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Coloured identity in post-apartheid South Africa
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Coloured identity in post-apartheid South Africa
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Content
COLOURED IDENTITY IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
by
Leila Dee Dougan
___________________________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
August 2013
Copyright 2013 Leila Dee Dougan
ii
DEDICATION
To my family.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract v
Coloured Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa 1
Bibliography 21
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my mother, Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, and my father,
Cecil Dougan, for all the hours spent calling, emailing, texting, passing on opinions,
information, ideas and memories. Thank you to my uncle, Alex Dougan, for getting all
those stories out of Pa. Thank you Professor Sasha Anawalt, Professor Michael Parks and
Professor Erna Smith for your unwavering support; despite all my changes and self-
doubt, you have been pillars in this process of self-discovery. Thank you Chris Van Wyk,
what an honor having my work read and edited by an acclaimed South African writer.
Thank you James Matthews for having such a profound influence on my identity through
your artistic expression. Thank you Jeanine Benjamin for sharing your poetry, and Ian
Bull for your words of support. Thank you to my cousins, aunties and uncles. Finally,
thank you to my sister, Amandla Ellen Dougan, for encouraging me to record our family
history, this is just the beginning.
v
ABSTRACT
What does it mean to be Coloured in post-apartheid South Africa and how can
Coloured identity be defined within this democratic setting? During apartheid, Coloured
people were not considered white enough. Post-1994, we are not considered black
enough. I come from a family that lived through apartheid, where the philosophy of black
consciousness ignited an identity of ‘blackness,’ which remains the core of my Coloured
identity. This essay considers how Coloured people have to redefine themselves post-
1994 by reaching beyond the definitions imposed by the apartheid regime. By sifting
through my own family history, I begin the process of deciding what to embrace and
what to leave behind, pasting together a collage of cultural clippings that can begin to
define my Coloured identity.
1
COLOURED IDENTITY IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
A four-part black and white photograph has always been displayed in our family
living room: a David Goldblatt landscape of the famous Cape Town township, District
Six. It is a panoramic image of destruction, neatly separated by four silver frames.
Established as the Sixth Municipal District of the Cape in 1867, known to locals as
‘District Six,’ the mixed community consisted of freed slaves, immigrants, artisans, and
laborers, all of whom were forcibly removed after it was declared a white area under the
government imposed Group Areas Act of 1950.
1
The photograph reveals the endless
heaps of rubble that remained once the bulldozers tore down an entire community. The
iconic Table Mountain stands tall in the far distance, overlooking the devastation.
Fragments of brick, wood and glass are lumped together with arbitrary artifacts that once
shaped the homes of 2,000 families. A lonely figure walks through the debris, overlooked
by St Mark’s Anglican Church, one of the few buildings to survive the demolition.
I will not delve into the history of District Six, or the significance of its
destruction at the hands of the apartheid government. My interest lies with the image as a
starting point, a metaphor, for exploring the destruction and construction of Coloured
identity in post-apartheid South Africa, by digging through the debris of my own family
history and pulling out the fragments that remain in the rubble of my identity 19 years
into South Africa’s democracy.
The lineage of those referred to as Coloured can be traced back to the colonial era.
“With the arrival of the first white settlers an ongoing process of absorption and
1. Kay McCormick, Language in Cape Town’s District Six (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
2
miscegenation between European colonists, the indigenous Khoikhoi peoples of the
Cape, slaves, and the so-called Bantu-speaking people gradually created a heterogeneous
group of mixed people later to be called coloured.”
2
I am the result of the amalgamation
of settlers, indigenous African people and those who were brought to the Cape by way of
the slave trade, the ultimate Cape Coloured with San, Xhosa, Irish, Scottish, Madagascan
and Indian blood coursing through my veins. Although there is a long cultural history of
Cape Coloured people, it was the apartheid government that defined and formalized the
Colored population as a racial group.
Apartheid was as a system of racial segregation that was carried out through
legislation passed by the National Party government that came into power in 1948.
Segregation was enforced according to four distinct racial groups: ‘white,’ ‘black,’
‘Coloured’ and ‘Asian,’ with the objective to repress those classified as ‘non-white’ to
ensure the superiority of the white minority. The Population Registration Act of 1950
3
cemented racial classifications and defined a Coloured person as ‘not a white person or a
native.’
4
This description became increasingly problematic as those of mixed race varied
in facial features, hair texture and skin tone. Many families were separated by this law as
some were light-skinned and could be classified as ‘white,’ while other members of the
2. Alan Mabing, “Comprehensive Segregation: The Origins of the Group Areas
Act and Its Planning Apparatuses,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18 (1992): 412,
http://www.millersville.edu/~schaffer/courses/su2003/soc329/Mabin.pdf.
3. Allegra Louw, “Coloured Identity: South Africa. A select bibliography” (Cape
Town: University of Cape Town, UCT Libraries, 2010), http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/wp-
content/uploads/asl/colouredid.pdf.
4. Zimitri Erasmus, Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on
Coloured Identities in Cape Town (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2001).
3
family may have been darker in tone and classified as ‘black’ or ‘Coloured.’ Under the
Group Areas Act they would have had to live in separate communities, with limited
interaction due to segregated schools, hospitals, libraries, certain churches and public
amenities, for instance.
My parents lived through these difficult times and have vivid memories of the
apartheid era, which permeated every aspect of their lives, and shaped their identity. The
creation of their racial identities has had a lasting effect on my understanding of my own
race, culture and identity.
I was eight years old when the African National Congress (ANC) came into
power. The three-day voting period in April 1994 saw millions of South Africans form
long snaking lines to cast their vote. The majority of voters were doing so for the first
time, inching forward to the polls, democratic freedom merely hours away after decades
of injustice. My older sister, Amandla, and I watched history unfold from our family’s
tiny living room flat in Cape Town. Nelson Mandela’s face beamed at us from the
television screen, while the ANC’s lead grew with each ballot that was counted. That was
nineteen years ago, as the ANC birthed our liberated nation, a non-racial society that
promised ‘A better life for all.’
5
The country was giddy with celebration as we welcomed
an end to an oppressive regime that dictated where you could live, what school you could
attend, whether you could vote and who you could marry based solely on the color of
your skin.
5. African National Congress, “1994 National Election Manifesto. Together we
have won the right for all South Africans to vote,” accessed June 23, 2013,
http://www.anc.org.za/centenary/main.php?id=262&p=5.
4
I do not recall any overt discrimination while growing up, but rather a series of
subtle moments that made me aware of my race: not wanting to get my blow-dried hair
wet around my white friends; for fear of it frizzing and looking different; refusing to go
to the beach with my schoolmates because I did not want my skin to darken; feeling
anxious about bringing home a white boyfriend.
These experiences are the remnants of apartheid, the effects of racial inequality,
tied up in my South African heritage that can be traced through my lineage.
My Grandfather the Xhosa
True to the history of the Cape, my grandfather, John Dougan, is a Xhosa man
with an Irish surname, classified as Coloured by the apartheid regime. His grandchildren
refer to him simply as ‘Pa,’ a grumpy old man with a mischievous sense of humor and
many secrets. When in a good mood he will poke fun at your hair or your weight. When
in a bad mood he will complain about aches and pains, poor service at the local clinic and
the current government.
He lives alone in the suburb of Montana, situated on the border of the Cape Town
township, Gugulethu, an area formerly reserved for black migrant laborers in the 1960s.
6
His three-bedroomed home has become a lonely space after the death of Sarah Dougan in
2011, his wife and my grandmother, who we referred to as ‘Ma.’ They were married in
the oldest Anglican cathedral in southern Africa, St George’s Cathedral, a Victorian
6. Quinton Mtyala, “Looking back at Gugs…forged under apartheid, but now a
testament to survival,” Cape Times, October 15, 2009,
http://www.sahistory.org.za/places/gugulethu.
5
masterpiece built from sandstone in 1834.
7
They were married for more than 60 years and
had 10 children: Colin, Raymond, Christian, Kenneth, Cecil (my father), Jenny, Maryan,
Sylvia, Margret and Alexander.
Pa’s usual spot is his antique ‘ball and claw’ dining room table, from which he
can keep watch over his collie, Lassie, and any activity that may take place in his quiet,
tiny living room. The mantelpiece, his wooden coffee table and glass display cabinet are
crammed with rose-printed teacups, crochet doilies and plastic flowers. Unframed
photographs of grandchildren and deceased family members are placed arbitrarily
between small glass vases and empty fruit bowls, supporting paper memories that curl at
the edges. One shows an already greying Ma greeting a cruise captain on one of the many
voyages she had taken abroad. She lived to travel. Another sun-bleached photograph
shows a smiling four year-old Samantha Scholtz, my younger cousin, who moved to
England with her family at the age of 9. The clock ticks away the seconds loudly, with
the hourly chimes being the only distractions between long-distance phone calls from
loved ones scattered across the world.
Alexander Dougan, Pa’s youngest son, settled in Switzerland in the early 1990s.
His youngest daughter, Margaret Whyburd, lives in New Zealand. Although their reasons
for moving were not politically motivated, they sought economic opportunities in other
countries that had not been available to them at home during the apartheid era.
7. Anglican Diocese, Cape Town, “Cape Town, Cathedral Church of St George
the Martyr,” December 18, 2007,
http://www.capetown.anglican.org/view.asp?ItemID=7&tname=tblComponent6&oname
=Parish&pg=front.
6
The tablecloth that covers Pa’s dinner table is always slightly worn. Stains from
the previous meal of chicken curry and beetroot soak into the fabric while the chunky
television in the corner blares in the background: Al Jazeera, wildlife program 50/50,
local soap opera 7 de Laan. His daughter and her husband, Jenny and Thurston Brown,
live a few streets away. After work they bring Pa pots of hot dinner and converse about
their daily activities or the headlines in the Cape Times.
My grandfather was born in the Eastern Cape; formerly known as the Transkei, a
homeland to which black African people were settled, or rather, banished. He hails from
the little village of Tabankulu; the Xhosa name translates to ‘large mountain.’ Amandla
and I visited in the summer of 2012 with my father, Cecil Dougan. We drove through an
obstacle course of potholed roads, which zigzagged through villages where local thumbs
hitched rides between towns. Tiny huts basked in the sunshine, which overlooked infinite
scenes of rolling hills, scraggly mountains and gathering clouds in the rainy season. Red
road signs along the way warned motorists of crossing cows.
Tabankulu greeted us with trash heaps and broken glass from discarded beer
bottles that could be traced back to the numerous liquor stalls that lined the main road.
Pools of stinking stagnant water marked the open fields and burnt tree trunks stood pitch
black and lifeless against the winter sky. The area was devoid of fruit and berries that
once grew wildly and fed the natural birdlife; a sign of poverty both of the land and the
people.
My grandfather was born to an Irish settler, John Robert Dougan, and a Xhosa
woman, known only by her first name, Anna, in January 1924. Pa’s father abandoned him
early on in life and he grew up in Tabankulu with his mother, a strong and elegant
7
woman, who was a schoolteacher in the local community. Pa and his mother
communicated in their first language, Xhosa. She did not speak a word of English. He
learnt the language of the settlers at a Scottish-run mission school.
8
His Xhosa mother, Xhosa language and Xhosa cultural background placed him on
a lower social and economic rung, as there was an attached inferiority to blackness,
according to the South African value system. Coloured communities in the big cities
frowned upon the language and thus he did not teach his children his mother tongue or
ancestral roots. As an adult, Pa lived in Bonteheuwel, a Coloured township, which
became the dumping ground for those classified as ‘non-white’ by the apartheid
government. Anna remained in the Bantustans of the Transkei. Once a year he would
pack a suitcase, leaving behind his wife and 10 children, and board a train to visit his
mother in the Eastern Cape.
9
South Africans like my grandfather did not deny their heritage because they did
not want to be black, rather it reflected a desperate struggle for a better way of life. He
chose opportunity for himself and his children, communicating with them in English and
Afrikaans, while chipping away at his lineage. Pa was a qualified bricklayer, which
meant that he was “a better paid person of colour.”
10
He worked with black African men
who would swap stories in their mother tongue, oblivious that he could understand their
8. Alexander Dougan, e-mail interview with author, February 24, 2013.
9. Cecil Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 10, 2013.
10. Ibid.
8
conversations.
11
This rejection of blackness spoke to his ambition because it paved the
way for social and economic mobility. Had he lived in a society that treated its citizens
equally, he would not have found it necessary to hide his lineage.
Apartheid Did Not Affect Me
My grandfather was 24 when apartheid was formalized, and lived through to its
end. But he claims proudly that “apartheid never affected me,” with one exception. He
recalled a time when, as a young man, he was traveling by train from Durban to
Kimberly. The train stopped at one of the big stations along the way and he disembarked
to purchase a pack of cigarettes. He found himself in an area reserved ‘for whites only,’
and on the way back to the train was confronted by a police officer who demanded to
know what he was doing there. He explained his purchase and the officer let him go.
“That’s the only encounter I ever had with apartheid,” he said.
12
Many people from his
generation, and some even younger, make this claim. However he could not live where
he chose, have a better education than he did, have a representative in Parliament, speak
his mind or open his own business in town. The insidiousness of apartheid defined who
you were without you even realizing its detrimental effects if you played by its unequal
rules.
Pa’s anecdote is a significant one. In Coloured communities taking a train to
Kimberly often meant you were changing your racial status. Mixed-race and white people
in this area were almost indistinguishable, and so it was easy to blend, mimic and
ultimately become part of the privileged white race. However, my grandfather retained
11. Cecil Dougan, e-mail interview with author, June 19, 2013.
12. John Dougan, telephone interview with author, February 21, 2013.
9
his Coloured classification. The policeman may have overlooked the ‘offense’ due to the
way in which Pa carries himself, with great dignity — a God-fearing man who is never
caught without a pressed shirt and neatly pleated grey pants. Our family would say that
he is the kind of man who would eat finger food with a knife and fork.
My father and his siblings grew up in a devout Christian household where the
smell of curry spices and the sound of hummed hymns would travel from the kitchen
where Ma would be preparing their evening meal. Sunday mass was an occasion with
pantyhose and skirts for the girls, starched slacks and shirts for the boys. Hands pressed
together and heads bowed to the bleeding Jesus on the altar. My father explained his
exposure to white people while growing up: “The only white contact I had was with
priests and clergy, people who had some form of compassion or wanted to reach out with
some friendliness. But those were very patronizing relationships.” My grandmother
worked as a domestic worker for a white family. “Ma worked in white homes and
thought that they had the key to life and love so that was some programming which I had
to shake off and made me very angry. She of course didn’t know better, that was very
negative,” he said.
13
My father only began to formulate his own racial identity at the age of 23 when he
met my mother, Mary-Ann Daniels. My mother was the reason my father became
politically aware. She shaped his racial identity by introducing him to the philosophy of
black consciousness. “When I met your mother we discussed black ideology. I liked the
13. Cecil Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 10, 2013.
10
idea of a Black Nationalist movement because I believe that the country belongs to
blacks, not to whites,” he said.
14
My Mother the Revolutionary
My mother was a Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) activist during the
liberation movement and worked alongside anti-apartheid activist Stephen Bantu Biko
during her days as a student at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). While the
ANC was preaching multiracialism and multiculturalism, inviting people of all racial
backgrounds to join in its struggle, the BCM was a grassroots social movement that
rejected what they considered the ‘condescending values’ of white liberalism and worked
to spread the ideology of black pride.
15
The BCM believed that all those classified as
African, Coloured and Indian could define themselves as black and in the process reject
the ‘non-white’ label, imposed under apartheid laws.
16
The movement sought to resist the
class differences imposed by the government, which were designed to create friction and
divide the population. Coloured people could find higher paying jobs, more money was
supplied to their schools, and they had better access to education compared to black
Africans, for example, however all those classified as ‘non-white’ were oppressed. The
goal of the BCM was to unify all black people, regardless of class or culture, creating
solidarity through black identity.
14. Ibid.
15. South African History Online, “Introduction: Black Consciousness
Movement,” accessed June 20, 2013, http://www.sahistory.org.za/introduction-black-
consciousness-movement.
16. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, e-mail interview with author, June 21, 2013.
11
“Black Consciousness is an attitude of mind and a way of life...Its essence is the
realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the
cause of their oppression — the blackness of their skins — and to operate as a group to
rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude,” Biko wrote.
“Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards
emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use
your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.”
17
My mother organized underground meetings and hid banned literature on behalf
of her friends and colleagues whose homes were routinely raided in the middle of the
night by the security police. Her social circle consisted of poets and artists, photographers
and militant academics who were active in the struggle. She credits her political
upbringing to her father, my maternal grandfather, Manuel Daniels, the descendent of a
Madagascan slave and a Scotsman.
18
“He raised our political awareness from a young age. My father always brought
our attention to people like the U.S Olympic track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos. I
remember him opening the newspaper and showing us a picture of them with a huge
smile on his face. He kept a clipping of these guys standing on the podium at the 1968
Olympics raising their clenched fists in a black power salute. I don’t remember his
comments save for the words ‘black power,’ sentiments wasted on me at the time. But
clearly they had an impact of some sort, hence my later affiliation with the BCM
17. Bantu Steven Biko, “The Definition of Black Consciousness,” AZAPO:
Azanian People’s Organisation, December 1971, http://www.azapo.org.za/links/bcc.htm.
18. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, e-mail interview with author, June 21, 2013.
12
philosophy. So my father created a sense of black consciousness with us from a young
age,” she said.
19
Manuel liked and disliked all people equally. “My father could speak seven
different languages, including black African languages. It would be no surprise for us to
come home and my father would be having a hearty chat with the milkman, or the ice
cream vendor who was inevitably black African,” my mother recalls. “He would be
sitting having tea with them in the lounge, speaking to them in their own tongue. He was
equally comfortable with white traveling salespeople, the English and the Italians who
would sell their wares to the working class. He taught us equality, by his own conduct.”
My mother’s awareness of her blackness came at a young age, while working as a
kitchen hand for a white family.
“I was about 10 years old at the time and I would clean the cups, lay the table for
tea, and clean up the kitchen,” she told me. “One day the madam of the house, an English
woman, asked me to clean and pack the dressing table in her son’s room. Wesley was his
name. She was sitting down and showing me what to do, so she opens the dresser and she
says to me, ‘Look at this child’s drawers. For a white child these drawers are rather
untidy.’ In my mind I thought, ‘does she think that because I am not white that my
drawers are untidy?’”
20
Her political consciousness touched every aspect of her life. It paved the way for
her occupation in the world of finance, an ambition established while working at a retail
store. “I was in high school at the time and I was working in the admin department over
19. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, telephone interview with author, April 1, 2013.
20. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 18, 2013.
13
my holiday. There were all these white women working in this department and they were
all flapping about because the auditors were coming to audit their books,” she said,
laughing. “So I decided I wanted to become an auditor because I wanted white people to
be jumping about when I come and check their books someday.”
21
Studying finance at UWC led to her becoming treasurer for the South African
Student’s Organization (SASO) in the Western Cape. Spearheaded by Biko, SASO was
formed by a body of politically active students who resisted the apartheid regime by
spreading the ideology of black consciousness. My mother said that SASO started the
wave of student activism on the campus and out of that activism the Student
Representative Council (SRC) was born.
22
“The university administration would not accept it. They said the SRC we had
voted for was illegitimate, so we took the administration to court. Due to the tension
between the students who wanted an SRC and the university administration there was a
lot of student revolt and upheaval and they expelled the lot of us in 1973. Members of the
student body were continually harassed by the State Security Police, served with banning
orders, placed under house arrest, as well as imprisoned for their political beliefs and
community activism. The entire UWC student body was expelled due to the political
activity that took place on the campus,” she said.
23
Having been expelled from university, and refusing to re-apply, my mother
continued her studies via distance learning at the University of South Africa (Unisa).
21. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, telephone interview with author, April 1, 2013.
22. Ibid.
23. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, e-mail interview with author, June 21, 2013.
14
During this period she served her articleship with a local firm of auditors. Upon
completion she worked as an account and tax consultant to small business operations and
community-based organizations, which is when she and my father met.
24
He recalled their first meeting. “I went to visit a friend in Mitchells Plain and she
was there. She was doing books for a friends business. He introduced us and she asked if
she could have a ride home. So I took her home and said I was going to call her and I
didn’t call her for two weeks and she then called me for a date.” They were married in
1981, two years after meeting.
Power to the People
My parents would attend anti-apartheid marches and demonstrations, raising
clenched fists and shouting “Amandla,” a Zulu name which means “power to the people”
and that is usually given to a male child. They named their first-born daughter after the
cry — my older sister, Amandla.
She and I were brought up on the political literature of Biko and the solitary
confinement writings of dissident poet, James Matthews. My sister treasures a hand-
written poem from him written in 1994:
Amandla
You are the struggle
Amandla
Yours the name that
is revolutionary
Amandla
24. Ibid.
15
Your name was called
When children challenged
the might of the oppressor
astride in horses armour-draped
Amandla
You are freedom’s child
25
Following the first democratic election, an entire nation was liberated from the
shackles of apartheid. However, my sister and I had always been ‘free’ because my
mother began shaping our racial identity from a young age.
“The BCM made more political sense to me in terms of the decolonization of the
mind,” my mother said, when I asked her about how she chose to raise her children. “The
philosophy of doing things for yourself, of not waiting for white people to do something
for you. You can’t expect your enemy to liberate you. The master is not going to do that
for the slave. The slave has to do it for himself.”
26
Amandla and I grew up distinguishing ourselves as black. The term ‘Coloured’
became derogatory in our household, for it was imposed and reinforced by an oppressive
government regime. My immediate family was the beginning of my complex racial
identity. I grew up in a Coloured family, brought up believing that I am black. However,
as a young child most of my friends were white.
25. James Matthews, “Amandla,” unpublished, November 17, 1994.
26. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 10, 2013.
16
“Jy Hou Jou Wit” (You Are Play White)
I was nine years old when I took up rhythmic gymnastics and became good
friends with four white girls: Marie Guyeu, Stephanie Sandler, Kristin Stark and Inga
Hewett. Marie’s family had emigrated from France to South Africa in 1992; they had a
three-story house in Rondebosch, an upper class whites-only suburb during the apartheid
era, complete with pool and neatly trimmed lawn. Stephanie came from a Jewish family
that lived in the middle class, formerly white suburb of Pinelands. Kristin lived in
Noordhoek, a community near the treacherous but scenic Chapman’s Peak Drive. A half-
smoked cigarette dangled constantly from her mother’s thin lips. Floating dust and cat
hair filled their wooden home. Inga’s family too lived in Noordhoek, in a converted
farmhouse on a large property. Hers was a life of pure white privilege.
Inga took horse-riding lessons over the weekends. She had a Great Dane and a
trampoline in her backyard, which you could survey from a private balcony that ran off
her bedroom. She had a walk-in closet, under-floor heating and slept on a queen-sized
bed. Sheer white lace hung from her bedroom ceiling draping elegantly over her large
bed. The wallpaper lining her room danced with hot air balloons and fluffy white clouds
in a bright blue sky.
Parents would rotate sleepover hosts, glad to be rid of hyperactive kids, be it only
for a night or two. Every few months my friends and I would cram into the tiny flat my
family shared in the city of Cape Town. It must have been a strange experience for my
parents, or so I thought.
In discussion with my mother she assured me that due to coming from a BCM
background, she did not feel intimidated by whiteness. After all, as an accountant and
17
auditor her work environment was dominated by white males. Despite the oppression of
black people, my mother’s academic qualifications were way above the white parents
with whose children I associated. She not only discussed matters of social awareness with
them, but also provided tax and business management advice while they waited for their
daughters to finish their daily gym routines, pack away their apparatus and greet their
coach.
I always got the feeling my father had a different take. “I haven’t really had a
friendly relationship with a white person who I can say, this is my friend, and look
beyond his color,” he told me. “I haven’t had that kind of situation because I find that I
am still crowded by economic prejudice. Coloured people are not getting jobs, white
people have old money, which they would be able to get from their parents, from trust
accounts, and that at times, bitters me.”
27
One afternoon my father dropped me off at training. My schedule was five days a
week at Gordon’s Gymnastics Club in Mowbray, Cape Town. As I kissed him goodbye
and shoved open the door of his 1978, bottle-green Volvo, he patted me on the shoulder
and said, “Go and show those white girls how it’s done.” I walked into gym confused,
repeating the methodically delivered line over in my head. He had caught me off-guard
but I understood what he meant. You are different from your friends. This was a moment
of awakening to my own racial identity.
I retain a deep-seated aversion to the term ‘Coloured,’ but in the new South Africa
I am no longer considered part of the ‘black’ camp, regardless of my mother’s
contribution to the liberation struggle, despite my ability to readily quote Biko. There is a
27. Cecil Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 10, 2013.
18
rejection of the Coloured ethnic group that fitted so neatly within the Black
Consciousness movement. We are increasingly displaced in the new South Africa, being
denied our own Africanism.
My Linguistic Curse
In 2006 I enrolled at Rhodes University. A formerly white university, student
demographics even by that stage were still representative of the apartheid years. I found
many of the white students my age frivolous. They were unwilling to engage in political
discussions regarding the future of our country and more concerned with outfits and
hairstyles to be worn at the next weekend binge drinking session at one of the all-boys
residence halls. I felt misunderstood in their presence. I stopped straightening my hair,
allowing my frizzy curls to grow as they pleased and gravitated toward a group of black
girls, Sibaphiwe Matiyela, Sanelisiwe Mpofana and Nosipho Mngomezulu, who became
my closest friends.
One afternoon Sanelisiwe, Nosipho and I were having lunch together; a student
approached our table with a stack of forms. She was doing a survey on behalf of the
university and was asking black female students to fill in a questionnaire. Instinctively I
grabbed a sheet. The student snatched it back retorting: “You’re not black.” I was
stunned. What defined one as black? I was certainly as dark-skinned as anyone sitting at
the table. She said I did not qualify because I could not speak an African language. That
was true. Did language define race, culture and heritage? If I did speak an African
language, would I have qualified? My linguistic curse. The language my grandfather was
reluctant to speak, I was now being humiliated for not speaking. She refused to let me fill
in her survey, thus denying my African-ness, my blackness, my upbringing.
19
Racial discrimination is not legally enforced, but it remains a powerful factor in
the social and political experience in democratic South Africa, an unyielding fixture in
our social identities.
“The way I look at it is, I still consider myself black regardless of what other
people think or say,” said my mother. “Being Coloured is not a race group, Coloured is
an ethnic group, Coloured is a social construct. So in my own definition I say that I am
black-Coloured in the same way that there is black-Sotho and black-Zulu. For me it’s an
ethnic group, we’re all black and in the black community there are different ethnic
groups. I’m not rooting for Coloured-ness, I’m rooting for inclusivity in terms of who is
black and who has the right to claim an identity as an African.” She says that for the past
20 years she has been telling Coloured people that they are black. Post-1994, she is now
telling black African people that Coloured people too are black.
28
My father said that there is at present a renewed energy around identity in South
Africa, “I still see myself as black, I don’t see myself as a Coloured person and I still
have difficulty talking about myself as a Coloured,” he said.
29
My sister relates her racial and ethnic identity to a carefully crafted cuisine. “The
recipe includes a spoon of Malay slave spices, a cup of Catholic Irish potatoes, a sliver of
Scottish salmon, a litre of Xhosa Amasi, and a sprinkling of Khoi-San Berries all stirred
together and baked in a Cape-Coloured clay pot,” she said.
30
28. Mary-Ann Daniels Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 18, 2013.
29. Cecil Dougan, telephone interview with author, March 10, 2013.
30. Amandla Dougan, telephone interview with author, December 15, 2013.
20
The Black Umbrella
Coloured people have been navigating the ambiguity of their identities for
decades. My parents began to formulate their identities influenced by the BCM, crafting
their vision of themselves and the future of their country through the teachings of black
consciousness. Oppressed racial groups could find solidarity under this black umbrella. In
post-apartheid South Africa, despite my upbringing, I find there is little tolerance as I
attempt to carve out a space beneath this shelter. Democracy has destabilized Coloured
identity. We navigate the ambiguous line of not having been white enough under
apartheid, and not being black enough post-1994.
As a result I am attempting to reconstruct my Coloured-ness by recalling and
embracing my African roots. Just as Goldblatt’s image reflects the fragmented remains of
what was once the District Six community, my identity too has been destroyed. Over time
I will pick my way through the rubble of the past in order to salvage my Coloured
identity.
21
BIBLIOGRAPHY
African National Congress. “1994 National Election Manifesto. Together we have won
the right for all South Africans to vote.” Accessed June 23, 2013.
http://www.anc.org.za/centenary/main.php?id=262&p=5.
Anglican Diocese, Cape Town. “Cape Town, Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr.”
December 18, 2007.
http://www.capetown.anglican.org/view.asp?ItemID=7&tname=tblComponent6&
oname=Parish&pg=front.
Biko, Steven, B. “The Definition of Black Consciousness.” AZAPO: Azanian People’s
Organisation. December 1971. http://www.azapo.org.za/links/bcc.htm.
———. I Write What I Like: A Selection of Writings. Johannesburg: Picador Africa,
2004.
Butchart, Alexander. The Anatomy of Power: European Constructions of the African
Body. London: Zed Books, 1998.
Erasmus, Zimitri. Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured
Identities in Cape Town. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2001.
Gumede ,William. Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. London: Zed
Books, 2007.
Hein, Marais. South Africa Pushed to the Limit: the Political Economy of Change.
London: Zed Books, 2011.
Jacobs, Sean. “Coloured Catgories.” Review of Not White Enough, Not Black Enough:
Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community, by Mohamed Adhikari.
H-SAfrica, H-S Reviews. May 2007. http://www.h-
net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13125.
Louw, Allegra. “Coloured Identity: South Africa. A select bibliography.” Cape Town:
University of Cape Town, UCT Libraries, 2010. http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/wp-
content/uploads/asl/colouredid.pdf.
Mabing, Alan. “Comprehensive Segregation: The Origins of the Group Areas Act and Its
Planning Apparatuses.” Journal of Southern African Studies 18 (1992): 405-429.
http://www.millersville.edu/~schaffer/courses/su2003/soc329/Mabin.pdf.
MacDonald, Michael. Why Race Matters in South Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006.
22
Mangcu, Xolela. To the Brink: the State of Democracy in South Africa. Scottsville:
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008.
Matthews, James. “Amandla”. Unpublished. November 17, 1994.
McCormick, Kay. Language in Cape Town’s District Six. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
Mtyala, Quinton. “Looking back at Gugs…forged under apartheid, but now a testament
to survival.” Cape Times. October 15, 2009.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/places/gugulethu.
South African History Online. “Gugulethu.” Accessed June 21, 2013.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/places/gugulethu.
———. “Introduction: Black Consciousness Movement.” Accessed June 20, 2013.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/introduction-black-consciousness-movement.
Wicomb, Zoë. “The Case of the Coloured in South Africa.” In Writing South Africa:
Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1995, edited by Derek Attridge and
Rosemary Jolly, 91-107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Wikipedia contributors. “St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town.” Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. Accessed June 20, 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._George’s_Cathedral,_Cape_Town.
———. “Apartheid in South Africa.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed June
20, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid_in_South_Africa.
———. “Gugulethu.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed June 20, 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gugulethu.
———. “Cape Flats.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed June 21, 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Flats.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
What does it mean to be Coloured in post-apartheid South Africa and how can Coloured identity be defined within this democratic setting? During apartheid, Coloured people were not considered white enough. Post-1994, we are not considered black enough. I come from a family that lived through apartheid, where the philosophy of black consciousness ignited an identity of ‘blackness,’ which remains the core of my Coloured identity. This essay considers how Coloured people have to redefine themselves post-1994 by reaching beyond the definitions imposed by the apartheid regime. By sifting through my own family history, I begin the process of deciding what to embrace and what to leave behind, pasting together a collage of cultural clippings that can begin to define my Coloured identity.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Dougan, Leila Dee
(author)
Core Title
Coloured identity in post-apartheid South Africa
School
Annenberg School for Communication
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Specialized Journalism (The Arts)
Publication Date
07/15/2013
Defense Date
06/24/2013
Publisher
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Apartheid,coloured,identity,OAI-PMH Harvest,Race,South Africa
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), Parks, Michael (
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), Smith, Erna R. (
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ldougan@usc.edu,leiladougan@gmail.com
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