thabo Mbeki changing the title of his historic I am an African speech to I am a coloured.
Today, Afrikaans hip hop has gone from strength to strength. MC’s are popping up from Manenberg to Muizenberg, from Kuilsriver to Kraaifontein. MC’s such as Jitsvinger, Terror MC, Jaak, Lee-Ursus, and the Cape Awake collective have put their Afrikaans identity and heritage before any Americanisation or Afro American ebonics, and thus are “keeping it real” in the truest sense. Jitsvinger in particular mentions the Khoi influence on Afrikaans at his shows. He has worked with a group focused on Khoi culture through music, The Khoi Khollektif, and has toured with the Official Khoisan praise poet Jethro Louw aka Tanneman !Xam. At his shows, Jits makes a point of educating the audience on the history of Afrikaans and of “coloured” people as the descendants of the Khoi; and as a result, the “first nation of people” of the continent. In this sense he is practicing one of the oldest of African traditions: Oral storytelling.
Under the wing of hip hop, one can’t help but feel that Afrikaans is in good hands. At a recent parkjam on a basketball court in Gugulethu, one of Cape Town’s oldest townships and where the audience was predominantly black and mostly Xhosa, Jits was on the bill. The line- up of rappers was a long one, and as the sun started to set behind Table Mountain, visitors from outside the neighbourhood slowly started to filter out. The MC of the event, Koriander, called up the next act. “Put your hands together for Jitsvinger!” As he finished, a lanky coloured man made his way through the crowd, his head and shoulders sticking out above the people surrounding him. He grabbed the mic, and like the captain of a ship addressing his crew, he told the audience: “Guys, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to rap in Afrikaans. When I say daai’s die move, you say maak ‘it aan. Make it on. Make it happen.” Soon everyone in the audience was rapping along in unison. “Daai’s die move, maak ‘it aan!” After his 30 minute set was done and he had handed the mic back, the MC exclaimed: “Damn! He makes Afrikaans sound like it was invented by a black man!”
