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.