Apartheid's Other Victims

White South Africans sometimes say flippantly that their country's color problem began nine months after Jan van Riebeeck and his Dutch East India Company settlers arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. In many ways, this is how the "coloreds" (racially mixed South Africans) have long been regarded by whites--as a joke and an embarrassment, as "brown Afrikaners," the living evidence of indiscretions by their forefathers.

Van Riebeeck imported slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Ceylon and the Malay Archipelago; during the first few years of the settlement, he encouraged his men to marry slave women who had been converted to Christianity. There was also casual mating between visiting European sailors and local nomadic Hottentot women, and between slaves, half-breeds and the Hottentots. In 1682 the Cape colony rulers decreed that whites could not marry freed slaves of "full color" but could continue to marry half-breeds. Nonetheless, "irregular unions" continued.

Most of the 2.5 million coloreds live in the western Cape Province; there are also small pockets near Durban, Natal and Johannesburg. They generally speak Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch settlers. They have better employment opportunities--and are usually paid more--than blacks, particularly in the Cape, where many hold skilled or semiskilled jobs that would be reserved for whites in Johannesburg. But like blacks, and Asians, they are subject to rigid apartheid laws that designate where they may live, what public facilities they may use and that, of course, forbid them to marry whites.

Until the early 1950s, some colored men who qualified because of education and property ownership could vote for white candidates in the South African Parliament. Their franchise ended in 1956; aware that coloreds tended to vote for the anti-apartheid opposition, the National Party changed the constitution to remove them from the voters' rolls. In 1964 the Colored Persons' Representative Council was established; it has no parliamentary powers but is answerable to a white Cabinet minister. Its chief function is to assist in administering housing, health and social welfare policies for coloreds.

South Africa's 850,000 "Asiatics," as they are officially designated, endure many of the same restrictions as the coloreds. Mostly of Indian birth or descent, they do not include South Africa's 8,000 or so Chinese who are, curiously, treated almost as honorary whites under the apartheid laws. The first Asians were imported in 1860 to work as indentured laborers on the sugar estates then being started in the fertile coastal regions of Natal. Some who had come over as traders eventually started small shops or became market gardeners and hawkers. Many have branched out into the manufacturing industries, mostly in textiles and clothing, rice processing and sugar milling. Like the coloreds, South African Asians have their own schools, including the University of Natal (Westville).

Asian political activists have been silenced by "banning orders" under security legislation of the past 15 years, and a few have been detained. But for the most part, the Asians tend to be politically conservative. Their official channel of communication with the government is the 30-member South African Indian Council. But there is no vital political organization that speaks for Asians.

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