Criminalise the term "Coloured".

 1. Why would anyone — in this case, PARC — create a legal document that could get people into trouble for using a term that has long been part of the identity and culture of a community in South Africa? (a) This is to correct the past injustice of forced identification. It is intended to put an end to old habits. Only after 1994, in a new and free democratic South Africa, were non-white South Africans given the opportunity to self-define. This also created the opportunity for people who identify as Khoi and San to have their original cultural names restored and officially recognised. (b) The name ―Coloured was created for the benefit and identity protection of ―White people. In order to keep themselves distinctly separated from the rest of the African people in Southern Africa and safeguard their race as ―pure, it became necessary to label others. Later, the apartheid laws were built and structured around these labels. Whenever someone claims to be protecting your identity as a ―Coloured person — encouraging you to be proud of who and what you are — they are, in fact, protecting their own identity of being referred to as either Black or White. We cannot discuss the terms ―Coloured or Brown in isolation without also referring to Black and White. (c) Proof of the notion that a so-called white European race needed protection against―inbreeding‖ with local citizens can be found in the Hansard Debates of the South African Parliament of 1950, on pages 2607 and 2608, during the introduction of the Population Registration Act of 1950. In those debates, members of parliament who opposed these laws warned the government of the dangers that would follow if they were implemented. The Hansard Debates of 1991, some 43 years later, describing the repeal of the Population Registration Act of 1950, record the dismantling of these race laws after decades of chaos, devastation, killings, and the worst excesses of the apartheid system. It is as if those earlier warnings echoed back to the government: ―We told you so. What must be noted here is how ― race was understood and used as a tool of power. The creation of four racial groups also served as a mechanism to make government administration easier, while at the same time erasing the tribal and cultural recognition of indigenous people. (d) Minority groups are often ignored in South Africa under majority rule. Too often, the rights and interests of minority identity groups are overlooked in favour of those of the majority. To hope for a majority vote in favour of a minority group seeking justice is, in most cases, a lost cause. This is why the problem of not being recognised by government as distinct from the name ― Coloured, or refusing to accept this imposed label, still persists 30 years after the dawn of a new democratic South Africa. (e) People generally resist being told what to do. This is why laws are necessary — to protect those who are perceived to ―look like Coloured people‖ but do not wish to be labelled as such by society. It is unjust that society continues to generalise and refer to all individuals within this community as ―Coloured. Criminal laws would compel an end to such unwanted behaviour. old Apartheid race classifications. It is the year 2021.