COLOURED

formerly Cape Coloured, in South African society, a person of mixed white and African (black) or Malay (East Indian) descent. Under the apartheid system, Coloured was a formal government census classification for the largest group of racially mixed South Africans. The Coloureds live mostly in Cape Town, its suburbs, and rural areas of Western Cape province. Significant numbers of Coloureds also live in Port Elizabeth and elsewhere in Eastern province and in Northern Cape province. They originated primarily from illicit unions between men of higher and women of lower social groups, for instance, between white men and slave women and between slave men and Khoikhoi (Hottentot) or San (Bushman) women. The slaves were from Madagascar, the Malayan archipelago, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and India. The black element traditionally has been small. Under the apartheid social system, the Coloureds held a status intermediate between that of whites and blacks. They speak Afrikaans and English, are Christians, live in a European manner, and regard themselves as affiliated to the whites. Those living outside the towns are mostly labourers on white-owned farms. In the ports of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, they are teachers and salaried employees; shopkeepers, artisans, and other skilled workers; and casual labourers and factory workers. There is a Muslim minority, the so-called Cape Malays, who live mostly in separate communities and marry among themselves for religious reasons. During the period of white rule, the Coloureds developed a strong sense of community as a consequence of the whites' refusal to accept them as equals and their own refusal to be classed socially with the blacks. Until World War II there had been considerable intermarriage between lighter-skinned Coloureds and whites, and many Coloureds were absorbed into the white community. After the adoption in 1948 of the policy of apartheid, however, there was more rigid separation of occupation, the Coloureds' voting rights in Cape Province were abolished, and intermarriage and sexual relations with other racial groups were (until 1985) prohibited. Socially, the Coloureds tended to be grouped more and more with the black community as nonwhite. All restrictions on the Coloureds were abolished in the 1990s as the apartheid system was dismantled.