“I am not a prisoner of history. In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.” ― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
The quote by Frantz Fanon speaks powerfully to a central conflict of post-colonial, multi-racial identity: the tension between an individual's agency in defining themselves and the historical or social labels imposed by society.
In Southern Africa, the weight of history remains heavy. One of the most enduring legacies of colonialism are the racial categories that continue to be perpetuated. In Zimbabwe, formerly the British colony of Rhodesia, society was segregated into 'White', 'Coloured', 'Asian', and 'African', straining social relations while reinforcing White superiority.
The term 'Coloured' broadly encompasses individuals of mixed European, Asian, Khoisan and Bantu ancestry, who historically occupied an intermediate position in the racial hierarchy. Zimbabwe is home to the second largest Coloured community in Anglophone Africa, after South Africa. Bulawayo, its second-largest city, is widely regarded as its cultural heartland.
This multimedia project invites senior members of today’s fragmented Coloured community in Bulawayo to share personal reflections that illuminate a collective (hi)story often left untold. We are challenged to confront, understand, and re-imagine: what does it mean to embrace the complexity and fluidity of one's identity—to belong nowhere, yet to multiple worlds at once?
To talk about Coloured people is to confront a multi-facetted reality. The violent dispossession and segregation of the colonial encounter. The anti-miscegenation laws that left mixed-race children in liminal spaces, burdened with shame. The intimate relationships, love letters hidden away by a system unwilling to acknowledge their truths. The intra-community dynamics and tensions.
Can we learn something from the bearers of memory—our elders—acknowledge our complex past, and perhaps, as Fanon advocates, reclaim our stories and ourselves?
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to all the participants and their families for the warm welcome, trust and openness. Special thanks to Rob Burrett and William Bezuidenhout for guidance and permission to use photos from private archives.
Disclaimer
The views expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect the creator's position.
© Katja Kuivanen, 2024
Proud Roots
Maud (*1933)
My great grandmother was Mzondwazi Khumalo, younger sister to King Lobengula. My great grandfather was William Usher, a tradesman from Scotland, Lobengula’s interpreter and close friend. When Queen Victoria visited, she brought King Lobengula a throne. He said to Usher, "I can’t sit on it, I am used to my little stool, so now when you come here, that is the chair you’re going to sit on".
William Usher had six children: my Granny, Baby Ann, was one of them. She was born in the late 1800s. Granny married my grandfather; a Welshman brought into the country to train settlers in gold mining.
The bit that I know is growing up under the African culture. Not the bit–the stronger part in fact. Granny was very good to me; of all her grandchildren, I knew her best. She would send me and another little girl to the shops over the hill to buy sugar. Now me and that child, our mouths would be covered with sugar when we got back! We used to swim in the river too...it flowed, unlike today. I grew up with the Africans in Old Bulawayo* until I was sent to Embakwe school for Coloureds.
*Old Bulawayo is a historic settlement that was originally established by King Lobengula as his capital in 1870 soon after becoming ruler of the Matebele (Northern Ndebele) people.
My father had me with a white Afrikaner woman. The family were against it. So, my mother was taken out to a farm to give birth to me. My mother ordered that I be given to my uncle, but because he wasn’t married at the time, I was handed over to Granny [Baby Ann]. I stayed with her for four years and was then taken to Embakwe. I remember leaving with the other Usher children by ox wagon. At the time, there were many children that came from a Matabele background. I couldn’t speak any English, only siNdebele. I love that language. Even today, I sometimes can’t understand what I’m reading in English.
I used to ask my aunt as a teenager, what does my mother look like? She would make me stand in front of the old dressing table. Then she'd say: 'look in the mirror'. Walking in town, I used to look at all the White women and wonder if they were my mother.
I remember an incident at Bulawayo City Hall. I was going to pay my rates and taxes at the counter for senior citizens. There was a queue, but the cashier said to me in siNdebele, "Just wait Gogo [Granny], let me serve two or three people and then you can come, just stand there." This one woman in the queue then turned around and said to the others, "I wonder who the hell she thinks she is, their time is over, it’s our time! She must queue at the back." She thought I was White. So I went to that lady and said to her in our language, "if your grandmother didn’t sleep with a White man, I wouldn’t be here".
I am born from Black and White. I know, and admit, that I’ve got Black blood in me.
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Just a Stranger
Petey (*1935)
They call me Petey. I was born in Brickfields, Bulawayo, as the fourth eldest out of thirteen children–the naughty one! We spoke Afrikaans at home, as my parents and grandparents traveled from down South [South Africa] by ox wagon in the early 1900s, looking for greener pastures. Until now, I don’t know who my great-grandparents were…I’ll never know.
My father had a sjambok [raw hide whip] he would hit us with. My mother used the shoe brush with spikes…but I'm not sorry about the way I grew up. I learned. We were a big family. If our shoes finished, we walked barefoot to school.
At some of the shops we had to go buy outside at the window. We weren’t allowed to stand by the counter. They served the Whites first. Coloured people needed a permit to buy beer. We only had one ‘scope house [cinema] to go to, whereas the Honkeys [Whites] had three!
Where Coloureds and Whites were involved, it was always a problem, you know. If you fight with them, the White man comes on top because the police take their part. But the Blacks can also insult you, and call you a 'Bushman', ja.
Her name is Laura–the guitar. While working at The Chronicle [newspaper], I bought my first one. I used to buy country music records and play in concerts at Davis Hall [a place where members of the Coloured community would meet to socialize]. My favourite country stars are Jimmy Rogers and Gene Autry.
My siblings, children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren are spread out around the world–in Zimbabwe, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. I have more photos of Kyle than anyone else. He kept me going, he's kept me alive.
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The Philosopher
Patrick (*1960)
From what I know, I was born in the Matopos Hills area. I know very little about my father. My mother was a Ndebele woman. My father died and we were taken to Sacred Heart–a boarding school run by German nuns. A lot of the children there were of Black and White unions. Perhaps the nuns felt responsible for us, I don’t know. They took in most of these kids because at the time, Whites weren’t allowed to mix with Blacks, and their offspring were frowned upon.
Growing up was difficult as I had no clue who I was, and where I came from. The connection between myself and society was quite difficult. Where do I fit in? We did bond at Sacred Heart, but each kid was also trying to find their own space. We didn’t have an outlet, we bottled it. A lot of guys turned to drugs and alcohol.
When the government changed hands [upon Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980], welfare was disbanded. We were given the choice to find our own sponsors or leave school. I was stunned and didn’t expect that. I wanted to study further and go to university, but thought it was the end of the road. I tried to find work, but the employment agencies closed. There was panic because Whites were leaving, and companies were closing. We got caught in the middle of all this. I couldn’t find a direction. Colour shouldn’t take away someone’s dream, it’s not fair.
In many ways I’m still a child as I have so many more things to learn. I've read a lot and researched how the human mind works, and how we should relate to each other. I've tried to expand my way of thinking. I admire art, and read books that you wouldn’t normally read. I can even listen to opera and enjoy it. There’s something in a man that's meant to grow and change.
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In-between
Diana (*1944)
My father came from Scotland to help control the Matabele uprising in the late 1800s. He was a Colonel in the army and was given a dairy farm near Gweru by the government in return for his service. A local Shona chief gave him three wives. The funny thing about my dad – he would tell us to never marry a Black person, yet he himself had African wives.
We were about thirty-two children in total. Wherever my father made kids, he collected them. He never left them behind. Because in those days if Coloureds were left in the reserves, the Catholic church or army would take them, and send them to missions. They didn’t want us to live in the rural areas. One of my mother’s sisters heard about a Coloured mission school called Embakwe. It was a boarding school run by German nuns. So, we were sent there when I was eight.
Our father used to speak to his wives in pidgin and to us in English. I spoke Shona with my mother. I remember one holiday when we came home from Embakwe, my mother was upset because dad was ill-treating her. You see, he had taken new, younger wives. Mother left him and took us to her rural area but the African people there said to us, "we don’t want maBushmani [Bushmen] here". So, we had to go back. We felt unwanted by the Africans, and unwanted by the Whites, who were ashamed of us. We were called maKharadi, Ninety-nines, maBushmani…it's tiring. Sometimes you feel nervous to be amongst certain people, because of the names you get called.
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Sisters
(Ethne *1951 & Edna *1932)
I was born on Redbank farm in Rangemore, known to locals as Nyama Endlovu. I got married to a man whose heritage was half-and-half like mine. –Edna (R). And I grew up alone, practically...never married or had children. –Ethne (L).
Our paternal grandfather came from Madras, India, to South Africa. He worked as a chef on the railways in Cape Town, traveled to Zimbabwe by train, and married our grandmother, who was of Cape Coloured [from Cape Town, South Africa] and German descent.
On our mother’s side we had a Ndebele Gogo [Granny], Songophi Mafuyana, and a British grandfather, Joseph Bunting-Gray. Although our mother, Jessica, was bilingual, one of our sorrows is that we never learned to speak the Ndebele language–only English was spoken at home.
What a wonderful person Gogo was. For an uneducated woman, she taught her children, washed and ironed and everything. But then, she had her [British] husband who was with her, and taught her a lot. She also learned how to sew, so our grandfather bought her a sewing machine. In the photo you can see the boys wearing dresses she made!
Our maternal grandfather, Joseph Bunting-Gray, arrived in Rhodesia when the British sought reinforcement for the Matabeleland uprising. In 1892, he landed at the City Hall grounds in Bulawayo after coming up by ox wagon from Johannesburg, South Africa. Sixteen oxen pulled those covered wagons!
At his death in 1967, our grandfather was one of the few White men who stayed with his Coloured children to the end. He would often say there is going to come a time when the whole world will be mixed–everyone will be 'half-breeds'. He even had a fall out with the 'Capie' [Cape Coloured] headmaster at McKeurtan [primary school for Coloured children in Bulawayo], who did not want local Euro-African ‘halfies’, like our mother, at his school. Grandfather went straight to the Education Department and said: “our children were born in this country, get these Cape Coloureds to go back to South Africa, this school is built for our children not theirs”.*
*'Cape Coloureds' from Cape Town, where most mixed-race people in Southern Africa lived, carried a certain cultural capital. For a time, Rhodesian Coloureds sought to identify with Cape Coloured roots, whether real or imagined. While Cape Coloureds did come with settlers from the Cape Colony as workers, they weren't the sole origin of Rhodesia’s Coloured population.
Our mother was a classical singer. The governess of Bulawayo heard her sing and put her in touch with a music teacher in Cape Town. She would sing at weddings and parties. Our mother got a powerful singing voice from her [Ndebele] mother. They would sing while washing clothes down by Khami river. Mother saw to it that we learned to play piano and dance ballet. We had a White ballet teacher, Ms Tomlinson, who taught amongst the Coloureds in Barham Green.
Gogo told our mother that when the White people came into the country, the Ndebele were driven into the swampy Matopos Hills. As they fled, they sang: “the white man is running after us, I am going to die! But he must know that this will be my country". One of the lines of the song is so sad you know. As a man is being sucked down into the swamp, he sings: “I will follow the dust of the zebra as they run off into the sunset”. Gogo used to sing this song. That’s gone with the generations now.
Two of our grandfather's sons had to fight in World War II. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) used Rhodesia as a training ground. An RAF airman even crash-landed into the kopjies on our farm. It hit the old man square, as at the time our uncles were away at the front in Abyssinia [Ethiopia]. Both made it back home, thankfully.
One of things that Coloured soldiers were promised by the government those days, was farmland as a 'thank you' for the war effort. Our uncles went to the necessary offices when they returned to Rhodesia, but they were never given anything. It made them so bitter.
My husband died when I was 48 years old. Since the children were still schooling, my mother kindly took us in. She had a big house and that is where I started gardening. Ever since then, I got into hard work.
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King Rat
(James *1949)
I've had a tough life. My mother was a Ndebele lady, my father came from Scotland. I was born in Redbank–Nyama Endlovu–and grew up in Matabeleland.
I can still remember the day I left home; I was thirteen years old. It was cold, during winter, so I made two fires and slept in the bush. By age sixteen, I was working on the railways, and after that I joined the Rhodesian army [to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War, or the Zimbabwe War of Liberation]. Even though it was compulsory, most Coloured men joined because of the difficult situation in the country. Many couldn’t feed their families. We built close friendships [in the army], but a lot of us also started to drink excessively.
Coloured soldiers were full of problems. Why was the discipline so bad amongst them? If you breed a horse and a donkey, you get the stubbornness of a mule. We are mixed breed, and we are very stubborn. To get a Coloured man to become a soldier, to install discipline in a life and death situation–you’ve got to be cruel. If you’re not cruel, you’re wasting your time.
Before joining the army, I worked at a detective agency in Harare [the capital city]. That is where I qualified [as a private investigator]. There were lots of divorce cases following the war. We would do whatever we could to prove adultery, then go to court against top class lawyers. Most of my clients were White! We became like legends amongst the lawyers we were up against. I can’t remember ever losing a case.
Today, I run my own detective agency. I don’t know of any other Coloured men in the country who are private investigators. So I am probably the only one, and very successful at that.
War makes you lose respect for human life. It takes away any compassionate feelings you have in your heart. A lot of men died of alcohol abuse. It’s sad. Even those that are living today are alcoholics. Their wives have deserted them, left them in the cold…ja. Most of them, you will find in the old people’s homes, broken.
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The Teacher
(Cynthia *1932)
My father came up from South Africa when he was around nineteen years old to look for work. Many young people came over to Rhodesia, as it was called back then, to look for work, you know? There were a lot of Coloured people in Bulawayo. In those days, the only jobs that Coloured men could get were on the railway. And so, my father went to train with my grandfather, who was a plate layer. He also became a plate layer and that’s how he met my mother, and they got married, around 1930, here in Bulawayo.
I was the eldest of eight siblings. We grew up in the bush, and since my father was a plate layer, we moved with the railway line. At the age of seven I had to go to boarding school at McKeurtan primary in Bulawayo–the only Coloured school at the time with a hostel. Coloured children came from different parts of Rhodesia to board there. In those days, Europeans, Indians, Coloureds and Africans had their own schools. We did not mix.
In those days they had separate hospitals and [residential] areas for each group. Barham Green, where we are now, was built for Coloureds.
After completing primary school, as girls we had two choices–to become a teacher or a nurse. Other than that, we could go work in factories. The boys went to work in the trades, where they did apprenticeships, for example as boilermakers. Only Europeans could become typists or rise to the rank of manager. But we grew up with that segregation, so we were used to it.
The government needed Coloured teachers and nurses, because Whites wouldn’t want to work in a Black school or hospital. So when we finished primary school, if we wanted to pursue a secondary education, they sent us to South Africa. The government paid for everything. I was thirteen years old when I left for Zonnebloem College in Cape Town in 1946, to train to become a primary school teacher, since there was no high school for Coloureds yet back home in Rhodesia. There was a teaching college–but for Whites only.
In 1950 I came back to Bulawayo to teach at McKeurtan. I got married and went on to have four children. I must say, I enjoyed teaching very much, but between having children and teaching, it wasn’t an easy life. Later, I taught at Barham Green Primary School. I knew every family in the neighbourhood, because all their children had to come through me!
When Zambia became independent in 1964, we moved there. I taught at a convent on the Copperbelt. That was the first time I taught in a mixed school, attended by Europeans, Coloureds, Indians and Africans. I did a lot of things in Zambia that we could never do as Coloureds in Zimbabwe: I learned to drive and bought myself a second-hand car. I belonged to the theatre society and the Women’s Institute. I even took up karate and judo as self-defense and to keep fit! When we returned to Zimbabwe [after independence] I continued teaching until I retired.
I feel sad sometimes. The other teachers I taught with have all passed.
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Mama
(Audrey *1942 †2023)
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"Preserving our heritage is preserving our memory–we cannot build a sustainable future without remembering our past." – Audrey Azouley, UNESCO Director-General
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