Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian

Coloured People

latest news & developments
Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy

Why the Open Chats podcast controversy demands more than outrage

The podcasters’ ‘coloured people are dangerous’ comments are the echoes of enduring colonial stereotypes which need to be silenced

And as South Africa marks Human Rights Day, thirty years after human dignity was written into law, this is the reckoning we cannot postpone.

Apartheid lives: Why we still use that era’s ‘racial’ categories

While race is still central, it is the battle among the rich for the wealth of South Africa that has exacerbated inequality

“The idea that one can observe a human being, in all their complexity and discern cognitive ability, is highly problematic.” (John McCann/M&G)

Prejudice thrives when knowledge systems are biased

Notions of superior Western and scientific understanding need to be challenged

“My parents were, therefore, from very early on in my life, very protective of me. I was the youngest.” (David Harrison/M&G)

Slice of life: Skin shapes the way I am

‘​Why do I write? Being born as the light-skinned girl in a dark-skinned neighbourhood gives you an interesting perspective’

(John McCann/M&G)

Coloured execs battle to get to the top

Research suggests that a complex crisis of identity is at the heart of the problem

One of the problems facing immigrants in South Africa is to confront the reality of adapting to racialised identity categories and to find their place in the racial classification system. (John McCann/M&G)

Face the challenge of racial ambiguity

Understanding who we coloured people are and not trying to fit into one race group or another is the way to the future

One of the problems facing immigrants in South Africa is to confront the reality of adapting to racialised identity categories and to find their place in the racial classification system. (John McCann/M&G)

Race identity policy is irrelevant to ‘new South Africans’

Immigrants self-identify differently – and they can help their new country become truly nonracial

Turnaround: Education Minister Angie Motshekga expresses her delight at the Eastern Cape’s improved matric results. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Audio

PODCAST: De Bijbel

In this Sound Africa podcast, Candice Nolan tries to find the answers she is looking for by looking in an old bible

The apartheid strategy of treating coloureds as a “buffer” between whites and “Africans” had the unintended consequence of crystallising a separate coloured identity.

The limits of coloured nationalism

Gatvol Capetonian is a coloured ultra-nationalist organisation but here’s the kicker: their racist culprit is the post-apartheid government

Killing Karoline is a narrative that is both shocking and subtly unsurprising

There’s life in ‘Killing Karoline’

A particularly South African kind of shame raises questions of home, belonging and mixed identity in this remarkable memoir

Wheels come off: A Putco bus was burned during the Kliptown West protest action

‘We’re not racist; just give coloureds a chance’

Protests disrupted schooling in Klipspruit West after a black principal was brought into the largely coloured area

The MultiChoice Group’s active customers for all its regions, including South Africa, dropped from 17.3 million to 15.7 million over the year.

Mixed-race realities collide in cinematic self-portrait

‘Mixed Space’ is a short film that delves, through the participants, into mixed-race people’s views of themselves and identities given to them

Anger spills over: Were the Eldorado Park protests conveniently timed to coincide with this week’s United Nations review?

‘Uprising’ prediction comes true

In the same week the UN was looking into claims that coloured people were gatvol, rioting erupted.

Life in Eldos: Bernadette Chamanil

Twenty-three people live in a two-bedroom flat in Eldos

Three families in too little space: "We literally fight for this room."

Eldorado Park residents illegally occupying vacant land demand houses from government at a protest outside the Johannesburg high court on May 12 2015.

​Rights group fights for coloured people at UN session

Camissa has taken its discrimination argument to the UN Human Rights Council.