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Abstract

Epistemic injustice towards Indigenous women is a global reality. In South Africa (SA) and beyond, Black pain is a recognized experience. “Coloured” pain is less familiar terrain since “Coloured” identity is accepted by some South Africans but rejected by others. Racial identities, however, often manifest as a material reality in society, shaping the life possibilities and potentialities of people. “Coloured” women have experienced limited upward mobility in post-Apartheid SA, and experiences of non-belonging accompany “Coloured” consciousness, collectively and individually. Claims attached to Khoi-Coloured heritage are growing more assertive in the current body politic and concentrated in provinces like the Western Cape in SA. Hidden by African patriarchal claims, the voices and politics of women with Khoi lineage are once again hidden in post-Apartheid SA. Many different stigmas are attached to such women, stigmas that are insufficiently explored and deconstructed in scholarly work. How much of this Khoi-Coloured condition entails a peculiar experience of pain and deprivation? How do we access Khoi (and San) lineage given a fragmented and absent archival political history, and do personal auto-ethnographies provide a way into a deeper understanding of these socio-cultural identities? Drawing on the experience of a historical figure, Krotoa, this paper argues that the “Coloured” African Matriarch is a decolonial African universal in the making.

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