8—
Coloured Identity and Coloured Politics in the Western Cape Region of South Africa
Ian Goldin
Introduction
At the heart of the Constitutional proposals which South African whites endorsed in 1983 lay an attempt to reconstitute a distinct 'Coloured' identity in South Africa.[1] The impending changes have fuelled an intense ideological and political conflict over the content of Coloured identity. This passionate debate cannot be divorced from the wider struggle being waged against the South African regime. Indeed, therein lies its particular historical significance. But the conflict over Coloured identity predates the current ideological and political war. For over a hundred years attempts have been made to foster and manipulate Coloured identity and to engineer socially a Coloured political alliance with the ruling white parties. A distinct Coloured identity, I shall show, is the outcome of a history of 'divide and rule' tactics. However, Coloured identity cannot simply be traced to attempts by the ruling class to promote a Coloured buffer group. In part, Coloured identity is the outcome of conflicts within the subordinate classes and of the resistance of sections of the colonized class to their further proletarianization. Coloured identity represents the peculiar historical resolution of a complex and contradictory set of events.
Bullets and Ballots
Attempts by the state and ruling class in South Africa to sponsor the development of a client Coloured class are not a recent phenomenon. They have their origin in the endeavours of the colonial administrations to deflect opposition based on mass resistance by the colonized people.
The indigenous people resisted the process of colonization in a variety of ways.[2] Some attempted to reconstitute an independent existence by migrating beyond the Cape's frontiers or by living as brigands outside the law.[3] The majority, however, were forced into wage labour.[4] Many, whom the settlers termed 'Hottentots', entered colonial service and some were found to be 'the most efficient troops for dealing with the Kaffirs'.[5]
Their loyalty to the colonial regime, however, could not be assumed.[6] In 1799 a rising of Khoi and Xhosa under Ndhalambi shattered the complacency of the first British administration (1795–1803). For, as Marais noted, 'if the rising spread to the western Hottentots and slaves the white man's hold on the colony would be
shaken to its foundations'.[7] The skilful intervention of the colonial administration served to deflect this challenge and to quieten the disaffected Khoi.[8] Under a growing rule of law the Khoi and other 'Hottentot' people were offered some protection in employment and civil society. These measures placed 'Hottentots' in a position which was relatively superior to that of the Bantu-speaking peoples. At the same time, Eric Walker has noted that the regulations in certain circumstances reduced the 'Hottentots' to the 'level of serfs at the disposal of local officials'.[9]
Khoi resistance had been deflected but the constant fear of further uprisings, Trapido has suggested, 'meant that the sense of unease among European settlers was sustained in the first half of the nineteenth century'.[10] In 1851 these fears were increased when 'Hottentots' in the Theopolis and Kat River districts allied themselves with the Tembu in a direct attack on the colony. The rebellion was defeated. Nevertheless, the clear extent of alienation strengthened the hand of those colonial administrators who favoured giving propertied 'Hottentots' a greater stake in the political system.[11] Prominent amongst those calling for the enfranchisement of such people was the Cape Attorney-General, William Porter. He noted:
I would rather meet the Hottentot at the hustings voting for his representative than meet the Hottentot in the wilds with a gun on his shoulder. . . . If these people have much physical force,—are armed, and—as you say—disaffected—is it not better to disarm them by letting them participate in the privileges of the constitution than by refusing them those long expected privileges to drive them into laager.[12]
The granting of self-rule to the Cape Colony in 1853 provided the opportunity for the implementation of such an incorporative strategy. A limited franchise for non-European males was introduced, embracing only the wealthier and more educated colonial subjects. This limited franchise served, with varying success, to incorporate the intellectual and petty-bourgeois non-Europeans who might otherwise, had they been excluded, have provided a vocal leadership for the organization of non-European resistance to the regime.[13] The historian William M. Macmillan commented that 'as a partial experiment the constitution of 1853 was abundantly justified' but that the 'very success of this experiment was won at the price of economic well-being'.[14] Though the constitution allowed 'the more fortunate individuals among them to rise to competence, the great mass of them were still a poor servant class'.[15]
By 1853 the colonial administration began to refer to growing numbers of the Cape Colony's population as 'Coloured'. In the main, the category referred to disenfranchised people of mixed race, freed slaves and Khoisan and 'Hottentots' who had not, following their colonization, been absorbed into the Xhosa or other Bantu-speaking groups or had not taken refuge outside the colony's frontiers. But, although a racial hierarchy was already an integral aspect of ruling class ideology, this had not yet crystallized in the exclusion of all Bantu-speaking people from the franchise. The period of Cape liberalism allowed people of African origin to participate in colonial politics. The principal criteria were related to class and a clear distinction was made between the minority of educated Bantu-speaking people and the vast majority of so-called 'blanket-Kafirs'.[16]
Until the turn of the century the term 'Coloured' commonly included all non-European people.[17] The official census of 1875 included in the category 'Coloured' all 'non-European' people, including 'Fingoes' and 'Kafir proper'.[18] The 1892 census maintained the same distinctions declaring that the Cape
population 'falls naturally into the two main classes, the European or White and Coloured'.[19] Private employers tended to perceive similar distinctions. So, for example, in 1890 A.R. McKenzie, the principal labour contractor in the Cape Town docks, referred to the fact that he employed 'principally Kaffirs; all our labourers are Coloured, and are of different nationalities and tribes'.[20] Clearly, in the latter half of the nineteenth century the term Coloured chiefly referred, in the discourse of the ruling class, to 'all non-European people'.
Yet, by 1904, this wide definition was no longer accepted. In the space of fifteen years the notion of Coloured was reconstituted. Increasingly the term came to denote an intermediate class of people distinct from the Bantu-speaking population. In marked contrast to the census of 1890, the Cape census of 1904 broke from previous practice and distinguished three 'clearly defined race groups in this colony: White, Bantu and Coloured'.[21] Included in the last category were 'all intermediate shades between the first two'.[22] A decisive shift in colonial discourse appears to have taken place in the years surrounding the Anglo-Boer War. In this period the reconstitution and identification of a distinct Coloured category was not reflected in state discourse only, nor associated only with changes within the colonial administration and ruling class. In a dialectical process, the crystallization of a Coloured identity reflected a shifting of ground within the subordinated society itself. This was reflected in the growth of separate Coloured political organizations and the creation of a distinct Coloured consciousness.
Specific notions of Coloured identity, I suggest, were forged in the white heat of the years surrounding the Anglo-Boer War. The reconstitution of Coloured identity into a form which approximates that which exists today is a relatively recent phenomenon which can be traced to those critical years. But from the outset the notion of a distinct Coloured identity was a focus of intense ideological and political struggle. The ambiguity and anxiety which is associated with the term was characteristic of Coloured identity from the outset. These tensions, if anything, have intensified over time.
The Critical Years (Circa 1890–1905)
It was no accident that the period which saw the evolution of a distinct Coloured identity was also one of capitalist crisis and a dramatic transformation of productive relations. The depression which had begun in the mid-1860s, precipitated by an international banking crisis, tore the fabric of Cape society and, as Bundy has noted, led to a 'marked increase in rural poverty' and high levels of unemployment in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.[23] The position of many unskilled work-seekers and labour tenants was further undermined by the recession of 1877–79. These cyclical recessions had a particularly marked impact on tenant farmers, many of whom by the 1880s had been forced to migrate to the towns in search of jobs.[24] There they joined the growing army of unemployed workers and refugees. By the turn of century it was recognized by a Cape Town clergyman that 'this is the city of the unemployed'.[25] According to another source, writing in 1899, The question of unemployed with us here at the Cape is well-nigh chronic.'[26] But any optimism about a new dawn would quickly have vanished at the beginning of the twentieth century: from 1905 to 1909 a depression, which according to the economic historian Schumann was 'one of the severest and undoubtedly the most prolonged South Africa has experienced during the past one hundred' years, devastated the Cape Colony.[27] Cape Town was hardest hit and the standard of living of the working class was undermined.[28]
The problems faced by the indigenous working class were compounded by the arrival in Cape Town of immigrants and refugees. The arrival between 1857 and 1863 of nearly ten thousand immigrants, many of whom were experienced in artisan and craft occupations, is likely to have led to increasing competition for scarce jobs within this class at the Cape.[29] Between 1873 and 1883 a further twenty thousand immigrants arrived: this no doubt compounded the situation, increasing the anxiety of indigenous workers and threatening the Cape Malay monopoly over many crafts.[30] Coming on top of the recessions of 1866 and 1877, these mass immigrations served to foster the development of an incipient protectionist and racial identity. The onset of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 led to a further deterioration as refugees streamed into Cape Town and began to compete for increasingly scarce jobs. With the demobilization of servicemen coinciding with the onset of the 1903–1909 recession, the situation became even more hopeless for many work-seekers.[31]
The arrival in the Cape of over five thousand 'Cape Boys' who had been deported from the South African Republic led to an increased awareness of Coloured identity in the Cape. From October 1899 the refugees were arriving in Cape Town 'by the hundreds'.[32] These exiles brought with them stories of ill-treatment and of the absence of civil rights for Coloureds in the interior republics. The refugees' concerns were shared by many Cape Coloureds who saw in the war a chance to extend the rule of British law to these republics. They also felt that loyalty shown by the non-European people in the Cape to the British cause would advance their case for full enfranchisement.[33]
The British had in fact made Coloured rights a feature of their war propaganda. Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner in South Africa, presented discrimination against Coloureds as a justification for intervention in the interior.[34] Not surprisingly, Coloureds, according to Marais, 'gave the British cause their enthusiastic support though they took no part in the actual fighting in the field'.[35] It must have come as a bitter disappointment to the Coloureds, therefore, to discover with the end of hostilities that their position had not been improved and that they were in fact likely to be made worse off. Increasingly, Coloured men and women came to fear that with the proposed Union the practices of the interior republics would be extended to the Cape and that Coloured rights would be sacrificed in the process of reconciliation.[36]
Their anger was fuelled by the growing realization that Coloureds had played an important part in the British victory and had proved to be amongst its most loyal supporters. The case of the blacksmith, Abraham Essau, became a rallying point amongst the indignant Coloured artisan class.[37] Essau had been tortured to death by the Boers without revealing his clandestine network of Coloured artisans who were acting as spies for the British forces. Despite being drawn between two horses, Essau had refused to renounce his loyalty to the Crown. But, the Coloured artisans observed, the loyalty of the British administration to the Coloured artisans was less robust.[38] The end of the war left Coloured artisans and the Coloured petty bourgeoisie cynical towards the colonial administration and white political parties. Their continued support of white political parties and their reluctance to mobilize independently had failed to lead to their assimilation into the white polity. Coloureds had seen a continuous erosion of their political and civil rights, despite the promises and polemics of the white parties which sought the Coloured vote.[39]
White political parties had solicited the Coloured vote since 1853 through what Trapido has referred to as a combination of 'patronage, corruption and intimidation'.[40] Coloured voters had lent their support to a variety of white parties
and no lasting alliance of Coloured voters and white parties had been sustained in the latter half of the nineteenth century.[41] During this period the Coloured voters saw the continual erosion of their vote. The increases in the educational and franchise qualifications and other restrictions on the non-European franchise were primarily aimed at decreasing the representation of African voters.[42] However, Coloured voters were also discriminated against.[43]
Between 1865 and 1894 the incorporation of British Kaffraria and the Transkei territories as part of the Cape Colony made it increasingly difficult for Africans in the colony to qualify for the franchise.[44] The changes in the educational and other franchise qualifications in 1887 and 1892 were intended to reduce further the number of Africans on the voters' roll. These modifications, Trapido and F. Molteno have suggested, were not intended as a frontal attack on the Coloured franchise.[45] Nevertheless, the raising of the qualifications removed poor and illiterate Coloureds as well as 'raw Africans' from the vote. The likely effect was to raise the issue of Coloured identity as non-European people in the Cape attempted to avoid the system being imposed on Africans. The disenfranchisement of Africans, occurring synchronously with the immiseration of the African peasantry, increased the significance of the distinction between Africans and Coloureds. At the same time, the declining number of Africans eligible to vote in the Western Cape was associated with a recognition within white politics of the insignificance of the African vote and the relative importance of the Coloured vote.[46] From 1883, when the Afrikaner Bond was formed under the leadership of 'Onze' Jan Hofmeyr, Cape political parties had begun to compete for the Coloured vote. White parties cultivated notions of a distinct Coloured identity, offering Coloureds preferential treatment if they lent their support to white parties. Coloureds were led to believe that by disassociating themselves from the African population and by supporting white parties they would be spared the political and economic humiliation that Africans were suffering. For almost fifty years the allure of this prospect had inhibited the formation of a distinct Coloured political party.[47] But, as we shall note, the failure of white parties to honour their commitments in the years following the Anglo-Boer War culminated in the ultimate alienation of many Coloured intellectuals from white politics and the formation of specifically Coloured political organizations.
The primary constituency of the Coloured political organizations which emerged at the turn of the century was the artisan and skilled class of Coloureds. This class was fearful of further disenfranchisement and cynical about white politicians. It had also suffered from decades of economic stress. At the turn of the century the anxieties of this Coloured class were compounded by the increasingly discriminatory tactics of white trade unionists. In 1900 the white stonemasons' society instituted a closed shop excluding Coloureds and effectively preventing Coloured stonemasons from working on public buildings.[48] The following year the Plasterers' Union barred Coloured labour and forbade its members to work 'on a scaffold with a Coloured or a Malay under pain of a fine'.[49] By 1904 Coloured bricklayers were being discriminated against and John Tobin, a founder member of the first Coloured political organization, could accuse the Cape unions of being 'rotten with colour prejudice'.[50] Coloured craftsmen were excluded from many projects including those associated with the construction of the University of Cape Town campus. Furthermore anti-Coloured prejudice increasingly was articulated through industrial legislation.[51] By 1906 amendments to the Mines Act reserved many of the skilled, supervisory and managerial jobs for whites.[52] The effect of the colour prejudice initiated by white workers was to provoke, from within the working class, an assertion of a distinct Coloured identity. At this time
there were in the Cape approximately 1500 stonemasons, 1300 coach-drivers, 1500 clerks and 287 teachers who were classified as Coloured.[53] These artisans and petty bourgeoises came increasingly to rely on the strength of their own independent organization to prevent the further erosion of their position in Cape society.
The restrictions increasingly being placed on upward mobility and mis-cegenation further encouraged the development of a distinct Coloured identity. The cementing of social prejudices and, to a lesser extent, the effect of state intervention increasingly prevented skilled and petty bourgeois people of light skin complexion from 'passing for white'. Frederickson has suggested that by the late eighteenth century the increased preoccupation of the ruling class with racial exclusiveness was reflected in the establishment of a racial hierarchy.[54] In the Cape, Frederickson emphasizes, well into the twentieth century distinctions between whites and Coloureds were determined 'mainly by convention rather than by law'. This situation, he suggests, 'facilitated passing on a substantial scale'.[55] Despite the existence of a racial hierarchy, the effect, from the time of the Dutch East India Company, of a permeable colour line had been to siphon off much of the leadership of the colonized people. Light-skinned petty bourgeois and more skilled and educated members of the colonized class were able to gain admission to the ruling class in the Cape. In this way opposition to the political system was deflected. In the United States, by contrast, in the same situation, the mulatto elite, excluded by an inflexible racial boundary, provided an important source of leadership for resistance by the Afro-American population.[56]
The development of a distinct Coloured identity at the turn of the twentieth century was associated with the ossification of the colour line. The ability of light-skinned people to 'pass for white' by 1904 was greatly restricted. Prior to this time, Trapido has noted, 'Coloured men who prospered were able to gain readmission into the White population, and some soon became prominent in the Afrikaner middle class.'[57]
In his study of Passing for White Watson observed, furthermore, that 'those who rank below the artisan group seldom possess the characteristics necessary for successful passing'.[58] The brake placed on the passing process around about the turn of the century contributed to the development of a distinctly Coloured intellectual leadership. Africans had long since given up hope of assimilation with whites. Coloureds by the turn of the century were recognizing that their case for assimilation had not been furthered by their reluctance to assert a distinct Coloured identity or their hesitation to establish ethnic political organizations.[59]
Amongst the factors accounting for the restrictions placed upon 'passing for white' was the growing awareness within the colonial administration of the 'poor white problem'. Colin Bundy, in his study of 'poor Whites before poor Whiteism', argues that there took place in the Cape in the last two decades of the nineteenth century 'a major shift in ruling class perceptions of the nature of poverty'.[60] Shifts in the 'social prism' in late Victorian Britain were transmitted to South Africa.[61] In both Britain and South Africa the reorientation of the state was associated with attempts to deflect opposition from what Gareth Stedman-Jones has referred to as the 'dangerous classes'.[62]
By the 1890s the impoverishment of Coloured and white Afrikaners in the Cape had led to 'a very real blurring of ethnic identity among the poor'.[63] Reports that in the towns there were many poor whites who were 'compelled to live among the Coloured people and who are sinking, sinking, sinking into the social conditions of the snuff-and-butter Coloured population' captured the imagination of many whites.[64] In this process, according to Bundy, 'assumptions of [white]
ethnic solidarity replaced the older forms of ideological distance and hostility along class lines'.[65]
The metropolitan redefinition of poverty was associated with calls for greater state intervention to resolve the social problems of poverty. In the South African context this was translated into increasingly successful attempts to institute strict demarcations between whites and Coloureds. Throughout the 1890s in the principal Cape papers, the Cape Argus and the Cape Times, the ethnic identification of Coloureds as the dangerous elements of the impoverished class continued to fuel both the prejudices of the whites and the apprehensions of the Coloureds.[66] By January 1895 the Cape Argus had embarked on a crusade against Coloured crime which served as an attack on all Coloureds. The paper declared that there was 'a need for stringent regulations of the Coloured classes in Cape Town' as Coloureds were 'a danger to society'.[67] A barrage of similar reports served to increase the ethnic identification of whites and to increase the anxieties of Coloureds. In this process, older class distinctions were broken by new ethnic alliances. The tendency towards ethnic stereotyping was by 1890 reflected in the caricature of Coloureds as criminals and in the ethnic response of the local authorities to what Swanson has termed the 'sanitation syndrome'.[68]
In 1882 a smallpox epidemic had led to claims that 'the sooner the Malays are forced to reside in a separate district the better for all concerned' whilst an outbreak of enteric fever in 1887 had prompted the Dean of Cape Town to call for the establishment of a separate quarter for Coloured people.[69] In 1901 a plague epidemic was associated with similar attacks on the Coloured community.[70] The plague epidemic had led to a massive attack on Cape Town's poor. The full brunt of the epidemic and of the resulting health and housing ordinances was borne by Africans.[71] Although the plague was by no means confined to Africans, ethnic stereotyping was by 1901 reflected in the local authorities' specifically ethnic diagnosis of the epidemic. Africans were hounded out of Cape Town and into the Uitlugt township on the Cape Flats. Over 7000 Africans were forced to vacate premises in the inner city and to move to the prison-like compound. The establishment of a highly regulated African township was inspired by the experience of controlling labour on the diamond mines. Thus, for example, even before the plague of 1901, 'Matabele' Thompson called for an extension to the Peninsula of the system 'so easily managed' at Kimberley.[72] Drawing on his Kimberley experience Thompson advocated the establishment of a location with a barbed wire fence ten feet high into which would be forced 'all the natives within the area'. A curfew bell would sound at eight o'clock and 'every native abroad after the bell' would be arrested under a pass law.[73] The Cape Town Medical Officer supported Thompson's proposal, suggesting that Africans on the Peninsula be confined to a location, as was the practice in the Eastern and Northern Cape.[74] Such generalized attacks led to the assertion by many non-European people of a distinct Coloured identity. In this way many people were able to escape the brunt of the health and housing ordinances hurriedly invoked by the Cape Town City Council. Perhaps for the first time, non-European people came to assert a Coloured identity as a defence against further immiseration.
The mounting racial prejudices served to reduce the class identification of wealthier and intellectual Coloureds with their peers and associates in the white communities and to reinforce the anxiety of Coloured men and women. At the same time the increasing distinction drawn between Coloureds and Africans and the exemption of Coloureds from certain of the restrictions endured by Africans undermined possible black ethnic solidarity. For many Coloured men and women
there was simply too much to lose through identification with Africans.
The first response of Coloured intellectuals to the mounting racial prejudice was to attempt to solicit the support of the white political parties, the colonial administration and eventually the British government. By 1906, following an unsuccessful mission to England, it was clear that this strategy had failed. Coloured intellectuals and skilled men came increasingly to realize the futility of their participation in white politics.[75] More and more, Coloured intellectuals came to feel that only the collective organization of Coloureds would prevent the further erosion of Coloured rights in the Cape.
The Rear-guard
The mobilization of a separate Coloured ethnic identity at the turn of the century was at least in part a rear-guard defensive action by skilled and petty bourgeois people against their exclusion from the white society. It was an attempt to establish a springboard from which to launch a greater claim for inclusion within the ruling dispensation. At the same time the establishment of a distinct Coloured identity was a signal that the interests of certain skilled segments of the non-European population could best be advanced—or at least protected—by organizing in isolation from the African working class.
The South African Spectator, a newspaper established in December 1900 under the editorial guidance of F.Z. Peregrino, reflected these concerns. It aimed to increase 'race pride' and was 'exclusively in the interest of the Coloured people'.[76] In particular, it aimed to advance the cause of the Coloured petty bourgeoisie whose 'business and economic progress' Peregrino sought to promote through a boycott of white commerce.[77] Through his Coloured People's Vigilance Society, Peregrino set the stage for future generations of Coloured petty bourgeois politicians. In particular, his ambiguity regarding the identity of Coloureds has remained a hallmark of subsequent Coloured organizations. At times, Peregrino urged his constituents to regard themselves as 'Negro'. At the same time, his newspaper devoted much of its attention to the promotion of narrowly Coloured interests. The Coloured People's Vigilance Society restricted its membership to Coloureds on the grounds that it was 'expedient and to the interests of the Coloured people generally that the Coloured Afrikander people held their meetings separate to the native'.[78] The Coloured People's Vigilance Society was principally confined to mutual aid and temperance activities. The society brought together Coloured men and women and provided a breeding ground for a separate Coloured identity. In 1902 the development of this identity was expressed in the formation of the African Peoples' Organization (APO). Mr W. Collins, the president of the organization, told the assembled delegates at the founding conference: "This is the first time in history that we are meeting together to discuss our affairs.'[79] The foundation of the APO constituted a watershed in the development of a reconstituted Coloured identity, and exercised a decisive influence over the development of a distinct Coloured consciousness for half a century.
The principal concerns of the organization were the defence of the Coloured franchise and the extension of educational opportunities for Coloured youth.[80] It is no accident that teachers came to play a leading role in the APO and in subsequent Coloured organizations. Collins, the APO's founding President, saw in the extension of Coloured education the means to advance the participation of Coloureds in the ruling polity. At the turn of the century the education of Coloureds, like so many other matters affecting them, was coming under
increasing attack. The basic link between education and the franchise further increased the anxiety of the incipient Coloured organizations. These rallied around the issue of the extension of education for Coloureds to prevent the further disenfranchisement and deskilling of their communities. In 1899 the Superintendent General of Education, Sir Langham Dale, fuelled the fears of the Coloureds when he confirmed that the
first duty of the Government has been assumed to be to recognise the position of European colonists as holding the paramount influence, social and political, and to see that sons and daughters of the colonists should have at least such education as their peers in Europe enjoy, with such local modifications as will fit them to maintain their unquestioned superiority and supremacy in this land.[81]
The government's policy had meant that the education of Coloured children de facto was left to missionaries and other private benefactors. In 1883 the enrolment at mission schools was 38,000, of whom fewer than 6000 were white.[82] The restriction of Coloured children and teachers to the inferior mission schools of the Western Cape contributed to the forging of Coloured identity, as pupils and teachers came to recognize their common exclusion and mobilize to increase their claim on the state system. Fearful of a further squeezing of its main base, the relatively educated and skilled Coloured class, the APO from the outset campaigned for the improvement in the education and teaching of Coloured youth. The organization aimed to show the administration that 'an educated class of Coloured people' existed in Cape Town.[83]
The APO from the outset was engaged in a rear-guard action in which the organization's tactics were informed by the politics of survival rather than a long-term vision of Coloured identity. In this defensive process, Abdurahman, the leader of the APO from 1906, attempted to extract the maximum gain from the strategic concerns of the ruling class. In 1853 the threat of an alliance of Coloured and African men and women had forced the Crown partially to incorporate Coloured men. In the first half of the twentieth century Abdurahman was able to achieve considerable leverage by the skilful manipulation of similar fears. The manipulation of these strategic concerns provided a shifting foundation for the APO and in part accounts for the ambiguity of the APO and subsequent Coloured organizations. To increase its leverage, the APO sought to emphasize to the administration its common cause with the white polity. At the same time the identification of the APO with African sentiment was used to demonstrate to the regime the cost of alienating Coloured intellectuals.
It is no accident that the growth of the APO under Abdurahman occurred at a time when the strategic concerns of the administration were increasingly focusing on a policy of 'divide and rule' in which the non-European world would be fragmented into Coloured and African. Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner of South Africa during the formative stage of the development of separate Coloured organizations, between 1900 and 1910, warned that:
Our object should be to teach the Coloured people to give their loyalty to the White population. It seems to me sheer folly to classify them with the Natives, and by treating them as Natives to force them away from their natural allegiance to the Whites and making common cause with the Natives.[84]
Abdurahman was sensitive to the concerns of Selborne and capitalized on them to advance the Coloured cause. He criticized Lord Milner for allowing Coloureds to be treated like the 'barbarous Native' noting that 'although Natives are
excluded from the vote [in the Transvaal] the Coloured should not be'.[85] Abdurahman was consistent only in his commitment to the advance of the Coloured franchise. The threat of an alliance with Africans and a wider commitment to non-European unity (as reflected in the name African Peoples' Organization) was used by Abdurahman in order to extend his leverage in his campaign to further Coloured rights. In 1912 Abdurahman warned the regime that if it continued to alienate Coloured people 'there will one day arise a solid mass of Black and Coloured humanity whose demands will be irresistible'.[86] But, at the same time, Abdurahman consistently refused to open the membership of the APO to Africans. Abdurahman was instrumental in maintaining the APO as a specifically ethnic Coloured organization. Tautologically, he argued that the legitimacy of the exclusive Coloured identity of the organization rested on its existence as a racially exclusive organization. For, as Abdurahman told the 1910 Conference of the APO:
people of South Africa . . . it is my duty to deal with the rights and duties of the Coloured people of South Africa as distinguished from the Native races.[87]
The focus of the APO on the advance of an identity of Coloureds separate from that of Africans reflected the determination of the organization to secure for its more skilled and petty bourgeois constituents some political and economic benefit. Illiterate and impoverished Coloureds had no political muscle and were left out of the electoral arithmetic. The organization of this class of Coloureds was left chiefly to the socialists from the International Socialist League and other organizations.[88] From the turn of the century, meetings at the 'Stone' and other venues were the forum for the development of a working class identity which was in opposition to ethnic identities. At a time when ethnicity was crystallizing in the Western Cape, radicals kept alive an alternative tradition. They recruited Coloureds and Africans in the docks and elsewhere into non-ethnic organizations. Whereas many more skilled and petty bourgeois Coloureds rallied in support of the APO and favoured ethnic organization, unskilled men and women were not similarly motivated by a desire to challenge the increasing racial exclusiveness of white trade unionists. Neither were they as disenchanted with the process of disenfranchisement, for they had never had the vote and were not compelled to revise their political expectations at the turn of the century. Although many of the factors accounting for the rise of Coloured identity affected the working class, others were missing. Socialists were able to point to destitution as a condition that afflicted working class people of all races in their efforts to forge non-ethnic working class organizations.
Though evidence of their participation is fragmentary, there can be little doubt that Coloureds were active in the leadership and membership of a number of non-racial organizations. The Industrial Workers Union, formed in 1913, actively recruited Coloured as well as African and white dock workers. In 1919 the IWU gave way to the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union. Prominent in its leadership were J.K. La Guma and J. Gomas, Coloured members of the Communist Party. Although eventually expelled by the increasingly Africanist union, La Guma, Gomas and others did bear witness to the fact that the APO was representative of only a section of the Coloured community.
Conclusion
Clearly, by 1910 a distinct Coloured identity had been established. This was reflected in the growth of the APO, an organization exclusively for Coloureds. In
the period 1890–1910 this identity was forged through the reconstitution of earlier notions of Coloured identity. The turn of the century was a critical period in the Western Cape during which the parameters of the conflict over Coloured identity were set. The increasingly intense ideological and political struggle which today characterizes and confuses class struggle in the Western Cape may usefully be traced to the constellation of circumstances associated with the reconstitution of Coloured identity within the period 1890–1910.
The Labour Party, since the demise of the APO, has continued to campaign for the advance of Coloured rights, using the tactics of discretionary collaboration perfected by Abdurahman. These have determined that the Labour Party has chosen the path of 'construstive engagement' with the regime in order to bring on reforms from within. Yet from the outset the existence of a separate Coloured identity was a source of conflict in the Western Cape. Prominent amongst those challenging the ethnic organizations were socialists committed to a non-racial society. And today a range of organizations committed to ending all collaboration with the regime have challenged the Labour Party's position. The 'left' opposition among blacks in the country as a whole has been divided into two main camps: those fighting for a non-racial society on a popular democratic platform and those who emphasize a popular unity of all disenfranchised people on a platform of black consciousness. Prominent within both these streams have been people officially classified as 'Coloureds', showing the continuing ambiguity that such a label entails.