Cape Coloureds
From Free net encyclopedia
The Cape Coloureds are modern-day descendants of slaves imported into South Africa by Dutch settlers. They are largely found in the Western Cape Province. There are approximately 4 million of them. The majority language is Afrikaans. These slaves were brought from Indonesia, Madagascar, and Mozambique, and from these diverse origins they gradually evolved into one single ethnic group. In many cases the slaves were imported to be concubines and wives to single male Dutch settlers. Much racial mixture has thus occurred over the generations, both with Europeans and with indigenous Khoi and San.
Technically, the term "Cape Coloured" referred to a subset of "Coloured" South Africans, with complex (and often arbitrary) criteria having been used by the Apartheid bureaucracy to determine whether a person was a "Cape Coloured", or belonged to one of a number of other related "Coloured" subgroups such as the "Cape Malays", or "Other Coloureds".