ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a narrative of the colonial encounter which identifies those factors that explain how 'color', 'ethnicity', and class became central constructs within dominant discourses in South Africa. It focuses on the following four factors: the construct of the 'savage other', the organization of early Cape society on the basis of a slave mode of production, the notion of a 'moving frontier', and the role of 'the missionary as messenger'. The chapter also focuses on the period from the Dutch settlement in 1652 to the creation of the 1910 'whites only' social contract, which established white control of state and civil society. The significance of the missionary lies in the spread of cultural practices that in the long run contributed to a changed subaltern consciousness. Missionaries represented the only group of whites to permanently work and reside within African polities and in this sense they could be viewed as inside 'outsiders' from the African perspective.