Cape Coloureds (Afrikaans: Kaapse Kleurlinge) are a South African group of multiracial people who are from the Cape region in South Africa which consists of the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape. Their ancestry comes from the interracial mixing between the White, the indigenous Khoi and San, the Xhosa plus other Bantu people, slaves imported from the Dutch East Indies, immigrants from the Levant or Yemen (or a combination of all).[3] People from India and the islands within the Indian Ocean region were also taken to the Cape and sold into slavery by the Dutch settlers. Eventually all these ethnic and racial group intermixed with each forming a group of mixed race people that became the "Cape Coloureds".
They are generally bilingual, speaking Afrikaans and English, though some speak only one of these. Some Cape Coloureds may code switch,[4] speaking a patois of Afrikaans and English called Afrikaaps, also known as Cape Slang (Capy) or Kombuis Afrikaans, meaning Kitchen Afrikaans. Cape Coloureds were classified under apartheid as a subset of the larger Coloured race group.
A genetic clustering of South African Coloured and five source populations.[5] Each vertical bar represents individual.
Recent studies of Cape Coloureds using genetic testing have found ancestry to vary by region. Khoe-San ancestry is higher in inland regions and towards the east. Bantu-Speaking ancestry is higher in eastern regions. Asian ancestry is higher in western regions. The European-related ancestry is highest along the coast. Near Cape Town & in the Western Cape province, the non-African ancestry is high, reflecting the historically greater density of European colonists & slaves in those locations. At least 4 genetic studies indicate that the average Cape Coloured has an ancestry consisting of the following, with large variation between individuals :[6][7][8][9]
Origins: ~ Primarily from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thai, Vietnam, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lanka, China, Philippines & to a smaller extent Japan, Korea & Cambodia.
Origins: ~ Primarily from Lebanon, Syria, Yemeni, Israel & Egypt to a smaller extent.
Please note that this is not an exhaustive list, and individual results may vary. The ancestry of Cape Coloureds can be diverse and complex.
The genetic reference cluster term "Khoisan" itself refers to a colonially admixed population cluster, hence the concatenation, and is not a straightforward reference to ancient African pastoralist and hunter ancestry, which is often demarcated by the L0 haplogroup ancestry common in the general South African native population, which is also integral part of other aboriginal genetic reference cluster terms like "South-East African Bantu".[11]
Success in the spread of Catholicism among Afrikaans speakers, including Coloured communities, remained minimal until the death throes of Apartheid during the mid to late 1980s. As Catholic texts began to be translated into Afrikaans, sympathetic Dutch Reformed pastors, who were defying the traditional anti-Catholicism of their Church, assisted in correcting linguistic errors. By 1996, the majority of Afrikaans-speaking Catholics came from the Coloured community, with a smaller number of Afrikaner converts, most of whom were from professional backgrounds.[12]
Sunni Islam remains in practice among Cape Malays, who were generally regarded as a separate ethnoreligious group under apartheid.
Origin and history
The first and the largest phase of interracial marriages/Miscegenation in South Africa happened in the Dutch Cape Colony which began from the 17th century, shortly after the arrival of Dutch settlers, who were led by Jan van Riebeeck.[13] When the Dutch settled in the Cape in 1652, they met the Khoi Khoi who were the natives of the area.[14] After settling in the Cape, the Dutch established farms that required intensive labour therefore, they enforced slavery in the Cape. Some of the Khoi Khoi became labourers in the Cape. Despite this, there was resistance by the Khoi Khoi, which led to the Khoikhoi-Dutch Wars.[15] As a result of this resistance, the Dutch imported slaves from other parts of the world, especially the Malay people from present-day Indonesia and the Bantu people from different parts of Southern Africa.[16] To a smaller extent, slaves were also imported from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India, Madagascar, Mauritius and other parts of Africa.[17] The slaves were almost invariably given Christian names but their places of origin were indicated in the records of sales and other documents so that it is possible to get an idea of the ratio of slaves from different regions.[18] These slaves were, however, dispersed and lost their cultural identity over the course of time.[19]
Because most of the Dutch settlers in the Cape were men, many of them married and conceived mixed-race children with the Khoi Khoi, the Southern African Bantu, the Malay from Indonesia and other enslaved ethnic groups in the Cape.[20] There was also interracial mixing between the slaves and mixed-race children were also conceived from these unions as well because the slaves were of different races (African and Asian).[21] Unlike the One-drop rule in the USA, mixed-race children in the Cape were not viewed as "white enough to be white", "black enough to be black" nor "asian enough to be asian", therefore, mixed race children from all these interracial unions in the Cape grew up and married amongst themselves, forming their own community that would later be known as the "Cape Coloured".[22]
Krotoa, a Khoi Khoi woman who was the first indigenous person in South Africa to have an official interracial marriage
The first interracial marriage in the Cape was between Krotoa (a Khoi Khoi woman who was a servant, a translator and a crucial negotiator between the Dutch and the Khoi Khoi. Her Dutch name was "Eva Van Meerhof") and Peter Havgard (a Danish surgeon whom the Dutch renamed as "Pieter Van Meerhof").[23] Having conceived 3 mixed-race children, Krotoa was known as the mother that gave birth to the Coloured community in South Africa.[24]
With the arrival of more Europeans (such as the French Huguenots and the Germans) and the arrival of more African and Asian slaves in the Cape Colony, there were more interracial unions, whose mixed-race children got absorbed into the Cape Coloured community.[25][26][27] The predominant Asian slaves in the Cape were the Malay that came from Indonesia.[28] Although most of them got interracially mixed into the Cape Coloured community, a small minority of them have retained their community and culture, therefore, they became known as the Cape Malay.[29] However, during the Apartheid regime, the Cape Malays were classified as a sub-group of the Cape Coloured due to similar ancestries and because South Africa's population was grouped into 4 races under the Population Registration Act, 1950: Black, White, Coloured and Indian.[30] Therefore, many Cape Malays were forced to live in Coloured townships of Cape Town during Apartheid.[31]
During the 17th century (in this case, from 1652-1700), the Dutch Cape Colony consisted only of present-day Cape Town with its surrounding areas such as Paarl, Stellenbosch and Franschhoek.[32] However, from the 18th century until the formation of the Union of South Africa in the year 1910, the territory of the Cape expanded gradually to the North and to the East.[33] The expansion of the Dutch Cape Colony was mainly caused by the dry and infertile nature of its immediate interior, therefore farmers needed fertile land because farms could only be settled where there were springs to provide permanent water.[34] However, it was also influenced by emigration of the Trekboers that left the Cape and migrated into the Karoo during the 18th century and after British annexation of the Cape in the 19th century.[35] By the mid 18th century, the territory of the Dutch Cape Colony had reached to present-day Swellendam and by the end of the Dutch rule (after British annexation in 1814), the territory of the Cape had already reached certain parts of the Eastern Cape and the Northern Cape.[36] With the gradual expansion of the Cape and the additional arrival of various European nationalities (such as the British, Irish etc.), there were more interracial unions, this time between the white and the Khoisans in the Northern Cape and between the white and the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape with more mixed race children being conceived, adding on to the Coloured population of the entire Cape.[37]
After British annexation in the early 19th century, slavery was abolished in the Cape, which lead to the Great Trek when the Boere left the Cape as Voortrekkers and migrated into the interior of South Africa to form the Boer republics.[38] Most of the freed slaves(who became Cape Coloureds) remained behind. Many freed slaves moved to an area in Cape Town that became known as District Six and by the turn of the 20th century, District six became more established and populated. Although its population was predominantly Cape Coloured, District Six (just like many places in the Cape) was diverse with different ethnicities, races and nationalities living there (this includes Blacks, Whites, Cape Malays and Asian immigrants such as the Indians,Chinese, Japanese etc.).[39] Many of these groups got absolved into the Cape coloured community.[40] The Cape also attracted many European immigrants of which many of them got married into the Cape Coloured community, adding on to the ancestry of the Cape Coloureds.[41]
As a result, the Cape Coloureds ended up having the most diverse ancestry in the world with a blend of so many different cultures mixed together.[42]
Cape Coloureds in the media
Cape Coloured school children in Mitchells PlainCape Coloured children in Bonteheuwel township (Cape Town, South Africa)The Christmas Bands are a popular Cape Coloured cultural tradition in Cape Town
A group of Cape Coloureds were interviewed in the documentary series Ross Kemp on Gangs. One of the gang members who participated in the interview mentioned that black South Africans have been the main beneficiaries of South African social promotion initiatives while the Cape Coloureds have been further marginalised.[citation needed]
The 2009 film I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured – Identity Crisis at the Cape of Good Hope (Monde World Films, US release) is one of the first historical documentary films to explore the legacy of Apartheid through the viewpoint of the Cape Coloured community, including interviews with elders, pastors, members of Parliament, students and everyday people struggling to find their identity in the new South Africa. The film's 2016 sequel Word of Honour: Reclaiming Mandela’s Promise (Monde World Films, US release) [43]
Various books have covered the subject matter of Coloured identity and heritage.[who?]
Patric Tariq Mellet, heritage activist and author of 'The Camissa Embrace' and co-creator of The Camissa Museum, has composed a vast online blog archive ('Camissa People') of heritage information concerning Coloured ancestry tracing to the Indigenous San and Khoe and Malagasy, East African, Indonesian, Indian, Bengal and Sri Lankan slaves.[citation needed]
Terminology
The term "coloureds" is currently treated as a neutral description in Southern Africa, classifying people of mixed race ancestry. "Coloured" may be seen as offensive in some other western countries, such as Britain and the United States of America.[44]
The most used racial slurs against Cape Coloureds are Hottentot or hotnot and Kaffir. The term "hotnot" is a derogatory term used to refer to Khoisan people and coloureds in South Africa. The term originated from the Dutch language, where "Hottentot" was used to describe a language spoken by the Khoisan people. It later came to be used as a derogatory term for the people themselves, based on European perceptions of their physical appearance and culture. The term is often used to demean and dehumanize Khoisan and coloured people, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and discrimination against them.[45] The term "Kaffir" is a racial slur used to refer to coloured people and black people in South Africa. It originated from Arabic and was used to refer to non-Muslims. Later, it was used by European-descended South Africans to refer to black and coloured people during the apartheid era, and the term became associated with racism and oppression. While it is still used against Coloured people, it is not as prevalent as it is against black people.[46][47]
