Abstract
South Africa is one of very few African countries with three distinct Chinese communities. Issues of community and identity in the country that perfected and codified racial segregation have been complicated by fault lines of ethnicity, generation (or the length of time in South Africa), language, region of origin, education and class, as well as nation (specifically, South Africa, Taiwan and mainland China) and citizenship. The state and larger society often fail to see these intragroup differences and on numerous occasions have treated the Chinese as alien, different, or “other.” Ethnic Chinese communities have also defied or co-opted these assigned identities to their own advantage. I focus on the fluidity of “Chineseness” both in terms of its content and its uses, the differences between the three main communities of Chinese in South Africa, and the shifting connections and identifications with China and Chineseness over time. Material for this chapter was culled from in-depth interviews with Chinese South Africans conducted in 1999, interviews with newer Chinese migrants conducted between 2007 and 2010, more recent interviews conducted in 2015, and close participant observation between 1999 and 2015 when I was resident in South Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
Several of the Indian Ocean nations, including Mauritius, Reunion and Madagascar, also have multigenerational as well as newer ethnic Chinese communities. Note that “communities” is used very loosely because these three groupings have more differences within than between them.
- 2.
From 1995 to 2010 I was resident in South Africa, allowing for regular interaction with the various communities of Chinese.
- 3.
The Chinese were the second “Asian” group to arrive in South Africa. The first were the more numerous Indians. The Indian population had arrived in South Africa both as indentured laborers and as free migrants a decade or more earlier. The various governing bodies of the time referred to them broadly as “Asiatics” and they formed the fourth major group in South Africa’s racial classification system after the black/“Bantu”, white/European, and “colored ” (or mixed-race) groups. It should also be remembered that the Chinese were among those who set up the first permanent (Western) settlement in the Cape of Good Hope with the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in 1652. These earlier Chinese were few. Some eventually returned to their homes, while others perished in the Cape. Those who stayed on were too few to establish a lasting Chinese community and instead became part of a growing mixed-race (now colored ) community.
- 4.
These laws were passed in response to two separate issues. The first was the long-term settlement of indentured Indian workers who, freed from their periods of indenture and part of the British Empire, were given land and had begun to compete with the white petit bourgeoisie. The first set of anti-Asian laws was designed to restrict their mobility, residence and occupations. The second was the proposal to import indentured Chinese to work in the gold mines of the Transvaal. Extremely controversial, the idea that thousands of pigtailed “Mandarins” might roam the streets or might eventually gain their independence to also compete with white business owners caused fear among segments of the white population. As a result, the importation of nearly 65,000 Chinese miners took place under the strictest conditions and was curtailed within a few years. Both the Transvaal and the Cape colonies also passed the laws mentioned here to restrict or entirely prevent the immigration of the Chinese.
- 5.
Hart explains that, at the same time, large numbers of small-scale industrialists in Taiwan came under enormous pressure to leave the country owing to rising wages, escalating exchange rates and high rents. Ironically, these conditions, she says, were created by the stunning pace of their industrial investment and export drive (Hart 2003: 2).
- 6.
A quick internet search for “corruption in home affairs-South Africa” resulted in more than 8 million hits. This is a well-known problem.
- 7.
- 8.
The older generation of Chinese South African shopkeepers depended for their livelihood on their black and coloured customers. However, with each passing decade, fewer and fewer Chinese remained in the shops as ever-larger numbers completed tertiary degrees and became professionals.
- 9.
Headlines such as this could be seen on media platforms around the globe. See, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7461099.stm, accessed August 3, 2016.
- 10.
To be fair, this is the case throughout Africa, that anyone from East Asia is identified as Chinese. Increasingly, too, whites are also identified as the Chinese, indicating that at least in some parts of Africa, the Chinese have become the most significant and most familiar face of the “other.”
- 11.
Many recent articles attest to these concerns See, for example, http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/china-and-the-us-compete-for-influence-in-africa/ and http://tribune.com.pk/story/428026/chinas-growing-influence-in-africa/, both accessed on August 3, 2016. The Western media, in particular, seems concerned about “competition” between China and the USA , or China and Europe, as they vie for influence in Africa.
- 12.
- 13.
See http://www.ccs.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/CCS_Commentary_Dalai_Lama_RA_2014.pdf for one of many analyses and comment, accessed August 3, 2016.
- 14.
Regarding Chinese investment, see http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1512517/winery-factories-chinese-firms-investing-billions-south, accessed August 3, 2016.
- 15.
- 16.
This is not “black” in the Steve Biko, political and broad definition of “blackness” as inclusive of all those who fought against white rule but rather a narrow view of South African “blackness”, which will be elaborated in this chapter.
- 17.
- 18.
A. Botha, “Could Affirmative Action Be Helping White People?” thought leader, Mail & Guardian, March 24, 2011.
- 19.
I use the term “ethnic Chinese” here and in various places throughout this chapter as an inclusive term for all three communities of the Chinese in South Africa: Chinese South Africans, Taiwanese South Africans and the newer Chinese migrants from mainland China.
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Park, Y.J. (2017). The Politics of Chineseness in South Africa: From Apartheid to 2015. In: Zhou, M. (eds) Contemporary Chinese Diasporas. Palgrave, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5595-9_2
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