Nomenclature & identity tags peculiar to the Cape of Good Hope deriving from an individual’s legal status made for legally-entrenched hierarchic discrimination
|
Designation |
Description |
|
Christen |
Christian |
|
Onchristen |
non-Christian |
|
Vrij geboren |
free-born and never enslaved (refers generally to swartes - indigenes, east Asian political exiles & to offspring of liberated slaves). Such a person was not the same as a free-black, although s/he would easily and often (even purposely) be mis-identified as being vrijzwart |
|
Vrij zwart |
manumitted or liberated from slavery having ostensibly the same legal status as free-burghers. Sub-groups also existed, for example vrij chinees & vrij caffer |
|
Lijfeijgen or slaaf |
slave |
|
Heelslagh |
full caste or full-blood (refers generally to slaves having no white admixture). These were further distinguished inter alia as neger, caffer, indisch, chinees etc. |
|
Halfslagh |
half-caste |
|
Mestiço or mesties or mestijs |
half-caste (refers generally to child of a white father and an Asian slave mother) |
|
Mulatto |
half-caste (refers generally to a child of a white father and an enslaved African mother) |
|
Kastiço or kasties or castijs |
child of a mesties or mulatto slave mother and white father. |
|
Bastaard |
child of a white father & Khoikhoi (Hottentot) / San (Bushman) mother |
|
Bastaard Hottentot |
child of a Khoikhoi or Bushman mother and an enslaved African or Asian father |
|
Hottentot |
Name given to Khoikhoi (also known as Quena / Khoena) by the VOC settlers. They practised nomadic pastoral agriculture |
|
Bosjesman |
Bushmen / San / Saan and also Khoikhoi who had lost their livestock were hunted down as Bushmen |
My thanks to Mansell Upham for this information. DR
