We arrived in Paarl on Day 12 to continue the relationship that Rutgers University Graduate School of Education has built with the farming communities in this area. There are a number of wine estates in this part of South Africa, and they house the families of farm workers in housing that has been built adjacent to the farms. These workers have families and children who attend some of the schools that we will be working in. The school I will be working in is the Bergendal School. I got to meet some of the teachers and the principal of the school at a welcome ceremony at Bergandal. They all seem to be lovely people. It was my first informal interaction with what South Africa calls "coloureds."
Its hard to define who coloureds are. According to definition, the term "Coloured" is used to distinguish people of mixed ancestry from white South Africans of European descent, and the darker black South Africans. Coloureds run the gamut. Some look like black people and some look like white people... some look like East Indians, Arabs, Asians, etc. It can be very confusing. I'm not 100% sure of whether I would be coloured or black in South Africa. I guess I would be coloured as I have Cuban, white, African, and Native American ancestors. The people we met here in Paarl are "Cape Coloureds."
The term Cape Coloureds refers to the modern-day descendants of slave labourers imported into South Africa by Dutch settlers as well as to other groups of mixed ancestry originating in the present-day Western Cape. They are the predominant population group found in the Western Cape Province. Their population size is roughly 4 million. Most Cape Coloureds are mother tongue Afrikaans speakers, as a result of their cultural development in the Dutch and Afrikaans-speaking areas of South Africa; but a minority are English speaking. Slaves of Malay ancestry were brought from Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, and Mozambique; and from these diverse origins they gradually developed into a grouping; along with coloured people (African and European origin); that was subsequently classified as a single major ethnical grouping under the Apartheid regime. In many cases the slaves were imported to be concubines and wives to single male Dutch settlers. People from India and the islands within the Indian Ocean region were also taken to the Cape and sold into slavery by the Dutch settlers. The Indian slaves were almost invariably given Christian names but their places of origin were indicated in the records of sales and other documents so that it is possible to get an idea of the ratio of slaves from different regions. These slaves were, however, dispersed and lost their cultural Indian identity in the course of time, hence being labelled Cape Coloureds. Much racial mixture has thus occurred over the generations, between the Europeans, Indians, Malays, various Bantu tribes, along with indigenous Khoi and San.
In today's South Africa, all non whites are categorized as blacks; however, the categorizations thrust upon people by Apartheid are still a huge part of the way that people self identify, and a huge part of the way that they are identified by other South Africans.
I had a great talk with a gentleman who teaches at one of the high schools here. Let's call this gentleman, Mike. Mike told me that he was a teenager before he met and talked to a black man for the first time (Mike is a coloured). He said that he believed the lies that he was taught in school about blacks until he met 2 young black men who educated him. One of these 2 men was a 2 years older than Mike. His name was John and he came to live with Mike's family in order to learn to play tennis from the Mike's father. They shared a room and would stay up late at night exchanging stories about one another's culture. One night John asked Mike what he knew about the Battle at Blood River. Mike recanted the story as the Voortrkkers tell it, and John told Mike that the Voortrekkers lied. John said that he knew this because his great great grandfather was one of the Zulu's who fought at this battle. The Voortrekkers claimed that the Zulu's went back on a deal they made with them for 400 head of cattle and ruthlessly attacked and murdered a number of the Voortrekkers. This was the Voortrekkers' justification for murdering 10-12K Zulus. The truth, according to John was that the Voortrekkers stole the cattle, and under Zulu law, they were to be publicly executed. The Zulus were simply enforcing their law in their land, and for this they were massacred.
Mike also told me that John was an excellent student. He passed every subject with flying colors except history. John failed history because when he was asked questions about the Battle of Blood River, he chose to tell the truth that had been passed down to him by his ancestors through the oral tradition.
Written by Frederick A Hanna
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