South African singer-songwriter Tyla made history in February 2024 when she won the inaugural Grammy for Best African Music Performance.
Her win was celebrated at home. But the 22-year-old sparked controversy in the US by referring to herself as "Coloured". There, the word is a slur dating back to the Jim Crow era, when state and local laws enforced racial discrimination against African Americans. In South Africa it has a very different meaning - and, by claiming her Coloured identity, Tyla has become an inspiration for many Coloured people who have long felt underrepresented in public life.
In South Africa, Coloured people are typically understood to be a group that encompasses geographically diverse ancestries. The Coloured community was positioned between white and Black in apartheid's racial hierarchy of privilege.
During the 1970s and onwards, in an effort to unify anti-apartheid resistance, activists like Steve Biko sought to collapse any distinctions between oppressed groups. They encouraged anyone who was not white to identify as "Black".
In recent years many people have reclaimed the term "Coloured" to discuss their identity and culture. The latest South African census indicated that there are more than 5 million people across the country who identify as Coloured.
Tyla's comments are just one example of how "Colouredness" has, in the past few years, found a new voice in South African society. The electoral success of the Patriotic Alliance, which claims to be "born in the heart of the Coloured community", is another. The highly acclaimed 2023 book Coloured by Lynsey Ebony Chutel and Tessa Dooms also brought conversations about Coloured identity to the fore.
I research the relationship between history and identity in societies that have experienced conflict. I wanted to know how society's increasingly positive perceptions of the term "Coloured" are playing out in South Africa's school history curriculum.
My resulting research presents a worrying picture. The way that Coloured identity is discussed in textbooks and curricula is leading young self-described Coloured people to believe that their history - and therefore their identity - is shameful.
The research
My research involved 10 months of ethnographic observation in two predominantly Coloured schools in Cape Town. I also analysed the history curricula and textbooks used in these schools, as well as repeatedly interviewing five grade 9 students, aged 14 and 15, and their history teachers from each school to understand their views on apartheid history and racial identity.
There is no mention of the word "Coloured" in the grade 9 South African curriculum assessment policy statements for History. In contrast, the racial terms "white", "Black" and "Indian" are mentioned 11, 44, and nine times respectively. In my analysis of the four most commonly used grade 9 history textbooks, Coloured identity is referred to, but infrequently. The Pearson textbook, for example, explains that "when we refer to 'black' South Africans in this topic [apartheid], it refers to African people, 'Coloured' people and Indian people". It continues:
The apartheid government found it hard to define race, especially when it came to what they called 'Coloured' people. The word 'Coloured' is controversial and possibly insulting, so here we have used it in inverted commas. (2013, p. 175)
Subsuming Coloured identity into Black identity, and referring to the term "Coloured" as "insulting", makes it difficult to learn about the lives and contributions of those who identified as Coloured.
For example, all four textbooks contain photographs of Sophia Williams (later Sophia Williams-De Bruyn) and list her as one of the organisers of the 1956 Women's March, during which 20,000 women marched to the government buildings to protest against racist laws.
But all four textbooks fail to mention that Williams was classified in terms of apartheid laws as Coloured, identified as Coloured, was a full-time organiser for the Coloured People's Congress in Johannesburg, and was assigned by the Coloured People's Congress to work on issues relating to the 1950 Population Registration Act.
So a student using these textbooks might learn about Williams - but still believe that Coloured people made no contribution to ending apartheid.
Shame and lack of interest
This denial of Coloured identity continued in the schools where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork. Teachers in a school on the Cape Flats - with a student population that overwhelmingly identified as Coloured - still referred to the school as a "Black school" by virtue of its involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle.
The grade 9 history teacher, for example, taught that "the apartheid government gave us labels", and that "if we didn't cooperate [by uniting under a Black identity] then South Africa would be a failure". This statement positioned the students' distinct Coloured identity as being in opposition to South Africa's success.
When the teacher spoke about anti-apartheid struggle heroes, his students frequently complained that life was better under apartheid, and when he espoused ideas of non-racialism, they shook their heads. All of this suggested that the students were actively resisting South Africa's founding narrative: that brave South Africans united to overcome the darkness of apartheid, and to found a democratic rainbow nation.
My interviews with students from this school suggested that they felt no connection to South Africa's history. When I asked about his family's experiences during apartheid, Lester (aged 14) replied that "they were just a normal Coloured family. Nothing interesting."
In another school, a slim majority of students identified as Coloured. Again, Coloured history was not explicitly taught. Students felt alienated from Coloured history in different ways. Bahir (aged 15), for example, felt shame and discomfort about his Coloured identity. When I asked him whether he wished he could study more Coloured history, he declined:
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I actually wouldn't want to like hear such a thing as slavery ... I don't actually like to hear that my family was put into that like category or something.
The only Coloured history Bahir could consider was one of enslavement.
Deborah (aged 14), meanwhile, suspected that there might be a proud Coloured history of anti-apartheid resistance, but assumed it hadn't been written yet. She attributed the lack of Coloured pride among her classmates to a lack of historical scholarship.
If I had a reason for why people do not want to be Coloureds, it's because they don't have a status, and they don't have history that's jotted down also.
Catching up
One thing was clear from my research: the absence of Coloured identity in history curriculum, textbooks, or lesson plans did not stop students from identifying as Coloured. However, they felt confused, ashamed or alienated from their history and South Africa's history.
Tyla and others are proudly, loudly defending their right to identify as Coloured. It's time for South Africa's history curriculum to catch up.
Natasha Robinson, PhD Candidate and research consultant, University of Oxford
