The “Coloured” community in Gauteng, South Africa’s economic heartland, continues to face barriers to full economic and social inclusion. Despite progress in post-apartheid South Africa, this historically oppressed community continues to experience significant socio-economic challenges.
The term “Coloured” is initially placed in quotation marks to acknowledge its contested nature. Historically, the formation of Coloured identity in South Africa emerged from a complex colonial encounter involving Dutch and British settlers, slaves from south and east Asia and east Africa, and the indigenous Khoi and San peoples. This produced a distinct, mixed group that did not neatly fit into colonial racial categories. During apartheid, Coloured people were legally defined by the 1950 Population Registration Act as those who were neither white nor Black African.
Today, it remains an official racial classification in South Africa. It is also used in everyday discourse. But it is not a universally accepted label.
Quotation marks signal critical distance and sensitivity to the complex debates surrounding the term.
The Coloured population is concentrated mainly in the Western Cape (42.1%) and the Northern Cape (41.6%). There are smaller proportions in the Eastern Cape (7.6%), Gauteng (2.9%), Free-State (2.6%), North-West (1.6%), KwaZulu-Natal (1.5%), Mpumalanga (0.6%) and Limpopo (0.3%).
Current, albeit limited, research on the Coloured community is usually focused on the Western Cape province. This means that there is no new substantial scholarship providing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of this community in Gauteng.
In a bid to fill this gap, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) initiated a research project that delves into the issues in greater detail. This follows findings from a GCRO Quality of Life Survey released in 2024 which revealed concerning data on the Coloured community in Gauteng. This included the fact that a larger proportion of Coloured people within Gauteng felt unsafe, discouraged, apathetic and dissatisfied compared to the provincial average.
The concerns highlighted in the survey are not separate from questions of Coloured identity. There is a link between an enduring perception of marginalisation within Coloured communities and real material struggles.
Biggest concerns
Safety: The survey indicated that safety remains a concern for the Coloured community in Gauteng. When asked about the main problems in their community, 2.3% indicated gangs as a problem. This compared with 0.2% of the general Gauteng population.
Additionally, 61% of Coloured people believed that the crime situation had worsened in their neighbourhoods over the past year. The provincial average was 48%.
South Africa is often regarded as “the protest capital of the world”. Over 680 protests were recorded in the country from August 2024 to August 2025, an average of nearly two a day. In September 2025, Johannesburg’s majority-Coloured suburbs, Westbury, Coronationville, Newclare and Claremont, erupted in violent protests following prolonged water shortages. These protests reflected broader frustrations over basic service delivery failures.
When Coloured respondents were asked about reasons for protests in the neighbourhood in the survey, 17% indicated that it was a result of crime and safety issues, compared to the provincial average of 4%.
Joblessness and financial stresses: The survey highlighted that 5% of Coloured residents are discouraged work seekers. This is double the average in Gauteng. A total of 26% of Coloured people felt that saving money was impossible, compared to 17% of the general population.
The highest proportion of households experiencing severe food insecurity in Gauteng belong to the Coloured (12%) and Black African (13%) population groups.
Food insecurity refers to individuals who do not have access to sufficient food to lead an active, healthy life. The GCRO developed a food security index based on four indicators: whether households could afford enough groceries, whether there was a place nearby to buy food, and whether adults or children had skipped a meal due to financial constraints.
Political apathy: Among Coloured people who stated that they intended not to vote or were unsure if they would vote, 40% indicated that they do not like politics, broken promises or believed that voting is a waste of time. This is nearly double the provincial average of 26%.
The Coloured community had the highest proportion of people who were dissatisfied with their local municipalities. This dissatisfaction extended to provincial and national government:
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72% of Coloured people expressed dissatisfaction with provincial government, compared to 63% across Gauteng, and
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78% were dissatisfied with the national government, compared to 67% for the province.
Over a quarter of Coloured people believed that politics was a waste of time (26%) and that South Africa was a failed state (29%). This was much higher than the provincial average.
The survey also shed light on the ongoing racial tensions within Gauteng. Eighteen percent of Coloured residents reported experiencing racial discrimination either always or often. This compares with 13% of the general population.
Unpacking Coloured identity
A range of South African scholars and authors are engaged in debates on the Coloured identity. In developing our own understanding of Coloured identity, we draw on a three-part framework for thinking about its formation developed by professor of anthropology Zimitri Erasmus and set out in the introduction of the book Coloured by history, shaped by place: New perspectives on Coloured identity in Cape Town.
First, Coloured identity cannot be reduced to a “race mixture”. It is a cultural formation shaped by the conditions of appropriation and dispossession under slavery, colonialism and apartheid.
Second, Coloured identity was developed through creolisation, the blending of subaltern and ruling cultures, and is continually, and creatively, remade by Coloured people across time and space in ways that help them make sense of their lives.
Third, the apartheid racial hierarchy placed Coloured between Black African and White. This gave rise to the common refrain, “not black enough to be Black and not white enough to be White”. This position is twofold. On the one hand researchers must recognise the intra-Black racism of Coloured people under apartheid. On the other hand, they need to recognise the community’s enduring sense of marginalisation.
Next steps
The GRCO‘s project, “The Coloured community in post-apartheid Gauteng” aims to understand and explore dimensions of the Coloured experience in Gauteng.
The research initiative includes these areas of focus: a political and historical overview; a demographic and geographic profile; an examination of social and economic conditions; subjective well-being; political attitudes; and the role of religion.
Shamsunisaa Miles-Timotheus and Shannon Whitaker, junior researchers at the GCRO, are co-authors of this article.
