This is Part Two of a two-part series. Part One can be found here.
The classification of “coloured”
South Africa’s forty-two-year apartheid government had a divide-and-rule policy that led to the creation of a group of people they called “coloureds”. A government education program, indistinguishable from propaganda, deliberately and maliciously separated this group from its roots. The public campaign propagated the myth that the so-called "coloureds" were solely the offspring of slaves and whites, rather than descendants of indigenous KhoiSan people.
There was a kernel of truth to the slave offspring narrative but, as with all propaganda, it was not the whole truth. It was a convenient distortion to create an in-between group caught in the middle with whites on the one side, and people the state classified as Africans on the other. As a meager consolation, the "coloureds" received a few more privileges than Africans.
Political machinations side-lined the descendants of the KhoiSan over time and portrayed the decades-long liberation struggle as only that between white rulers and black freedom fighters concerning a country that whites had stolen from blacks. This black-and-white narrative conveniently ignored the fact that neither of these two groups were historically indigenous to the lands of South Africa. Both had migrated there, from Europe and central Africa respectively—although the Bantu African migrants settled there a long time before the Europeans.
This false narrative has had disastrous consequences for the descendants of the indigenous KhoiSan who had lived on the land for millennia. Cut off from their African identity and roots, they became foreigners in the land of their forebears, and stereotyped as a happy-go-lucky, untrustworthy, good-for-nothing, lazy, and often drunk, criminal bunch.
In the apartheid era, the label “coloured” cynically implied that they were not white enough to be white and get the privileges that came with that classification. This form of racial discrimination and the label “coloured” have bizarrely been carried into democratic South Africa. But now it’s not the parents of apartheid, the National Party, that are the guilty ones.
The ANC retained the racialized category of “coloured” as a preferred label for those they consider not black enough to be considered African.
The ANC continue the discrimination. Since becoming the government thirty years ago, the ANC retained the racialized category of “coloured” as a preferred label for those they consider not black enough to be considered African. Clearly, the apartheid stratification was not buried deep enough and remains to haunt those of us caught in the middle.
The continuation of suppression
So focused are they on their own issues, the ANC is unmoved by the hurt, alienation, and anger articulated by the so-called “coloured” people. Our voice goes unheard. The government has ignored a recommendation by a statutory body, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which in 2018 issued a report on the situation of the descendants of the KhoiSan people who were being treated unfairly as the “coloureds”.
According to the SAHRC document, indigenous peoples around the world are some of the most poverty-stricken groups. The KhoiSan descendants in South Africa, about 8.3% of the population, are no exception. Mostly poor, their dire situation as a group is exacerbated by multiple factors including a pervasive negative stigma, social exclusion, a declining culture, a lack of official recognition by the state as African and fundamentally belonging to the land, and a muted and insignificant political voice. These factors give rise to multiple rights violations which occur on a daily basis.
The SAHRC expressed concern that the descendants of the KhoiSan people were not officially recognized and were still regarded by the derogatory term “coloured”. Official recognition, said the Commission, formed an imperative component in the ability of the KhoiSan’s descendants to live a life of dignity and respect in their ancestral homeland.
Rejecting the KhoiSan people as indigenous and African is no accident. It is a wanton, deliberate act, used to hide the fact that there are a group of people living in South Africa who are the descendants of an ancient first people, with both cultural and land rights. For the majority of settler governments the world over, formal acknowledgment of indigenous peoples must be suppressed to avoid indigenous claims to fair recompense for historic abuses.
Calling the KhoiSan “coloured” is not going to extinguish their rightful position.
Calling the KhoiSan “coloured” is not going to extinguish their rightful position. Yet the label is exacerbating their marginalization, which accelerates vast social ills such as substance abuse, gangsterism and crime, and the breakdown of families. For example, in just one seven-day period, from 5 to 11 September 2022, 83 people were killed in predominantly gang-related murders around Cape Town and the Cape Flats outside Cape Town—a vast area of “coloured” townships.
This is a legacy of apartheid. Yet it persists in today’s democracy, forcing citizens to racially identify themselves in a way that amplifies stigma. Government apologists claim that it is for statistical reasons but that is a poor excuse. Now the term “coloured” is used to sharpen the sword that continues to divide people, only this time the black and white categories of power have flipped.
It is now used in the name of Black Economic Empowerment, an official government policy, to give preferential treatment to the so-called real Africans. This is the sad reality of our popularized “rainbow nation”, a democratic South Africa, but one still marginalizing people.
The power of ancestry
Growing up, in my parents’ house, we knew who we were: Africans, with our roots in the Moravian-influenced Valley of Grace, and the blood of the indigenous people as well as others flowing in our veins. Oral knowledge about one’s African heritage, however, is not proof according to those who require scientific evidence. Incontrovertible evidence is needed that the ANC and those who think like them cannot dispute.
In May, my wife and two friends gifted me the chance to use DNA to confirm my ancestry. I was so delighted about this gift because the results of the test would finally declare, loud and clear, who I am, where I come from, and what my bloodline has to say about those who walked before me on the African continent.
I meticulously followed instructions to get my DNA sample and took the required swabs. Afterwards I informed the laboratory that would do the test that it could send a courier service to collect the sealed specimens.
All that remained was to await the outcome, which took about six weeks. It was a long, impatient wait with all sorts of thoughts crisscrossing through my mind. Burning with nervous anticipation, I regularly opened my email account. Time after time, I was disappointed as no result had dropped. Finally, the results were there, waiting to be opened and digested. It was a big moment, one of the biggest and most important ones of my life.
The main root in my blood line is grounded in the KhoeSan
I read the report slowly. Not wanting to miss anything. Wanting to take in every word. It notified me that according to my DNA results the main root in my blood line is grounded in the KhoeSan (another name for KhoiSan ). The report went on to say that the KhoeSan,
“is the oldest population worldwide and have ties in southern Africa for centuries. The KhoeSan population are made up of Khoekhoe populations who were agropastoralists and the San who were historically hunter-gatherers. These populations were the first to meet the Europeans as they arrived at the southern tip of South Africa in the 15th and 17th century."
So, there it was beyond any reasonable doubt! The indigenous people are in my DNA and probably in those of millions of people like me. The report also stated that in my veins flowed contributions from east and west Africa, central Europe and Asia. However, the KhoeSan is the main contributor.
There was a surprise in the report, one that literally took my breath away. According to the DNA results, my maternal bloodline showed that I have the same ancient female ancestor as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. So, if these iconic South Africans are African, what does that make me? An African, nothing less; and an African indigenous to South Africa.
I was shaken. I have only known an environment where apartheid indoctrination was so successful in burning the word “coloured” onto our identity that some who have taken on this definition would be happy to be anything other than black and African. Some have also lauded their slave ancestry but kept quiet about possible indigenous links. An identity means many things to different people.
The beginnings of renewal
As I absorbed the DNA information, I began to formulate some new thinking. An application should be made to the South African Constitutional Court to define what an African is, and to declare that the descendants of the indigenous people in South Africa were indeed the first Africans that lived here. Without such a decision, the government will not change its position, and we will be doomed to forever be defined negatively as “coloured”, just like our former apartheid rulers wanted.
We must find ways to resist the retreat toward accepting the negative connotations of the label “coloured” and revitalize our identity as South Africa’s most ancient indigenous inhabitants. We have the authority and duty as the first people to resist the government’s attempt to erase our history as part of their relentless political push for “Africanization”—an Africanization that does not recognize the descendants of the indigenous people as African.
If we descendants of the KhoiSan continue to withdraw into a false identity it will perpetuate the divisive and destructive course our people are on, and ultimately seal a victory for apartheid-style racial classification. We need to restore an appropriate KhoiSan pride, with the potential for the kind of development and well-being evident in our Valley of Grace history.
I long for a real united country where all people born here or who are naturalized South Africans are free, equal, and not condemned to a life filled with the ignominy of the deliberate denial of one’s African identity. Our nation cannot thrive long on the pseudo reality that is currently evident and being promoted.
As long as the classification policy is maintained, apartheid wins, whether it be through the current government’s policies, or the structures that persist from the initial white architects of this despicable system. If the system remains, and without the power to create a compelling counter-narrative, the descendants of the indigenous people will continue to live ignorant or in denial of who we really are; without a true identity, drifting aimlessly, feeling like we do not belong anywhere, and being excluded everywhere.
We who want to be recognized as African must find the will to stand up and assert our God-given identity, heritage, and rights to the lands of our forefathers. If we do nothing then the symptoms of lostness—drugs, crime, and self-destructive behavior—will continue to wreak havoc in our ranks. If that were to happen, God’s grace, which was so miraculously evident in Genadendal, will be squandered with little left to show for it. But I do not believe that is God’s plan for the descendants of the KhoiSan.
We can have pride in our respective ethnic heritage, celebrating the uniqueness of our cultures, and contribute those as God’s gifts to the building of a more equitable society.
A glimpse of things to come
The divisive evil must not have the last say and continue to divide South Africans: all of whom, irrespective of their skin color, are ultimately Africans. Stone by stone, the apartheid walls dividing us must be dismantled. True nonracialism beckons, where we can have pride in our respective ethnic heritage, celebrating the uniqueness of our cultures, and contribute those as God’s gifts to the building of a more equitable society that values inclusion, mutuality, and respect. A haven of hope like Genadendal, the Valley of Grace, can emerge again.
Jesus Christ, who is in the very nature God, the God of George Schmidt and my believing ancestor Jonas, has the power to accomplish this through us. His death and resurrection pulled down the walls of hostility between opposing peoples (fore example, Jews and Gentiles, Ephesians 2:14-15), and God’s grace to followers of Jesus can accomplish the same in nations torn apart by racial division today. Not by denying the ethnic identities of people, but by honoring them and the grace of God within them, investing the best of who we are for God’s purposes, and to display the glory of God as we renew our world to make it better for all.
Dennis Cruywagen is an acclaimed South African journalist and political commentator, as well as a former parliamentary spokesperson for the ANC. He previously served as deputy editor of the Pretoria News and a political reporter on the Cape Argus. He is a recipient of a Nieman Fellowship and a Mason Fellowship at Harvard University, and holds a master's degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of "Brothers in War and Peace", a detailed look at the lives of Abraham and Constand Viljoen; as well as "The Spiritual Mandela".
