Cape Town and the Western Cape: The Colored Majority

Today, I began a three-day shadowing of a principal at a secondary school in one of the colored townships around Cape Town. The school is unusual in that, even during Apartheid, the school, built in 1983, has accepted all students. As such, the student body, while mostly colored, has a significant minority of Xhosa (Koza) students from the township of Khayelitsha and diversity programming has hence been a priority. The languages of instruction are Afrikaans and English eventhough some students speak Xhosa as a first language. The vast remainder speak Afrikaans as a first language. There are a few students of Indian descent but these students are also of mixed ancestry. Surnames of those of colored ancestry could have originally been Dutch, Indian, English, French and/or of other origin. As my time at the school continues, I will continue to post.

The Colored community in the Cape Town region plays a significant role in the area being the majority population. As the Dutch became the world sea power and trader of spices from Indonesia (Batavia), in the early 1600s, they began to depend on slaves. Some Indonesian slaves were thus transported to the Cape in South Africa which the Dutch established as a resupply depot in between the Netherlands and Asia. (As an aside, the British agreed to give up any claims in Indonesia for the handover of control from the Dutch over New Amsterdam - i.e. New York City). In time, these slaves mixed with whites and Indians to eventually create a "colored" community. The coloreds also suffered under Apartheid being forced to move from areas around Cape Town, such as Constancia and Simon's Town, which had become desirable areas south of Cape Town designated for white settlement. These are some of the most spectacularly beautiful places I have ever seen! The coloreds were then forced to move to the less-than-desirable Cape Flats and colored designated townships such as Mitchell's Plain. Today, if those removed owned property in areas from which they were evicted and those properties were destroyed, individuals can apply for restitution.

The Bo-Kaap area within the Center City was also largely colored and they too were also expected to move under the Group Resettlement Act. This community, however, refused and Bo-Kaap remains largely colored today. There are several museums and tours of Bo-Kaap now commemorating the contributions of this community to the growth of South Africa. The community itself is also diverse in that some colored South Africans are Muslim while others are Christian and/or non-affiliated.