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the spirit of water • magda minguzzi
Racial laws The next step in the process of Indigenous oppression was the application of the racial laws of the Apartheid regime, in place from the 1948 until 1990. These laws served to formalize a mechanism of repression that, as we have seen, was already in place. With the Population Registration Act No. 30 of 1950, the South African population was divided into three main racial groups: Black, White, and Coloured. The government made these classifications according to a person’s skin colour, habits, education, appearance, and social norms. Rules were applied according to this classification. The KhoiSan were mostly classified “coloured” together with the Malay, Javanese, Sumatran, Indian and Chinese people. Only later would a fourth category for people of Indian descent be adopted. From this moment on, the Indigenous peoples could not identify themselves as “San”20 or “KhoiKhoi” or more specifically, among others, as Griekwa, Damasonqua, Inqua, Nama, Korana. From that moment onwards, the KhoiSan as a distinct ethnic group ceased to exist.21 The term “coloured” however, had been used before in common parlance to refer to people born of the miscegenation between slaves or low cost workers, mostly Africans and Asians, with the European colonials (Adhikari 2013:2). In this way, those who were classified in this category were judged as being of “mixed race”. The notion of a “pure race” or “chosen people” essentially links to aspects of the Old Testament into the fertile ideological soil of which colonialism planted its roots. Chief Jean Burgess explains: We were taught it was wrong to be you, strive to be white. White is right, strive towards whiteness. That was inculcated into us. My grandmother refused to speak our mother tongue with us. She taught us how to use a knife and a fork, how to starch pure white serviettes, and how to starch our pillowcases, because we had to strive towards Western culture. We were taught it was wrong to be you; strive to be white. White is right, strive towards whiteness. That was inculcated into us. And the reason was related to the fact that my grandmother used to do the laundry of a British woman. She starched the white linen, the white serviettes, she starched all the white cotton stuff. But she did not starch at their house, she brought the laundry home where all the daughters, including my aunt, and the children had to participate doing the laundry of that British woman’s cotton linen. It had to be white to perfection. Because of colonization my grandmother came to think that striving towards British whiteness was right. I live in a town where in 1820, British settlers formally landed: Grahamstown. So, lots of those British families that came to South Africa came to this town. When the first British family arrived in Grahamstown, the process of the colonization of the First Indigenous Peoples was already on going. My grandmother used to do the washing of the linen of those British women; and they referred to them as British “ladies”. There was the notion of striving towards that British “ladieness”. Part of this process was also to become confident in the English language. English was prioritised in order to communicate but also to become equal. Because white was seen as better. San was a term coined by the colonists to indicate populations that were nomadic but lacked domesticated animals unlike the KhoiKhoi who were herdsmen. 21 The racial group classifications “Black, White, Coloured, Indian or Other” remain officially in place today. For example, when applying for a job or registering as a student at university, the applicant is obliged to fill in a form declaring to what racial group he or she “belongs”. 20
