On race and culture

I am still processing the information that, somewhere out there are 2000 people who bought a book with the good intentions of navigating the diverse cultures of the people of South Africa.  Instead, I shudder to think, they were offered stereotypes of so-called ‘coloured culture. That someone could be bold enough to write a chapter on the subject is wrong on so many levels. Where shall I start?

Firstly, the very notion of a grouping of coloured people is an artificial construct of an apartheid government hell-bent on denying the rights and freedoms to 80% of the population of our country, for more than 40 years. 

Secondly, culture, “the arts, customs, and institutions of a nation, people or group”, by its nature refers to a fairly homogenous group of people to begin with. There is no white culture or black culture or coloured culture.

Gabeba Baderoon in her book, Regarding Muslims, notes that,

… in the racial hierarchy of apartheid, ‘colouredness’ formed the interstitial zone between ‘native’ and ‘white’… defined solely through negatives, imbued with ambiguity … ‘colouredness’ was the fluid middle of the hierarchy in South Africa …

Even the architects of apartheid had trouble deciding who fitted into this group of “leftovers” (as Marike de Klerk so famously referred to coloureds). The fluidity that Baderoon refers to was evident in the seven subgroups of coloured made provision for in the Population Registration Act of 1950:

Cape Coloured/Malay/Griqua/Chinese/Indian/Other Asian/Other Coloured

And as Mrs de Klerk observed, the people who were” left after the nations were sorted out, the negative group, the non-people” were classified coloured.  Conveniently forgotten was the rich diversity of people descended from Indonesian slaves, Europeans, Khoikhoi and San, with diverse art, music, customs, speaking Afrikaans and/or English.  Also ignored by Mrs de Klerk and others like her, were studies that showed that on average 7% of all Afrikaner forefathers were of “coloured” origin. 

The Act required every citizen to be registered according to his/her race group, with race determined by a classification board acting on information from family and friends; a person’s hair, eyeballs and cuticles could be examined for pigmentation if there was any doubt. This fluidity meant, for example, that my grandfather could change his classification from ‘white’ to marry my ‘coloured’ grandmother, even though she was fairer-skinned than he. My aunt, who married a "real" European (as in he really was born there and not as a synonym for "white South African") was not able to live in South Africa with her husband. When she visited with her children, she was not allowed to stay in her mother’s “coloured” home with her “white” children.

My aunt Hilda on her wedding day

Lastly, tough as it may be to comprehend, there is only one human race. We are 99% genetically identical. There is no coloured race, or white or black race for that matter. So let’s refrain from deepening divisions by assigning sweeping characteristics to artificial groups of people.