Between Black and White: South Africa's Coloureds and Apartheid

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This project will analyse the situation of the South African coloured people during apartheid. For a long time there was no certainty who belonged to the coloureds. It was only the apartheid state after 1948 that introduced an arbitrary distinction. This in turn produced ambiguity for population heterogeneous historically as well as it skin colour. Only during the 19th century the term people of colour became used but without making clear distinctions. Distinction during the rule of the Dutch East India Company were influenced by categories of status according to an estate society. Their basis were the distinctions between free and unfree in relation to slaves, and Christian vs. heathen in relation to the Khoisan population. Both distinctions until the early 19th century increasingly became congruent with skin colour. Up to that time diverse namings for different groups of people emerged that were brought together under the umbrella of "people of colour": hottentots and bushmen for Khoisan, Bastard hottentots for a so-called mixed population made up of slaves and Khoisan. Besides these there were further identifications of ethnically distinct groups as the Griqua or the Cape Malays. However, this population which became submerged in the system of colonial rule was never clearly circumscribed. "Coloured" remained somthing like an open category, because transformations of individuals from "white" to "coloured" and vice versa occured and remained possible. It was only with the advent of apartheid that clear distinctions occured. The state made sure by legislation that ascriptions henceforth were unmistakable. Thus coloureds were constructed from outside via external ascriptions, but they rejected especially being defined as a separate and identifiable ethnic group. The project therefore will focus on the politically dominant white minority as an observant during the early phase, but also on self-observation and identification vis-a-vis other population groups in the later phase. This culminated in the very rejection of the term coloured by many of those people who were named as such. This project will analyse who coloureds positioned themselves towards an identity that forced upon them by the state. This implies that the dichotomy which still can be found in much of the literature between "collaboration" and "resistance" must be problematised. Instead of clear ascriptions, ambiguity can be observed in the political relationship to the state. There was subversive adaptation of apartheid institutions just as open resistance in the context of protest movements, but with coloureds as a minority of their membership. The historical era this project will focus on are the 1960s until the 1990s, the high tide and final period of apartheid. Research on the early years until the 1970s will concentrate on outside observation, whereas the later period problematises mainly selfobservation.