From Westbury in Johannesburg to Mitchells Plain in Cape Town, something troubling has been unravelling in South African society. People mobilise themselves and articulate their grievances not as the poor, or even as blacks, but as “coloured people”.
In a mosque where I was about to speak, a well-organised group of citizens spoke brazenly about black Africans in Cape Town as outsiders coming from the Eastern Cape. “Not white enough then, not black enough now,” they complain.
To the protesters the grievance is real — the government of the day prioritises the needs of black Africans and, once again, coloured people are shunted aside, this time by dark-skinned nationalists.