iii In the 1930s, the breakaway Independent ANC of the Southern Cape publicly attacked the ‘Natives only’ policy of the then conservative national ANC, iv complaining that contact between African and coloured was confined to leadership level.

It organized Africans and coloureds from all classes on a non-racial basis at a time when the elite African leadership of the ANC was attracted to Marcus Garvey's Africa for the Africans' movement. The most active and militant regional structure of the ANC in the late 1920s was its Western Province branch. The most influential political trends among coloureds have traditionally emanated from the Western Cape, where the population is centred, outnumbering Africans as well as whites.

Non-racialism in the coloured community evolved out of a rejection of this arbitrary ethnic category based on the notion of `miscegenation' of supposedly pure races.

Government ‘coloured preference’ policies i aimed at ensuring that the coloureds remained in this buffer, precluding any sense of either solidarity with other blacks or equality with whites.

The descendants of indigenous Khoikhoi, San, and Bantu peoples, imported Asian and African slaves, and European settlers developed an identity that existed solely in contrast with the other race groups: less privileged than the whites, but better off than the Africans. Those classified ‘coloured’ by the South African government shared a community of interests only because they were defined as a separate community - not because of any innate characteristics uniting them.

Albino coloured townships south africa