Coloureds – the most authentic SA citizens

This article was written by famous South African journalist Max du Preez and published in The Star newspaper recently. It has been copied below for your perusal and comment. The original article can be found by clicking the link below:
Coloureds – the most authentic SA citizens

Publicly many, possibly even most, of them deny they are a definable ethnic group. They occupy an often uncomfortable space between those who have political power now and those who gave up their political dominance 11 years ago.

They only receive special attention from powerful political parties when their votes are sought during election times.

In our strange society we call them coloureds. If we want to be extra-sensitive, we call them “coloureds”, “so-called coloureds” or “bruinmense” (brown people). Outside the big cities they mostly call themselves Kleurlinge.

The vast majority of them have the “language of the former oppressor” as their mother tongue.

During the recent local elections the official opposition used a slogan often heard from these people after 1994: Before liberation we were not white enough, after liberation we are not black enough.

It is not politically correct to talk about this group of South Africans. It makes everybody uncomfortable. It is certainly very un-PC for me as a white Afrikaner male to write about them in this way.

Many of the “coloured” middle class and elite also do not like talking about themselves as a group. In the process we avoid addressing some serious problems in our society.

But “the coloureds” are in the news again. Gang violence is once again disturbing the peace in predominantly “coloured” areas in the Cape Peninsula. Seven people were shot dead during the last two weeks, schools in some areas are empty and the communities now fear an escalation as gangsters threaten revenge attacks.

Has anybody ever done a proper study of why we do not have a gangster problem in the white or black communities, only in “coloured” areas? And why we have not allocated resources to address the problem?

Black South Africans often state openly that “coloureds” did not suffer as much as they did during apartheid – they did not have to suffer Bantu Education, they were not told that they are not South Africans but citizens of Bantustans, and they did not have to carry pass books. As a result, “coloureds” are often not deemed worthy of affirmative action or black economic empowerment.The media adviser of Cape Town’s former mayor blatantly called them a group of culturally inferior drunks. He was gently let go for jeopardising the ANC’s election prospects in Cape Town.

Many otherwise sensitive and balanced black personalities have spoken or written in recent years about how racist Cape Town was. They rarely saw black people in restaurants and other public places, they say. What they mean is that one mostly sees “coloureds” besides white people on the streets in Cape Town.

My ward councillor in the place where I live is also the local ANC chairperson. He is a “brown person” and a man of good standing in the community. I saw him electioneering before the local elections and it struck me that he called all white people Mr or Mrs, and they all simply called him John. They like him, but it never occurred to them to call him Mr October.

The neo-Afrikaners who have embarked on a new struggle for a privileged position for their language have rediscovered the “coloureds”. “Coloureds” give their struggle for Afrikaans a bit of respectability. In the storm around Stellenbosch University’s language identity, the interests of “the poor coloured kids” who would suffer being taught in English was used as one of the main arguments.

History will one day struggle to explain the dominant attitudes towards “coloureds”. Among them are people who carry the genes of the first Africans, the Khoisan. Among them are also people who carry the genes of the slaves brought from Africa and the East.

But they also share a large chunk of the same gene pools the rest of us in South Africa come from. In short, “coloureds” are the first and most authentic South Africans.

Because of their history, they never had the social or cultural cohesion groups such as the Xhosa, Zulu or Tswana had. When they were humiliated and subjugated by the whites, they had no tribal structures or cultures to seek refuge in. They lost their original languages and instead started a new one they could use to communicate with the white overlords. That language was later co-opted by the Afrikaners as their own and symbol of their own narrow nationalism.

Yes, it is uncomfortable to talk about this group, because in many senses they are not really a group as Afrikaners or Zulu-speakers are a group. It certainly would be outrageous for me to try and speak on their behalf.

But as an ordinary South African I can ask the rest of the nation to reflect about these compatriots and our attitudes towards them. We give them a separate identity because they do not fit into our narrow racial and ethnic compartmentalisation.

We support and understand a new black assertiveness and we sometimes have empathy with the feelings of marginalisation the former white ruling class have. “Coloureds” just make us feel uncomfortable.