The World: Apartheid's Other Victims

White South Africans sometimes say flippantly that their country's color problem began nine months after Jan van Riebeeck and his Dutch East India Company settlers arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. In many ways, this is how the "coloreds" (racially mixed South Africans) have long been regarded by whites—as a joke and an embarrassment, as "brown Afrikaners," the living evidence of indiscretions by their forefathers.

Van Riebeeck imported slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Ceylon and the Malay Archipelago; during the first few years of the settlement, he encouraged his men...

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