Tyla’s Success Highlights Identity and Coloured Community Support

Tyla’s rise to global music prominence with her hit song Water brought attention not only to her R&B vocals and viral dance moves but also to her self-identification as “Coloured,” sparking controversy, particularly in the US, where the term carries a painful racist history and is rarely used.

The debates have highlighted the challenges of discussing hyperlocal racism and identity issues in a globalized world, where words offensive in some countries can be reclaimed with pride in others. Many Black and Coloured South Africans have defended the Grammy-winning singer’s right to define her own identity, while younger Coloured South Africans are exploring the complexities of a category entrenched by apartheid but now a distinct culture.

The 1950 Population Registration Act forced all South Africans to register as “native,” “Coloured,” or “white,” with “Asian” added later. Those categorized as “Coloured” included indigenous Khoi and San people, descendants of enslaved people from other parts of Africa, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and families with mixed-race heritage. This was a strategy to divide and rule Coloured and Black South Africans, with the apartheid regime offering slightly better jobs, houses, and other benefits to Coloured people. Many Coloured South Africans continue to reject being called Black.

Apartheid policies segregated people into Coloured-only townships, assigning identity based on assessments of skin color, facial features, hair, language, and cultural practices. From this displacement, a culture has developed, including unique music, humor, and food like koe’sisters – syrup-drenched dough balls served warm, infused with spices and rolled in coconut.

In 2020, Tyla, who has Zulu, Irish, and Mauritian-Indian heritage, posted a video on TikTok of herself twisting her hair into a traditional African style, writing, “I’m a Coloured South African… I’m exploring my African heritage by wearing Bantu knots.”

As Water climbed the US charts in late 2023, some Black Americans online expressed discomfort with the term “Coloured” to describe the 22-year-old.

In June, when interviewing Tyla, US radio DJ Charlamagne tha God asked her to explain the debates surrounding her identity; she declined to answer. Tyla later posted a statement saying, “I don’t expect to be identified as Coloured outside of South Africa by anyone not comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside South Africa. But to close this conversation, I’m both Coloured in South Africa and a Black woman.”

Lynsey Ebony Chutel, co-author of Coloured, said the lesson of the Tyla experience was that “there are multiple ways of being Black.” She added, “There has been a lack of grace from Black communities around the world, where some commentators are arguing that there’s one way to be Black.”

Chutel and her co-author, Tessa Dooms, identify as both ethnically and culturally Coloured and politically Black. Political blackness gained popularity in South Africa through Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1960s and 70s, encouraging people to shed feelings of inferiority. However, apartheid forced Coloured people to distance themselves from Black heritage to gain benefits.

Since apartheid ended, disillusionment has festered in historically Coloured communities, according to jazz musician Benjamin Jephta, who noted high rates of gang crime, incarceration, and school dropouts.

While Coloured people were not monolithic, many shared the struggle of discussing their heritage with older relatives, said Jamil Khan, who is researching Coloured identities. Khan said a shared experience among people with enslaved heritage is shame and silence around that history.

Chutel said a positive outcome of Americans’ questioning of Tyla’s identity has been observing Black South Africans defending her. “There has been historic animosity between the two groups, and that’s because of that division created by apartheid,” she said. “When Black South Africans stood up for Tyla in that way, it told me that we are beginning to create a more unified understanding of who we are as South Africans.”