![]() Throughout this period most observers wondered why in contrast with other "races" in South Africa among whom post-apartheid voting patterns are more "stable," Coloured voting patterns are so unpredictable: For much of the twentieth century-when Coloured identity solidified-the most visible political organizations, either led by Coloureds or with significant Coloured membership or support, were either closely aligned or identified with broader black resistance. While the DA is largely led by whites, Coloured support is central to its newfound dominance in controlling the more significant local government administrations (such as the Cape Town metropolitan city council) in the Western Cape. Since then Coloured voters have been central to the resurgence of the increasingly right-wing DA (the DA is erroneously labeled as "liberal" in South Africa, a relic of its position relative to the NP within a very limited white public discourse under apartheid). That the NP would eventually disband in 2005 was also largely hastened by these developments. ![]() But growing support for the ANC among more rural-based Coloureds and the actions of a range of Coloured politicians who abandoned the NP for the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA), also clearly had significant effects on the respective outcomes. ![]() It might be true that lower turnout among Coloureds as well as an expanding African population in the province had much to do with the latter two election results. de Klerk as one of two deputy-presidents and prevented the African National Congress (ANC) from gaining a two-thirds electoral majority nationally.īut during the next two election cycles-19-the ANC first ousted the NP and then consolidated its hold over the Western Cape provincial government, with the help of Coloured voters. The result also secured for the NP a prominent position in the first "government of national unity" with F. In those elections, the votes of a plurality of Coloureds (alongside the majority of whites) ensured that the National Party (NP)-the party of apartheid-won the right to govern the Western Cape. Renewed interest by academics and journalists in Coloured identity and politics was triggered by the results of the inaugural democratic elections in 1994. Mostly working class and concentrated in (but not restricted to) the Western Cape Province (where they comprise 53.9 percent of the total population) and the more rural Northern Cape, they, along with Africans-despite some changes at the apex of the class pyramid-account for most of South Africa's urban and rural poor. While much of the material he covers is useful and interesting, it is not clear that Adhikari has quite managed to get out from under the weight of inherited categories and analytic frames in quite the way he sets out to do.Ĭoloureds make up 4.1 million of South Africa's 46.9 million people. The book's main focus is on attempts by Coloureds themselves to construct identity and history. That is, Adhikari also targets attempts to "do away" with Coloured identity, as by proclaiming it a species of false consciousness. For him, Coloured identity is, in fact, both a product of apartheid category-making and of vigorous identity-building on the part of Coloured political actors themselves. In Not White Enough, Not Black Enough-a slim volume of 187 pages-Adhikari attempts to place Colouredness as a product, not of any biological process such as "mixture," but rather as one of the politics of the last century or so. Mohamed Adhikari's work attempts a corrective to this kind of de-contextualized portrayal and assessment of Coloured politics and identity. These were the views of apartheid's planners and retain their resonance for most South Africans today, including many whom self-identify as Coloured. Linked to this view is of course the persistence of the stereotype of "tragic mulattoes"-long a trope in South African writing-in which the "products of miscegenation" can never be "true" South Africans. What are "Coloureds"? For most South Africans and others familiar with South Africa the answer will be "people of mixed race." This invocation of "mixing" inevitably links to a racial binary that relies on two opposing and ossified (primordial) identities of black and white. Reviewed by Sean Jacobs (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community.Īfrica Series.
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