Hope, Fear, Shame, Frustration: Continuity and Change in the Expression of Coloured Identity in White Supremacist South Africa, 1910–1994

Abstract

This article seeks to explain the basic impulses behind coloured exclusivity in white supremacist South Africa and to elaborate on continuity and change in the processes of coloured self-definition by identifying the core attributes of coloured identity and outlining the ways in which they operated to reinforce and reproduce that identity. The central argument is that coloured identity is better understood not as having evolved through a series of transformations, as conventional historical thinking would have it and as the existing literature assumes, but as having remained remarkably stable throughout the era of white rule. It is argued that this stability derived from a core of enduring characteristics that informed the manner in which colouredness functioned as an identity during this period. This is not to contend that coloured identity was static or that it lacked fluidity, but that there were both important constraints on the ways in which it was able to find expression and sufficiently strong continuities in its day-to-day functioning for coloured identity to have remained recognisably uniform despite radical changes in the social and political landscape during this time. The principal constituents of this stable core are the assimilationism of the coloured people, which spurred hopes of future acceptance into the dominant society; their intermediate status in the racial hierarchy, which generated fears that they might lose their position of relative privilege and be relegated to the status of Africans; the negative connotations, especially the shame attached to racial hybridity, with which colouredness was imbued; and finally, the marginality of the coloured community, which severely limited their options for social and political action, giving rise to a great deal of frustration.

Notes

 1 For the more recent studies on the history of the coloured people, see M. Hommel, Capricorn Blues: The Struggle for Human Rights in South Africa (Toronto, Culturama, 1981); R. van der Ross, The Rise and Decline of Apartheid: A Study of Political Movements Among the Coloured People of South Africa, 1880–1985 (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1986); G. Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African ‘Coloured’ Politics (Cape Town, David Philip, 1987); I. Goldin, Making Race: The Politics and Economics of Coloured Identity in South Africa (Cape Town, Maskew Miller Longman, 1987); R. du Pré, Separate but Unequal: The ‘Coloured’ People of South Africa – a Political History (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 1994).

 2 For a more detailed critique of this historiography see M. Adhikari, ‘Hope, Fear, Shame, Frustration: Continuity and Change in the Expression of Coloured Identity in White Supremacist South Africa, 1910–1994’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cape Town [UCT], 2002), pp. 63–9, and M. Adhikari, ‘From Narratives of Miscegenation to Post-Modernist Re-Imaginings: A Historiography of Coloured Identity’ (unpublished paper, National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre, University of Fort Hare, 2005).

 3 L. Switzer, review of M. Adhikari, Let Us Live for Our Children: The Teachers’ League of South Africa, 1913–1940 (Cape Town, UCT Press, 1993) in the Journal of African History, 36, 2 (1995), p. 338.

 4 Z. Erasmus (ed.), Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 2001).

 5 In this article the term ‘black’ is used in its inclusive sense to refer to African, coloured and Indian people collectively, while ‘African’ refers to the indigenous Bantu-speaking peoples of South Africa.

 6 Novelist, academic and literary critic, Kole Omotoso, describes the skin colour of coloured people, the most important of these phenotypical features, as varying ‘from charcoal black to breadcrust brown, sallow yellow and finally off-white cream that wants to pass for white’. Cape Times, 14 January 2002.

 7 See M. Adhikari, ‘Coloureds’, in C. Saunders (consulting ed.), An Illustrated Dictionary of South African History (Johannesburg, Ibis Books, 1994), pp. 77–9.

 8 The People of South Africa Population Census, 1996: Primary Tables – the Country as a Whole (Report No. 03-01-19), p. 6; Statistics South Africa, 2000 (Pretoria, Government Publications Dept., 2001), 1.1.

 9 Compare statistics in Census of the Union of South Africa, 1911 (U.G.32-1912), Annexure 1, pp. 7–11 with South African Census, 1996, p. 6.

 10 The term ‘Cape Coloured’ is usually used to distinguish coloured people from the broader category that includes these sub-groups.

 11 M. Adhikari, ‘The Sons of Ham: Slavery and the Making of Coloured Identity’, South African Historical Journal, 27 (1992), pp. 107–8; N. Worden, ‘Adjusting to Emancipation: Freed Slaves and Farmers in Mid-Nineteenth Century Southwestern Cape’, in W. James and M. Simons (eds), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town, David Philip, 1989), pp. 33–4; P. Scully, ‘The Bouquet of Freedom: Social and Economic Relations in the Stellenbosch District, 1870–1900’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987), pp. 11–12.

 12 Adhikari, ‘Sons of Ham’, p. 110; W. Worger, South Africa's City of Diamonds: Mineworkers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867–1895 (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1987), Chapter 2; R. Turrell, Capital and Labour on the Kimberley Diamond Fields, 1871–1890 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 29–31, 94–104; V. Bickford-Smith, ‘Commerce, Class and Ethnicity in Cape Town, 1875–1902’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1988), pp. 102–3, 185–8.

 13 See M. Adhikari, Teachers’ League, pp. 11–18, and ‘Sons of Ham’, pp. 95–112, for a more detailed discussion of the origins of coloured identity. For case studies of the process in Cape Town and Kimberley respectively, see V. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town, 1875–1902 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 186–209 and P. Lawrence, ‘Class, Colour Consciousness and the Search for Identity at the Kimberley Diamond Diggings, 1867–1893’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1994).

 14 S. Trapido, ‘“The Friends of the Natives”: Merchants, Peasants and the Political and Ideological Structure of Liberalism in the Cape’, in S. Marks and A. Atmore (eds), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London, Longman, 1980), p. 266.

 15 The most significant were the exclusion of coloured people from the franchise in the former Boer republics after the Anglo-Boer War; the promulgation of the School Board Act of 1905 that segregated the Cape's education system by providing compulsory public schooling for white children only; and the denial of the right of coloured people to be elected to Parliament with the implementation of Union in 1910. Van der Ross, Rise and Decline of Apartheid, pp. 43–55; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 30–9, 46–63.

 16 For example, the 1921 Juvenile Affairs Act set up mechanisms for placing white school leavers in suitable employment, while the Apprenticeship Act of 1922 put such training beyond the reach of most coloured youths by stipulating educational entry levels that very few coloured schools met, but which fell within the minimum standard set for white schools. The 1925 Wage Act subverted the ability of coloured labour to undercut white wage demands by setting high minimum wage levels in key industries. Lewis, Between the Wire and Wall, pp. 131–3, 161–3; S. Patterson, Colour and Culture in South Africa: A Study of the Status of Cape Coloured People of the Union of South Africa (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), pp. 71–2; G.V. Doxey, The Industrial Colour Bar in South Africa (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 198–9; W.H. Hutt, The Economics of the Colour Bar: A Study of the Economic Origins and Consequences of Racial Segregation in South Africa (London, André Deutsch, 1964), pp. 35–6, 74–5.

 17 L. Thompson, The Cape Coloured Franchise (Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1949) pp. 20–1, 55; G. Lewis, ‘The Reaction of the Cape “Coloureds” to Segregation’ (Ph.D. thesis, Queens University, 1984), pp. 330–1; T. Shifrin, ‘New Deal for Coloured People? A Study of National Party Policies Towards the Coloured People’ (BA Honours thesis, University of Cape Town, 1962), pp. 20–3.

 18 Van der Ross, Rise and Decline of Apartheid, Chapter 16; Lewis, Between the Wire and Wall, pp. 261–2, 267–70; du Pré, Separate but Unequal, Chapters 4–8; V. Bickford-Smith, E. van Heyningen and N. Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated Social History (Cape Town, David Philip, 1999), pp. 143–96.

 19 Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 10–25; Van der Ross, Rise and Decline of Apartheid, pp. 1–30.

 20 A number of ephemeral political organisations such as the United Afrikaner League of the late 1910s and the Afrikaanse Nasionale Bond of the latter half of the 1920s – bodies that were promoted by Cape National Party politicians hoping to win coloured electoral support – failed to subvert the dominance of the APO. M. Adhikari, ‘Abdullah Abdurahman, 1872–1940’, in They Shaped Our Century: The Most Influential South Africans of the Twentieth Century (Cape Town, Human and Rousseau, 1999), p. 438; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 124–6, 128–33, 250–6.

 21 Hommel, Capricorn Blues, pp. 65 ff.; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 179–98, 207–44; van der Ross, Rise and Decline of Apartheid, pp. 209 ff.; A. Drew, Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000), pp. 266–70.

 22 SACPO was renamed the Coloured People's Congress (CPC) in December 1959.

 23 Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 263–71; Hommel, Capricorn Blues, pp. 135–42, 157–9.

 24 For a history of the Labour Party as well as information on the Federal Party and the Coloured Representative Council (CRC), see R. du Pré, ‘Confrontation, Co-optation and Collaboration: The Response and Reaction of the Labour Party to Government Policy, 1965–1984’ (Ph.D. thesis, Rhodes University, 1994) and for a collection of relevant documents, see P. Hugo, Quislings or Realists? A Documentary Study of ‘Coloured’ Politics in South Africa (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1978), Chapters 4 and 5.

 25 The role of coloured people in the Black Consciousness movement and its history in the western Cape, neglected topics in South African historiography, are discussed in E. Messina, ‘Kleurlinge is ook Swart: Swartbewustheid in die Wes-Kaap tot 1977’, Kronos, 20 (1995), pp. 115–40.

 26 For a discussion of attitudes toward coloured identity in the anti-apartheid movement, see M. Adhikari, ‘“You Have the Right to Know”: South, 1987–1994’, in L. Switzer and M. Adhikari (eds), South Africa's Resistance Press: Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2000), pp. 349–54.

 27 For a discussion of Khoisan revivalism, see M. Besten, ‘Khoisan Revivalism and the Limits of Theory: A Preliminary Assessment’ (unpublished paper, Institute for Historical Research, University of the Western Cape, 2000). For information on the December 1st Movement, which sought to develop a sense of pride in their slave past amongst coloured people, consult Anon., ‘December 1st Movement: Retracing the Path of Memory’ (unpublished manuscript, African Studies Library, University of Cape Town, 1996).

 28 Aspects of coloured identity in the new South Africa are dealt with in W. James, D. Caliguire and K. Cullinan (eds), Now that We are Free: Coloured Communities in a Democratic South Africa (Boulder, CO, Lynne Riener, 1996) and Erasmus, Coloured by History.

 29 The works by Ziervogel, Cruse and van der Ross mentioned elsewhere in the article serve as examples of the former, whereas those of Lewis, Goldin, Hommel and du Pré would be examples of the latter.

 30 The argument presented in this article is the result of a research project that initially sought to track the evolution of coloured identity through the twentieth century. When the evidence failed to confirm the assumptions based on this orthodox approach, a reconceptualisation of the nature of coloured identity was clearly necessary. See Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 321.

 31 For some examples of the expression of these ideas by ideologues within the radical movement see B. Kies, Background of Segregation (Cape Town, Anti-CAD, 1943); W.P. van Schoor, The Origin and Development of Segregation in South Africa (Cape Town, Teachers’ League of South Africa, 1951) and K. Jordaan, ‘Jan van Riebeeck: His Place in South African History’, Discussion, 1, 5 (1952).

 32 For discussion of the denial of coloured identity in the anti-apartheid movement, see I. Van Kessel, ‘Grassroots: From Washing Lines to Utopia’, and Adhikari, ‘“You Have the Right to Know”‘, both in Switzer, and Adhikari, Resistance Press, pp. 308–10, 349–54.

 33 For detailed elaboration on these issues see M. Adhikari, ‘Fiercely Non-Racial? Discourses and Politics of Race in the Non-European Unity Movement, 1943–1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31, 2 (June 2005), pp. 403–18.

 36 South, 13 June 1991. Mitchell's Plain was a sprawling, almost exclusively working-class set of coloured housing estates with a population of perhaps half a million at the time. Spine Road, one of its main thoroughfares, was a favoured place for activists to erect barricades of burning tyres; numerous clashes between youths and police took place there.

 34 Adhikari, ‘South’, pp. 354, 367; van Kessel, ‘Grassroots’, p. 310; Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, pp. 241–97.

 35 Author's interviews with R. Seria, 16 January and 11 October 1998; and with M. Williams, 17 July 1998. Both activists were fully aware of the contradiction of maintaining a non-racial façade and targeting the coloured community for political mobilisation.

 37 For detailed examination of the coloured rejectionist movement, which draws on analyses of Educational Journal (1956–70), Grassroots (1980–90), South (1987–94) and the Black Consciousness poetry of James Matthews as case studies, see M. Adhikari, Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2005), Chapter 4.

 38 Admittedly, it may appear paradoxical to argue that wanting to associate with whiteness was a key feature of being coloured.

 42 Educational Journal, April 1939.

 39 Adhikari, Teachers' League, pp. 14–17, 22–3, 150. Of course, educated Africans often likewise shared this assimilationist hope.

 40 Adhikari, Not White Enough, pp. 72–8, 82–3, 92–4.

 41 H. Giliomee, ‘The Non-Racial Franchise and Afrikaner and Coloured Identities, 1910–1994’, African Affairs, 94, 375 (1995), pp. 199–225; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 126–30.

 43 F. Blume, ‘The Education of Coloured Children in the Urban Area of Kimberley’ (B.Ed. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1942), pp. 98–100.

 44 For two detailed case studies confirming the prevalence of these views within the coloured community, see Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, pp. 121–79. See also M. Adhikari, ‘“A Drink-Sodden Race of Bestial Degenerates”: Perceptions of Race and Class in the Educational Journal, 1915–1940’, in E. van Heyningen (ed.), Studies in the History of Cape Town, 7 (Cape Town, UCT Press in association with the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1994), pp. 109–32.

 45 Educational Journal, December 1917.

 46 In contrast to the pseudo-scientific racist theories that from the latter part of the nineteenth century propagated the idea that racial differences, especially in intellectual capacity, were immutable, earlier explanations based on environmental variation generally accepted that changes in the environment would affect both individuals and social groups, even to the extent of eliminating cultural and intellectual disparities. For evidence of moderate coloured opinion adhering to environmentalist conceptions of racial difference, see APO, 12 February 1910, and Educational Journal, June 1918, August, 1938; for further elaboration on this point see Adhikari, Not White Enough, pp. 76, 90–1.

 47 For some examples of this discourse, see John Tobin's speech reported in South African News, 28 November 2003, as well as APO, 24 May 1909, 18 December 1909; Adhikari, Teachers' League, pp. 14–15, 179–80.

 48 For some examples see APO, 31 July 1909; 3 December 1910; Educational Journal, May 1915, December 1917, November 1920, August 1922; A. Desmore, With the Second Cape Corps Through Central Africa (Cape Town, Citadel, 1920), p. 5; J.H. Rhoda, ‘A Contribution Toward the Study of Education Among the Cape Coloured People’ (B.Ed. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1929), pp. 2ff., 59. For further discussion of this issue, see Adhikari, Teachers' League, pp. 17, 47–8, 157–60. The radical minority was clearly an exception.

 49 See G. Watson, Passing for White (London, Tavistock, 1970) and B. Unterhalter, ‘Changing Attitudes to “Passing for White” in an Urban Coloured Community’, Social Dynamics, 1, 1 (1975), pp. 53–62, for case studies of the phenomenon.

 50 Analyses of coloured voting patterns in the 1994 election underplay the significance of deeper historical currents and emphasise short-term, pragmatic considerations. See James et al., Now that We are Free, Chapters 4–7; M. Eldridge and J. Seekings, ‘Mandela's Lost Province: The African National Congress and the Western Cape Electorate in the 1994 South African Elections’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 22, 4 (1996); A. Reynolds, Election ’94: South Africa (Cape Town, David Philip, 1994), pp. 192–3; R. Mattes, H. Giliomee and W. James, ‘The Election in the Western Cape’, in R.W. Johnson and L. Schlemmer (eds), Launching Democracy in South Africa: The First Open Election, April, 1994 (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 108–67; B. Pickel, Coloured Ethnicity and Identity: A Case Study in the Former Coloured Areas of the Western Cape/South Africa (Hamburg, Lit Verlag, 1997), pp. 84–101.

 51 Erasmus, Coloured by History, p. 13. Emphasis in the original.

 52 Kies, Background of Segregation, p. 5; A. La Guma, A Walk in the Night and Other Stories (London, Heinemann, 1967), p. 114.

 53 See D.B. Bosman, I.W. van der Merwe, L.W. Hiemstra, Tweetalige Woordeboek: Afrikaans-Engels/Engels-Afrikaans (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1967), pp. 117, 1088; P. Grobbelaar (ed.), Readers’ Digest Afrikaans-Engelse Woordeboek (Cape Town, Readers’ Digest Association of South Africa, 1987), pp. 88–9; J. Branford and W. Branford, A Dictionary of South African English (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 51–2; P. Silva (managing ed.), A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 115–16.

 54 N.P. van Wyk Louw, ‘Voorwoord’, in D.P. Botha, Die Opkoms van ons Derde Stand (Cape Town, Human and Rousseau, 1960), p. vi. The suffix ‘-ling’ carries connotations of objectification and emotional distancing. ‘Kleurling’ was also the official term as used in apartheid legislation and by the bureaucracy that implemented it. Hence the aversion to it of van Wyk Louw, Petersen and others.

 55 C. Ziervogel, Brown South Africa (Cape Town, Maskew Miller, 1938); Torch, 19 June 1956; James et al., Now that We are Free, pp. 60–1; G.L. Stone, ‘An Ethnographic and Socio-Semantic Analysis of Lexis Among Working-Class, Afrikaans-Speaking, Coloured Adolescents and Young Adult Males in the Cape Peninsula, 1963–1990’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991), pp. 389–90.

 56 C. Ziervogel, The Coloured People and the Race Problem (Ceres, Weber, 1936), p. 5; Adhikari, Teachers' League, pp. 13–14, 17–18, 149–50, 162–4.

 57 APO, 9 April 1910.

 58 Educational Journal, December 1920; APO, 30 October 1920.

 61 S. Field, ‘Fragile Identities: Memory, Emotion and Coloured Residents of Windermere’, in Erasmus, Coloured by History, p. 105. The references to the ape with the golden ring echoes the well-known Afrikaans proverb ‘Al dra ’n aap ’n goue ring, bly hy steeds ’n lelike ding’ (Though an ape may wear a golden ring, he remains an ugly thing).

 59 APO, 17 June 1911; M. Adhikari, Straatpraatjes: Language, Politics and Popular Culture in Cape Town (Pretoria, van Schaik, 1997), p. 97.

 60 Ziervogel, The Coloured People and the Race Problem, pp. 5, 6.

 62 Organisations within the radical tradition are obvious exceptions. Although, for example, the Anti-CAD was effectively, and SACPO exclusively, coloured in membership, their ultimate goals were broadly socialist.

 63 Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 126–33, 237–52; du Pré, ‘Confrontation, Co-optation and Collaboration’, Chapter 4; Hugo, Quislings or Realists, Chapters 4, 5; Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, pp. 122–45.

 64 J. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 19.

 65 For discussion of official definitions of the term ‘coloured’, see A.J. Venter, Coloured: A Profile of Two Million South Africans (Cape Town, Human and Rousseau, 1974), pp. 1–2; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, p. 3; Patterson, Colour and Culture, pp. 361–3.

 66 U.G.54-1937, Report of the Commission of Enquiry Regarding the Cape Coloured Population of the Union, pp. 7–10; R.P.38/1976, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Matters Relating to the Coloured Population Group, pp. 275, 277.

 67 Erasmus, Coloured by History, p. 17.

 68 Quoted in B. McLennan, Apartheid: The Lighter Side (Cape Town, Chameleon Press, 1990), p. 59.

 69 Unrecorded conversation with a middle-aged coloured man translated from Cape Vernacular Afrikaans.

 70 For another example of this metaphor see Z. Erasmus, ‘Some Kind of White, Some Kind of Black’, in B. Hesse (ed.), Un/settled Multiculturalisms (London, Zed Books, 2000), p. 199. See also K. Jachoutek, ‘Mixed Bredie in the Creole Cuisine: Cultural Drivers in the Search for “Coloured” Identity at the Cape’ (unpublished paper, University of Cape Town, 2003).

 71 S.G. Millin, God's Stepchildren (Cape Town, AD Donker, 1924).

 72 J. Lelyveld, Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White (London, Michael Joseph, 1985), pp. 173–4. Emphasis in the original. In a written assignment on coloured identity, an African undergraduate student at UCT confirmed that in her Kroonstad township community coloured people were colloquially referred to as ‘ma 0.5’, echoing the common term ‘half-caste’ (unpublished paper, in possession of the author).

 73 See Patterson, Colour and Culture, p. 199; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 9–10, 128, 131; Venter, Two Million South Africans, pp. 2, 14.

 74 For a brief description of this act and its various amendments see M. Horrell, Legislation and Race Relations: A Summary of the Main South African Laws which Affect Race Relations (Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1971), pp. 9–12.

 75 For further discussion of colouredness associated with shame, see Z. Wicomb, ‘Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa’, in D. Attridge and R. Jolly (eds), Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy, 1970–1995 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 91–107.

 76 Erasmus, Coloured by History, p. 17.

 77 A UCT student, as part of a third-year History research project, did a word-association exercise in which people were asked to respond spontaneously and instantly to his utterance of the word ‘coloured’. Virtually all of the responses were negative, the most common of which was ‘Gam’ (Ham), the stereotype for the loud, uncouth, working-class coloured person. See S. Ariefdien, ‘Coloured Identity and Politics in the Western Cape from the APO to the 1994 Elections’ (unpublished paper, University of Cape Town, 2003). For further information on the Gam stereotype, see Adhikari, ‘Sons of Ham’ and ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 58.

 78 APO, 24 May 1909. See also M. Adhikari, ‘“The Product of Civilisation in its Most Repellent Manifestation”: Ambiguities in the Racial Perceptions of the APO, 1909–1923’, Journal of African History, 38, 2 (1997), pp. 283–300.

 79 Erasmus, Coloured by History, p. 13. Although voiced in the context of the added dimension of the gendered stereotyping of coloured women, the quote nevertheless holds true generally.

 82 S. Ariefdien interview with A. Boesak, September 2003.

 80 For a typical example of this sort of discourse, see H.P. Cruse, Die Opheffing van die Kleurlingbevolking: Deel I: Aanvangsjare, 1652–1795 (Stellenbosch, Christen Studentevereniging, 1947). See also C. Hendricks, ‘“Ominous” Liaisons: Tracing the Interface Between “Race” and “Sex” at the Cape’, in Erasmus, Coloured by History, p. 35.

 81 J.S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1968), p. 282. This book was first published by Longmans Green & Co. in 1939.

 83 S.G. Millin, The South Africans (London, Constable & Co., 1926), p. 276.

 84 See A. Smith, ‘The Hotnot Syndrome: Myth-Making in South African School Textbooks’, Social Dynamics, 9, 2 (1983), as well as R. van der Ross, Up From Slavery: Slaves at the Cape – Their Origins, Treatment and Contribution (Cape Town, Ampersand Press, 2005), p. iii; Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, pp. 55–59.

 85 This incident was related to me by a confidant of the politician who accompanied him on the tour some time during the course of 2000. The informant wishes to remain anonymous.

 86 For a sense of popular debate around the issue, see ‘Painful Discovery of a Rejected Moedertaal’ and ‘Boere Don't Own Afrikaans’, in Cape Times, 30 October 1996. For academic works in which this argument is made, see A. Davids, ‘Words the Cape Slaves Made: A Socio-Linguistic Study’, South African Journal of Linguistics, 8 (1990), pp. 1–24; H. den Besten, ‘From Khoekhoe Foreigner Talk via Hottentot Dutch to Afrikaans: The Creation of a Novel Grammar’, in M. Putz and R. Derven (eds), Wheels within Wheels: Papers of the Duisburg Symposium on Pidgin and Creole Languages (New York, P. Lang, 1989), pp. 207–49; P. Roberge, ‘The Formation of Afrikaans’, in R. Mestrie (ed.), Language and Social History: Studies in South African Socio-Linguistics (Cape Town, David Philip, 1995), pp. 68–88.

 87 APO, 13 August 1910. See also APO, 8 April 1911, 10 August 1912; E. Maurice, ‘The Development of Policy in Regard to the Education of Coloured Pupils at the Cape, 1880–1940’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1966), pp. 332–34; Adhikari, Not White Enough, pp. 69–70.

 88 Educational Journal, June 1918; Adhikari, Teachers' League, pp. 102–3.

 89 Author's unrecorded casual conversation with a coloured businessman.

 90 The year was 1976 and I was teaching at Bonteheuwel High School in the working-class suburb of Bonteheuwel, Cape Town. The name of the inspector has long since escaped me. A common subtext to comments of this sort is that it is not unexpected that a ‘bastardised’ people would speak a ‘bastardised’ language.

 91 Cape Standard, 9 January 1940, 16 January 1940; Torch, 5 January 1948, 25 March 1952; Muslim News, 29 November 1968; Cape Herald, 20 December 1969; D.C. Martin, Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town, Past and Present (Cape Town, David Philip, 1999), pp. 117–19, 126–30; S. Jeppie, ‘Popular Culture and Carnival in Cape Town: The 1940s and 1950s’, in S. Jeppie and C. Soudien (eds), The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present (Cape Town, Buchu Books, 1990), p. 74; L. Baxter, ‘History, Identity and Meaning: Cape Town's Coon Carnival in the 1960s and 1970s’ (MA thesis, UCT, 1996), pp. 157, 172, 181–82.

 92 For detailed case studies confirming this, see Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, especially Chapter 3.

 93 A. Drew, ‘Social Mobilisation and Racial Capitalism in South Africa’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, 1991), pp. 476–7; van der Ross, Rise and Decline of Apartheid, pp. 211–15.

 94 For a study of marginality within the coloured community of Durban, see H.F. Dickie-Clark, The Marginal Situation: A Sociological Study of a Coloured Group (New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1996).

 95 Compare figures provided in Statistics South Africa, 2000, 1.4, which summarises basic population census data from 1904 onwards.

 96 According to South African Census, 1996, p. 6, 59.6 per cent of coloured people lived in the Western Cape and formed a majority of 54.2 per cent of the population in the province.

 97 Thompson, Coloured Franchise, p. 55; Patterson, Colour and Culture, pp. 35–36; Shifrin, ‘New Deal for Coloured People’, p. 58.

 98 Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, pp. 46–63; Adhikari, Teachers' League, pp. 23–4.

 99 For further confirmation of this, see Adhikari, ‘Continuity and Change’, especially Chapter 3; Lawrence, ‘Search for Identity’, Chapter 6.

 100 Sun, 13 May 1938.

 101 This expression appears to be a version of the more conventional ‘ham in the sandwich’ which is also meant to convey the idea of something being caught between two more powerful forces. It is appropriate that relatively expensive ham is substituted with jam, a staple in many working-class coloured homes. In my experience this expression was also taken up by conservative Indians fearful of majority rule. See the quotation attributed to an anonymous Indian person in J. Crwys-Williams, The Penguin Dictionary of South African Quotations (Sandton, Penguin, 1999), p. 134.

 102 For an analysis of coloured identity in post-apartheid South Africa see M. Adhikari, ‘Not Black Enough: Reflections on Changing Expressions of Coloured Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, South African Historical Journal, 51 (2004), pp. 167–78.

 103 See Adhikari, ‘Not Black Enough’, pp. 171–3 for further elaboration on this last point.