DIAMONDS,GOLD,AND BRITISHIMPERIALISM
Black South Africans, too, had varied affiliations. The people whom
Whites grouped together as "Coloured"
differed greatly among them-
selves. Their ancestors included indigenous Khoisan people and slaves
from Indonesia, Madagascar, and tropical Africa. They ranged from cul-
turally deprived farm laborers to skilled urban craftspeople. Some were
Christians, others Muslims. Moreover, although there were small Colo-
ured communities in the Witwatersrand and in Natal, most Coloureds still
lived in the western part of South Africa and had no contact with Africans.
Most Africans still identified with specific chiefdoms, which had a
history of conflict with neighbors, especially during the Mfecane wars.
Nevertheless, "tribalism,"
as the Whites called it, was less rigid than
Whites believed. African social and political communities had always been
flexible. In the late nineteenth century and afterwards, Africans continued
to move from one chiefdom to another and chiefs willingly incorporated
newcomers. Conquest and industrialization
intensified social divisions
among Africans. Mission-educated
clergy and teachers, and successful
peasants, formed a new hierarchy in competition with the old hierarchy of
chiefs.
To compound