Coloured, a person of mixed European (“white”) and African (“Black”) or Asian ancestry, as officially defined by the South African apartheid government from 1950 to 1991.
Individuals assigned to this classification originated primarily from 18th- and 19th-century unions between men of higher and women of lower social groups: for instance, between white men and enslaved women or between enslaved men and Khoekhoe or San women. The enslaved people were from Madagascar, the Malayan archipelago, Sri Lanka, and India.
In early 20th-century South Africa, the word “Coloured” was a social category rather than a legal designation and typically indicated a status intermediate between those who were identified as “white” and those who were identified as “Black.” The classification was largely arbitrary, based on family background and cultural practices as well as physical features. Most South Africans who identified themselves as Coloured spoke Afrikaans and English, were Christians, lived in a European manner, and affiliated with whites. Many lived in Cape Town, its suburbs, and rural areas of Western Cape province. Significant numbers also lived in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) and elsewhere in Eastern Cape province and in Northern Cape province. In Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, they represented the middle and working classes and were employed as teachers, clerks, shopkeepers, artisans, and other skilled workers. Those living outside the towns were mostly labourers on white-owned farms. A Muslim minority, the so-called Cape Malays, lived mostly in separate communities and married among themselves for religious reasons.
Until World War II (1939–45) there was considerable intermarriage between lighter-skinned Coloureds and whites, and many individuals were absorbed into the white community. Severe apartheid laws established in 1948, however, immediately subjected Coloured individuals to a rigid separation of occupational opportunities, the abolition of voting rights in Cape Province, and laws that prohibited (until 1985) intermarriage and sexual relations with other groups. In the 1950s a further series of laws disenfranchised many Coloured individuals, confiscated their land, and forced them to relocate to less desirable areas.
The designation “Coloured” and all restrictions based upon it were abolished in the 1990s as the apartheid system was dismantled and the legal classification system was abandoned. (See also South Africa: People.)