Microsoft Word - PhD Thesis Final.pdf - University of Limpopo ...

among one another, visit one another, while the same could not be said
between the White groups and Black ones. The early European travellers,
traders, and hunters maintained their distinct identities. Later the
missionaries, whose nature of their job dictated that they work among
Blacks, ironically also maintained their distinct European identities. The
missionaries continued to live European lifestyles as they put on western
clothes, and even lived in separate plots from the rest of the Black
communities among whom they worked. The successive missionaries in the
Makgabeng vicinity such as Beyer, Stech, Franz and Jackel, lived on
separate mission plots, away from Black settlements.
Therefore, racial identities were observable among earliest communities
which came into contact with one another in the Makgabeng area. The
conceptualisation and institutionalisation of racial identities in the form of
apartheid in South Africa did not invent new ways of people’s perceptions
as racially different. The institutionalisation of apartheid policies was an
attempt to create identities which were imposed on people for political
expediency. But people felt, expressed and perceived themselves as
different racial groups long before apartheid became an imposed identity
creation concept in South Africa.
Today in the Makgabeng area, with the advent of democratic dispensation
at macro level, racial perceptions and expressions are not salient. Just like
in the whole country, emphasis on race is perceived as a negative aspect
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