Advancing Black solidarity in South Africa while Coloured and Black: reflections during-COVID-19

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has presented South Africans with an unprecedented period through which race, gender, violence, socio-economic circumstances and identity politics have been visiblized. This paper uses autoethnography to explore some of the experiences I have had because of my legal classification as a Coloured woman in post-Apartheid South Africa specifically during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. My selective narratives focus on how COVID-19 has amplified hostility and divisive politics, using negative stereotypes and perceptions. I interpret my selected narratives through Black Consciousness to illustrate how my legal identity as a Coloured woman has been saturated with colonial and Apartheid knowledge. By drawing attention to the fictitious legal classification of Coloured through a Black Consciousness lens, I advance the need to re-humanize myself as both a Coloured and Black woman. More importantly, I emphasize the need to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a space for forging Black solidarity and dismantling divisive politics among Black people.

KEYWORDS:

• Coloured
• COVID-19
• Black Consciousness
• South Africa
• autoethnography

Acknowledgments

This work is based on the research supported by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and are not the official position of any institution.

Additional information

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Danille Elize Arendse

Danille Elize Arendse obtained a BA (psychology), BA Honours degree (Psychology) and MA (Research Psychology) degree from the University of the Western Cape. She joined the SANDF in 2011 as a uniformed member and became employed as a Research Psychologist at the Military Psychological Institute (MPI). She completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Pretoria in 2018. She holds a Major rank and was the Research Psychology Intern Supervisor and Coordinator at MPI. She is also a Research Associate for the Department of Psychology at the University of Pretoria and an Accredited Conflict Dynamics Mediator. In 2022, she was awarded the Diverse Black Africa research grant and travel grant that is affiliated with Michigan State University. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVREQ) at Stellenbosch University. She is also currently funded under the NIHSS/SU prestigious postdoctoral fellowship. She has presented and published papers both locally and internationally. Her research interests include ‘Coloured’ identity, mentoring, psychometric assessments, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, military, wellbeing, gender and sexuality and decolonial research.