Who I am

Well, let me explain how it all started!

I am from Southern Africa, with ancestors from the local African and the settling European. The history of my racial background goes something like this:

I am locally known, in the country of my origin, as a Goffal or a Coloured. Coloured is my official race as designated to me by the Government and appears on my birth certificate and any official government document that will refer to my race. It would not be normal for a person to say, “Please ask that coloured person to stop” if I was walking down the street. Everyone would know who to stop.

Coloured, I hate the word Goffal, can refer to a mixture of any race but is predominantly a mixture of local black tribes, and white settlers. 99% of Goffal surnames are of European origin, mainly English and Dutch names.

During the white minority rule in then Rhodesia, all children resulting from interracial relations were separated from their families and put into race specific schools and restricted to living in coloured designated neighbourhoods. As a result the mixed race offspring began to marry and have families within their racial. The Coloured community began to grow and gain an identity. This evolution happened over around 200 years I would estimate. I’m not a historian, I am just looking back at family histories! Go to www.goffal.com for a little idea of the community and search the terms Goffal and mixed race Southern Africans in wikipedia for more information.

The sad thing about our community is that because we really have suffered from not having any good relationships with both White European and Black African, we have very little written history. Also, because we have suffered as a community under both these groups, we don’t really have any identity.

Our forefathers who would be pensioners now, did jobs such as boilermaking, welding, mechanics, and the women were mainly secretaries and clerks in the banks under Colonial Rule. When Independence was granted, the Black Africans took over the power and the jobs from the European whites that had settled. Coloured people always had the benefit of better jobs than African blacks under Colonial rule. Coloureds were still shunned upon because they had been favoured under the Colonial rule and, therefore work place progression suffering continued. Few coloured businessmen and women started their own companies and progressed in their careers. Most did what their parents did.

Traditional coloured designated areas still exist until today, and so do white and black, but there is more integration in that society. It is still shunned upon to marry someone outside your race. Coloured people have moved to all the corners of the earth for economic reasons.

I grew up in the era just after independence and am one of the lucky ones who views people of all colours as just human beings. Coming from the society I grew up in, this is an achievement and something that can only accomplished successfully if you leave Africa all together.