Shahied Joseph
It baffles me. In 2025, we have Coloured people who reject the very label that defines a community, and therefore its struggles, its culture, and its history.
Some say it’s just a label. I say it’s more, it’s a lived experience and the future of this world. And when you deny it, you deny the pain, the progress and the possibility of real change.
Yusuf Daniels via Living Lekka recently highlighted heated arguments between grown Coloured folks and Fadiel Adams president of the National Coloured Congress.
Yusuf made a fair point: Fadiel’s tone may be off, but the man’s intention is solid.
I once clashed with Fadiel on Facebook. Yes, his delivery can be abrasive. But his fight? His fight is real.
Misplaced Focus
In the past year, as a member of Parliament, Fadiel has made an undeniable impact, calling out corrupt cops, even revealing that his life was under threat. Days later, bullets flew through the communities on the Cape Flats again.
Coloured people killing Coloured people. Children dying, breadwinners gunned down, mothers forming support groups to cope with the loss of teenage boys.
There has been blood on the streets, for decades. And what was the focus? Fadiel’s “tone.”
Not the massacres. Not the system. Not the person he alleges put a hit on him, no, his manners are highlighted.
The Coloured Identity Question
One person noted, “I’m not Coloured, I’m South African,” among other insipid comments.
That kind of “neutrality” and “positivity” is dangerous.
There is a Coloured community. A tribe. A people. And this community needs urgent help. Denying our identity doesn’t absolve the problem; it worsens it.
By distancing yourself, you’re not rising above the struggle, you’re walking away from it.
White South Africans, by and large, don’t face what we face. Indian and Black communities, too, have the same challenges with alcohol abuse, drug use and gun violence.
I identify with the Cape Flats, with Reiger Park, Poort, the Floors, Wentworth. Not just because of my skin colour, but with my soul. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. These are my people.
And no, this isn’t to say our pain is deeper than Black or Indian people. It’s to say our wounds need their own healing strategy. We need targeted focus, not diluted sympathy.
Yet here we are, critiquing Fadiel Adams’s delivery while kids die in crossfires, boys are groomed to kill, young girls are…
ALSO READ: THE COLOURED DECOY – How Violence Is Used to Distract Us and Protect Political Power
Coloured Identity Was Not a Choice
Meanwhile, those truly responsible, the architects of poverty and violence, still enjoy the fruits of a system born in 1948.
Your Coloured Identity wasn’t a choice. It was shaped by history. But your response to it is a choice.
You can embrace it and help your people rise, or you can ignore it, and read weekly, no daily, about the streets of death in South Africa.
