ZINTO - Navigating Cape Identities: An exploration of identity in South Africa's Western Cape Province

Zinto: Navigating Cape Identities is inspired by South Africa?s constitutional commitment to ?Unity in Diversity?. Plurality of identity is explored using the author's own journey, to open discourse on identity that departs from the paradigm of race and ethnicity. Six lenses explore ? collective heritage; genealogy: history; life experience; genetic ancestry; and national group cultures. Exploration of identity in South Africa has been stymied by Apartheid ideology which forced the population into race silos - white, black, coloured and Indian, amplifying ethnicity as identity. Particularly for those classified as 'Coloured', identity was totally warped by ideology. This distorted legacy still haunts the post-Apartheid era. A fresh approach, illustrated by personal experience, emphasises ?the ties that bind people? and provides perspective particularly for 'Coloured' or Cape Creole people, often misrepresented as a mixed-race product of miscegenation. Six journeys proceed from the seven enmeshed tributaries to Cape identities - Indigene, Slave, Free Black, European, Maroon, Exiled Resisters and Refugees, and Indentures and Migrants.