Racial Order at Cape Town

The background of the concept of racial order at the Cape includes an appreciation of two elements of South African society that were fundamental to the workingout (to a degree) of racial policy by the British. The two elements are the longterm presence of slavery in South Africa and the concept of both slavery and race as reflected in the Dutch colonial policy of the region. This context is important because it sets the stage, in part, for the British response to issues revolving around race.

As Armstrong, Elphick, and Giliomee explain, an important basic policy of Dutch colonialism was that of slavery, both inside Dutch colonies and outside, in Dutchsponsored slave trade. Thus, when Jan van Riebeeck founded the city of Cape Town and the Dutch East India Company did not effectively oppose slavery as a mainstay of commerce, what was really happening was that the stage was being set for racial prejudice that marked European colonization of Africa. As Armstron

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formalized its separatist policy, declaring the sough off limits to Sudanese Arabs. . . . To speed the south's development, the British began training black administrators and assisting the rural economy. It was too little and too late . . . Capitalizing on southern disarray, northerners dominated the Sudan's transition to independence. They blocked most British efforts to create safeguards for the south and largely excluded southerners from the final preparations for selfrule, from 1953 to 1956. By Independence Day, the black south faced the worst of all possible worldsthe north's active hostility and a local shortage of skills and resources with which to resist domination.19 The same pattern can be seen in the modern conflict between black factions in South Africa, as well as between blacks and coloreds, and between nonwhites and whites. Thus it must be said that the British seem to have wanted to be perceived as dismantling the separatist racial order, but that they also reinforced that order when there was a chance that white public opinionalways presumptive of white supremacyor simple social order might be threatened. Above all, o
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Some common words found in the essay are:
South Africa, Bushman Khoisan, Cape Colony12, Bantu European, Africa Bantu, Cape Colony, Sudanese Arabs, India Company, Minnesota Press, Elphick Giliomee, south africa, richard elphick, cape town, south african, hermann giliomee, elphick hermann giliomee, african society, elphick hermann, richard elphick hermann, south african society, hermann giliomee cape, giliomee cape, giliomee cape town, longman 1979, elphick richard,
Approximate Word count = 6092
Approximate Pages = 24 (250 words per page)

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