The Passing of Ernest Cole
We don’t know why the South African photographer decided to apply to become "coloured" under Apartheid's racial classification laws.
The segregated stands of a sports arena in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in May 1969. (UN Photo, CC Licensed).
Not much is known about the decision by the renowned South African photographer Ernest Cole (of the seminal “House of Bondage” project) to “pass” from “African” to “coloured.” “Passing” refered to officially changing one’s racial classification under apartheid. In South Africa, there was a long history of people of mixed race, often categorized as “coloured,” attempting to pass as white, though the complexities of this identity go far beyond a simple label.
Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole (pronounced Ko-leh), his full name, successfully applied to be reclassified from African to Coloured in 1966. He was 26 years old. A few months after he successfully applied to become coloured, Cole left for the United States, where he died in 1990 as a black man.
We don’t know exactly why Cole chose to navigate the Kafkaesque racial classification system imposed by apartheid beyond the common theories and explanations found in museum catalogs and on websites. These sources offer only glimpses of Cole’s anxiety and the strain this decision caused his family. In “Ernest Cole,” the only documentary about Cole’s life until now, by photographer Jürgen Schadeberg, the issue of passing is avoided entirely, with no exploration of Cole’s motivations. One possible reason offered is that a coloured ID card would have meant less harassment for Cole while photographing apartheid and made it easier for him to obtain a passport.
It is difficult to get a sense how widespread this was, because similar to the “play-whites” (coloured individuals who passed as white), we have no way of knowing how many “play-coloureds” there were. As writer Zoe Wicomb has noted about play-whites: “We don’t even know how many of them there were. There’s no discourse, no records, because officially, after apartheid, they don’t exist anymore.”
Catherine Dilokweng Hlongwane (Cole’s sister) tells Schadeburg in the film “Ernest Cole” that her brother “… did a funny thing. He started stretching his hair … My mother [Martha Kole] was worried. He did not want to tell the truth … [Finally] he said, ‘I don’t want this pass. I want to be a coloured’.” In the same film, Struan Robertson, a photographer and an associate of Cole, adds: “Other friends [of Cole] had been [through the experience before] him.” The idea that friends of Cole had done the same is quite revealing, but Schadeburg doesn’t pursue Robertson’s claim with follow up question.
The apartheid government’s census defined the races thus:
(1) Asiatic means a person of whose parents are or were members of a race or tribe whose national or ethnical home is Asia, and shall include a person partly of Asiatic origin living as an Asiatic family, but shall not include any Jew, Syrian or Cape Malay; (2) Bantu means a person both of whose parents are or were members of an aboriginal tribe of Africa, and shall include a person of mixed race living as a member of the Bantu community, tribe, kraal or location, but shall not include any Bushman, Griqua, Hottentot or Koranna; (3) Coloured means any person who is not a white person, Asiatic, Bantu or Cape Malay as defined, and shall include any Bushmen, Griqua, Hottentot or Koranna; and (4) a white person means a person both of whose parents are or were members of a race whose national or ethnical home is Europe, and shall include any Jew, Syrian or other person who is in appearance obviously a white person unless and until the contrary is proven.
It seems strange that Cole chose to apply for reclassification as coloured so soon before leaving South Africa for the United States, a country where such intra-black racial distinctions didn’t hold the same significance or legal weight. Upon arriving in the U.S., he settled in Harlem, in an era when black nationalism, which actively discouraged black balkanization in favor of a broader unity, was in vogue. In this context, colluding with the official racial categories of South African apartheid would have been frowned upon. Politically and culturally, his neighbors in Harlem identified as black—this was, after all, the era when “Negroes” were becoming “Black,” and later “African American.”
Race politics in South Africa are skin deep or obvious, but they are also complex. Cole’s decision to pass for colored makes me want to ask more questions.
Who helped Cole’s prepare for his question to become coloured?
After he passed, did he “look” or “sound” like a coloured? What do coloureds look and sound like? Like “A Pretoria coloured”? What do Pretoria coloureds sound or look like?
Did some members of his family see him as a ‘race traitor’? Did they admire his decision?
What kind of coloured did he become? ‘Other Coloured’? ‘Malay’? ‘Cape Coloured’?
In the 1950s, at least 10 percent of whites were coloured, passing for whites. How many ‘Africans’ passed for ‘coloureds’?
What about Cole’s anxieties? There are too many problems with the certainty attached to his motives (mentioned at the outset here).
How does becoming coloured make it easier to leave 1960s South Africa? Are there reports or other instances of this? Were there laws or procedures that made it easier for coloureds to leave?
How does being a South African coloured figure or play into this new world he enters in the United States? What privileges come with being a South African coloured in America?
Why was he so focused on becoming coloured when his work was more interested in the apparent certainties of Apartheid black and white binaries?
- This is an edited version of a piece originally published as part of an arts project on racial memory in South Africa.
