The issue of coloured identity surfaces every now and then. It surfaced again last week with the news that a group of coloured leaders are considering starting a social movement to focus on issues concerning the coloured community.
My immediate reaction was to dismiss this as the work of non-progressive forces who do not buy into the notion of a South African nation. There are, after all, I thought, also many people who still feel that there is no such thing as a coloured.
But after much consideration I feel that coloured people in South Africa are faced with a set of peculiar issues and one cannot deny those issues. There is a strong feeling, for instance, among many African blacks, that coloureds benefited more than them under apartheid and should now not be benefiting to the same extent in our democracy.
So there are legitimate reasons for some coloured people to say that in the apartheid years they were not white enough and now they are not black enough.
But the coloured community, especially in the Western Cape, is also facing myriad problems, such as gangsterism, drug abuse and teen pregnancies. Some of these issues are not unique to the coloured community, but its intensity is probably greater among them.
Does the fact that coloured people feel excluded from political processes and face peculiar issues, however, justify the formation of an exclusive social movement?
I believe not.
I do believe that, in the South African context, it is difficult to have social movements. Politics colour (excuse the pun) everything we do in South Africa, and it would be difficult to have a social movement that is supposedly non-political.
We saw this with the December 1st Movement, which was started soon after the 1994 elections by ANC activists who realised that the ANC was out of touch with the coloured community. They wanted to use the December 1st Movement as a means of bringing coloured people closer to the ANC. Of course, the leadership of the ANC did not agree and, very soon, the December 1st Movement was consigned to the history bin.
It was a pity because the December 1st Movement, with its name based on the date slaves were emancipated at the Cape, had the potential to do good work in our divided political environment.
So how do coloured people make those with political power aware of their grievances?
I believe that coloured people need to accept that they have various identities in South African. They are human. They are South African. They are black. And they are coloured. But they need to fight for their right to be coloured within the context of existing political structures, whether this be the ANC, the DA, the ID or other political parties.
If it means forming “coloured caucuses” within these parties, then that is what should happen. In political parties throughout the world, there are caucuses looking after the interests of smaller groups within those parties.
I see no reason why South Africa should be different. My biggest fear with another social movement aimed at coloured people is that it could potentially be hijacked by non-progressive forces and it could play a reactionary role in society.
The only basis on which I would support the right of coloured people to fight for their rights is within the context of the advancement of all South Africans. I do not believe that one group should be advanced at the expense of another. In the same way, I do not believe that one group should be disadvantaged while others are making progress. If coloured people feel they are not making advances while others are, then they have a right for their voices to be heard: but not as a separate social movement.
A separate social movement would, I believe, unwittingly take us back to the apartheid days, and nobody wants that.
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