moreover, Coloured children were effectively banned from the public
schools. Those who received any formal education did so in mission in-
stitutions, which transmitted little secular knowledge. In spite of the non-
racial terminology of the 1853 constitution, the white rulers of the Cape
Colony were treating the Coloured People as a distinct and inferior com-
munity, dependent on white employers.F?
The first officialcensus of the Cape Colony (which was subject to a large
margin of error) was taken in 1865, on the eve of the rnineral discoveries
that would transform the entire Southern African region. The population
was reported to comprise about 180,000
"Europeans," 200,000
"Hotten-
tots" and "Others" (that is, Coloured People), and 100,000
"Kafirs"-
people of African farming stock who were becoming the main labor force
in the eastern districts. 73
With a few breaks, the colonial economy had been expanding con-
tinually since the time of van Riebeeck. Contrary to earlier views, which
accepted burgher polemics against the Dutch East India Company at face
value, Peter van Duin and Robert Ross have shown that this, was true
throughout the Dutch period: "All major sectors of the Cape's agrarian
economy, namely the production of wheat and wine and the ranching of