A group of Khoi and San activists from Nelson Mandela Bay are on a mission to get recognition from government.
They want the term “coloured” abolished as they view it as an insult. They want the Khoi and San race groups added on all official government documents pertaining to demographics. To further their cause, they have marched hundreds of kilometres, embarked on a hunger strike and in the latest move, torched their ID books.
They say this is in protest as their ID books still reflect racial classification by the second last numeric digit. This was used until the late 1980s to indicate a person’s race. It has since been eliminated.
“We want to burn it in protest that we are not coloureds, and also burn all official documents with racial demographics that reflect coloured and omit the Khoi and San,” they said.
Their fight for identity, recognition and equality is a noble one and must be supported, but it remains a fraught process caught up in the painstakingly slow wheels of government.
Those in power must take seriously their quest to be recognised as a race separate to coloured.
But in doing so, it must take into account that there are close to five million South Africans who are classified coloured. They, too, should have a say.
It would be presumptuous for the group of Khoi and San activists to suggest they represent the views of all coloured people as many do not believe their ancestral lineage is linked to the “first nation”.
Some are products of interracial unions dating back hundreds of years and they are comfortable with the term “coloured”. Although the term was the construct of the apartheid government, for some it no longer carries a derogatory connotation.
It is a sensitive issue and it must be handled carefully by the government to take into account the views of all coloured people. It need not be an either/ or situation.
Our democracy is about expressing our own identity as it is about respecting the rights of others to do the same.