'We Would Have No Name'

This article traces racial identification and identity formation within the ‘coloured communities’ of Stellenbosch (c. 1890 – 1960) and discusses how this process was, and still is, affected by political, social and economic pressures on a macro (state), meso (municipal) and micro (individual) level. In re-imagining and re-interpreting a select past, a particular identity somehow becomes assumed and mythologised to such an extent that the diversity within is relegated to the periphery. It will be suggested that becoming merely ‘a coloured’ from Stellenbosch rather than part of ‘the coloured community’ will give rise to a fair evaluation of the past, an objective legacy for generations to come and the freedom to celebrate the diversity that exists within.