Measuring Mixedness in Zambia: Creating and Erasing Coloureds in Zambia’s Colonial and Post-colonial Census, 1921 to 2010

Abstract

My primary focus in this chapter is on the enumeration and classification of Northern Rhodesian-born Eurafricans who are more commonly known as ‘Coloured’ in Zambia. I outline the historical events that contributed to the development of a ‘single’ Coloured population as a racial category in Zambia’s colonial census (1921–1961) and question the ‘erasure’ of ‘Coloured’ as a statistical category in Zambia’s 1990, 2000, and 2010 Censuses. Interestingly, the seventy-three tribes accounted for in British colonial reports are ‘officially’ categorized as Indigenous Zambians while Coloureds are erased on account of their ‘European’ ancestry. In this chapter, I argue that the Zambian government should officially recognize ‘Eurafricans/Coloureds’ in the national census as they are Indigenous Zambians and they share with the wider Zambian population a mutual history of British colonization and discrimination. Coloureds recognition is important in consideration of ‘dual citizenship’ clauses in the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act, 2016. Previously, Zambian nationals automatically forfeited their Zambian citizenship when they acquired the citizenship of another nation. This is no longer the case. Consequently, the Zambian government needs to consider making provisions for ‘self-identification questions’ in future censuses and surveys so that its ‘dual citizens’ and citizens of mixed descent can articulate and self-describe the complexities of multinational and multiethnic identities.