In South Africa, Asian usually refers to people of South Asian ancestry, more commonly called Indians. [1] [2] They are largely descended from people who migrated to South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century from British ruled South Asia.
The "Indian"/"Asian" identity was codified by law under Apartheid as a race group. [3] This term excluded other peoples from Continental Asia, including East Asians such as the Chinese, who were either classified as Coloureds or Honorary whites, [2] West Asians (particularly the Lebanese and Syrians), who were originally classified as "Asian" until the early 1900s, [4] and later as “white”, or groups like the Cape Malays who have some degree of Southeast Asian ancestry, and were classified as a subgroup of Coloured.
There are more than 1 million Indians in South Africa, like the indians of Burma, most of whom are descended from indentured labourers who were brought into the country by the British Raj from India in the mid-19th century. [5] They were hired to work in sugar plantations or mines (especially coal) in the Colony of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal). [6] Traders, known as Passenger Indians also subsequently immigrated. Since 1994 however, there has been a steady trickle of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. Most Indian South Africans live in KwaZulu-Natal, particularly in the cities of Durban, Pietermaritzburg and their surrounding areas.
The smaller Chinese community was initially descended from migrant workers who came to work in the gold mines around Johannesburg in the late nineteenth century. [7] Some of those workers were repatriated. [8] Estimates vary, but the Chinese population is reckoned to have increased from 10,000 in the early 1980s to more than 100,000 in the early 2000s.
Chinese immigration caused difficulties for the apartheid regime. Based on the earlier status of Chinese as indentured labourers, the government classified immigrants from Mainland China as "non-white", in particular as coloureds, [9] and therefore subject to numerous restrictions in residence, voting, education, work, free movement, etc. In 1984, South African Chinese, now increased to about 10,000, received some rights of given to the Japanese who had honorary white status in South African, that is, to be treated as whites in terms of the Group Areas Act only as they didn't acquire all of the official rights of Honorary White status and thus could not do things such as vote or be eligible for conscription.
In late 2006, the Chinese Association of South Africa filed suit to have Chinese South Africans recognised as having been disadvantaged under apartheid, to benefit from Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). Complicating this attempt was the presence of recent immigrant Chinese who had not been disadvantaged by apartheid. They greatly outnumber native Chinese South Africans. Because Chinese under apartheid had somewhat less rigid restrictions than indigenous blacks, some people argued against their receiving benefits. In addition, the status of Japanese and South Koreans as honorary whites under apartheid complicated the case. Nonetheless, in June 2008, Chinese South Africans were fully recognised as having been disadvantaged and entered the BEE ethnic groups if they arrived before 1994. [10] [11]
For separate political reasons, the government had classified Japanese, South Koreans, and Taiwanese, as honorary whites, and thus were granted the same privileges as whites. [12] There is a small community of Koreans in South Africa, numbering 3,480 people; it began to form mostly in the 1990s, and includes expatriates sent by South Korean companies, students of English, and individual entrepreneurs. [13] [14]
Descendants of people who migrated to South Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries from the pre-partition regions that became Pakistan, are part of the South African Indian community. A number of people from Pakistan have also immigrated to South Africa following the end of apartheid. A substantial number of Pakistanis, most of them belonging to the Muhajir community of Karachi, moved to South Africa in the early 1990s. They largely reside in the bigger cities.
During the Dutch Empire of the 17th and 18th centuries, many slaves were brought from the island of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). In the early 18th century, half of the slaves of Cape came from the colonies of India and Ceylon. [15] The ethnicities that have roots from Ceylon are the Cape Malays and Cape Coloured.[ citation needed ] The total numbers of people with Sri Lankan descent is unknown.[ citation needed ]
The Cape Malays are a Muslim group with some Pribumi Indonesian and Malay ancestry that originated at the Cape during the period of Dutch colonization. During the apartheid regime, they were both classified as part of the "Coloured" racial group and thus considered "non-white" and treated as such. [16] [17]
South Africans of Filipino descent were classified as "black" due to historical outlook on Filipinos by White South Africans, and many of them lived in bantustans, which were areas set aside to be inhabited by Black South Africans. [17]
Certain people from West Asia, particularly Lebanese and Syrians, were originally classified as "Asian" and therefore "non-white". In 1913, Moses Gadur sued the government after being denied the right to purchase land in Johannesburg on the basis of being considered non-white. Moses Gandur's lawyers successfully argued that Jewish immigrants, who were part of the same Semitic race, were not considered "Asian" the same way other people from the Levant were. Therefore, if they were subject to these laws, the Jews should also be affected. Ultimately, the agreement was that the laws only apply to colored people and "yellow" Asiatics, and not them. [4]
South African English is the set of English language dialects native to South Africans.
KwaZulu-Natal is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu and Natal Province.
Coloureds refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe and Zambia who have ancestry from African, European, and Asian people. The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa, with European settlers intermixing with the indigenous Khoi tribes, and Asian slaves of the region. Later various other European nationals also contributed to the growing mixed race people, who would later be officially classified as coloured by the apartheid government in the 1950s.
The Population Registration Act of 1950 required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with their racial characteristics as part of the system of apartheid.
This article discusses Chinatowns in Africa. There are at least three major Chinatowns in Africa.
KwaZulu was a semi-independent bantustan in South Africa, intended by the apartheid government as a homeland for the Zulu people. The capital was moved from Nongoma to Ulundi in 1980.
Chinese South Africans are Overseas Chinese who reside in South Africa, including those whose ancestors came to South Africa in the early 20th century until Chinese immigration was banned under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904. Chinese industrialists from the Republic of China (Taiwan) who arrived in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and post-apartheid immigrants to South Africa now outnumber locally-born Chinese South Africans.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians as well as Coloureds and then Black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.
Chatsworth is a large township in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa established in the 1950s to segregate the Indian population and create a buffer between the white suburbs of Durban to the north and the black townships of Durban to the south. Located in the Southern Durban basin and roughly bordered by the Umhlatuzana River in the North and Umlaas River in the South, the suburb is made up mainly of Indian/Asian and Black African people.
South African Bantu-speaking peoples represent the majority indigenous ethno-racial group of South Africans. Occasionally grouped as Bantu, the term itself is derived from the English word "people", common to many of the Bantu languages. The Oxford Dictionary of South African English describes "Bantu", when used in a contemporary usage or racial context as "obsolescent and offensive", because of its strong association with the "white minority rule" with their Apartheid system. However, Bantu is used without pejorative connotations in other parts of Africa and is still used in South Africa as the group term for the language family.
Honorary whites was a political term that was used by the apartheid regime of South Africa to grant some of the rights and privileges of whites to those who would otherwise have been treated as non-whites under the Population Registration Act. It was enacted by the then ruling National Party (NP).
The Shell House massacre was a 1994 shooting incident that took place at Shell House, the headquarters of the African National Congress (ANC), in central Johannesburg, South Africa in the lead up to the 1994 elections.
Indian South Africans are South Africans who descend from indentured labourers and free migrants who arrived from British India during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The majority live in and around the city of Durban, making it one of the largest ethnically Indian-populated cities outside of India.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Cape Colony was annexed by the British and officially became their colony in 1815. Britain encouraged settlers to the Cape, and in particular, sponsored the 1820 Settlers to farm in the disputed area between the colony and the Xhosa in what is now the Eastern Cape. The changing image of the Cape from Dutch to British excluded the Dutch farmers in the area, the Boers who in the 1820s started their Great Trek to the northern areas of modern South Africa. This period also marked the rise in power of the Zulu under their king Shaka Zulu. Subsequently, several conflicts arose between the British, Boers and Zulus, which led to the Zulu defeat and the ultimate Boer defeat in the Second Anglo-Boer War. However, the Treaty of Vereeniging established the framework of South African limited independence as the Union of South Africa.
Tamil South Africans are Indian South Africans of Tamil descent. Tamil people form the majority of Indian immigrants who came from India to Natal, South Africa, from 1860 onwards. After the expiry of their indentures most of these Indians moved to the cities, becoming established as a thoroughly urban population.
The Extension of University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959, formed part of the apartheid system of racial segregation in South Africa. This act made it a criminal offense for a non-white student to register at a formerly open university without the written permission of the Minister of Internal Affairs. New universities were then established for various non-white groups.
Racism in South Africa can be traced back to the earliest historical accounts of interactions between African, Asian, and European peoples along the coast of Southern Africa. It has existed throughout several centuries of the history of South Africa, dating back to the Dutch colonization of Southern Africa, which started in 1652. Before universal suffrage was achieved in 1994, White South Africans, especially Afrikaners during the period of Apartheid, enjoyed various legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights that were denied to the indigenous African peoples. Examples of systematic racism over the course of South Africa's history include forced removals, racial inequality and segregation, uneven resource distribution, and disenfranchisement. Racial controversies and politics remain major phenomena in the country.
Ethnic groups in South Africa have a variety of origins. The racial categories introduced by the colonial apartheid regime remain ingrained in South African society with the governing party of South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) continuing to classify the population as belonging to one of the three colonial-era constructed racial groups: Africans, 'Whites', and 'Coloureds' as well as Indians.
The Reverend John Thomas (1871–1921) was a Wesleyan Methodist Church minister, schoolmaster and community leader in the province of Natal, South Africa. The World Methodist Historical Society notes that Rev. Thomas was the very first East Indian minister to ever be ordained in South Africa, and probably the first ever non-white ordination, since it was standard practice for both the Anglican and Roman Catholic sects to import all Indian ministers from India. According to the Rev. S. H. Stott, in his autobiographical work, 'A Nonagenarian's Experiences and Observations in Many Lands.', Rev. John Thomas is noted for his single-handed translation of the Bible into the Dravidian Tamil language and Telugu language which was an essential element for the growth of Christianity in the South African Indian community.
The history of gangs in South Africa goes back to the Apartheid era.
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