Chinese South Africans
The first Chinese to settle in South Africa were prisoners, usually debtors, exiled from Batavia by the Dutch to their then newly founded colony at Cape Town in 1660.
[5]: 5–6 Chinese people began arriving in large numbers in South Africa in the 1870s[7] through to the early 20th century initially in hopes of making their fortune on the diamond and gold mines in Kimberley and the Witwatersrand respectively.
Due to anti-Chinese feeling and racial discrimination at the time they were prevented from obtaining mining contracts and so became entrepreneurs and small business owners instead.
The Anglo-Boer War, fought between 1898 and 1902, pushed some Chinese South Africans out of the Witwatersrand and into areas such as Port Elizabeth and East London in the Eastern Cape.
[9] Areas recorded to have Chinese populations moving in to settle at the time include Pageview in Johannesburg that was declared a non-white area in the late 1800s and known as the "Malay Location"[10] Large-scale immigration into South Africa during this time was prohibited by the Transvaal Immigration Restriction Act of 1902 and the Cape Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904.
These laws were largely made popular by a general anti-Chinese feeling across the western world during the early 1900s and the arrival of over 60,000 indentured Chinese miners after the second Anglo-Boer War.
Because of the war, unskilled African laborers had returned to rural areas and were more inclined to work on rebuilding infrastructure as mining was more dangerous.
[5]: 105 They were repatriated after 1910,[3][12] because of strong White opposition to their presence, similar to anti-Asian sentiments in the western United States, particularly California at the same time.
The mass importation of Chinese labourers to work on the gold mines contributed to the fall from power of the conservative government in the United Kingdom.
[5]: 103 In 1906, about 1,000 Chinese joined Indian protesters led by Mahatma Gandhi to march against laws barring Asians in the Transvaal Colony from purchasing land.
[19] Mahatma Gandhi started a campaign of passive resistance to protest the legislation that was supported by the Indian and Chinese communities.
[3] Under the apartheid-era Population Registration Act, 1950, Chinese South Africans were deemed "Asiatic", then "Coloured", and finally: the Chinese Group, which shall consist of persons who in fact are, or who, except in the case of persons who in fact are members of a race or class or tribe referred to in paragraph (1), (2), (3), (5) or (6) are generally accepted as members of a race or tribe whose national home is in China.
[36] Previously, the Chinese Association had expelled a member who had been appointed to the President's Council, a body established to advise on constitutional reform.
[12] The South African government also offered a number of economic incentives to investors from Taiwan seeking to set up factories and businesses in the country.
[5]: 427 In the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century many of the Taiwanese left South Africa, in part due to official recognition of the People's Republic of China and a post-apartheid crime wave that swept the country.
[1] In Johannesburg, in particular, a new Chinatown has emerged in the eastern suburbs of Cyrildene and Bruma Lake, replacing the declining one in the city centre.
The Chinese Association of South Africa was represented by human rights lawyer George Bizos in court during the case.
In September 2015, Department of Trade and Industry deputy director general Sipho Zikode clarified who the ruling was meant to benefit.
The heightened incidences of robberies and hate crimes against Chinese south Africans could be associated with their greater representation in the retail sector.
Tensions among the Chinese community in South Africa have deep historical roots, with early Cantonese and Hakka settlers residing in separate regions until apartheid laws compelled coexistence.
Chinese South Africans, frustrated by being wrongly associated with these actions, expressed anger and a desire to distance themselves from the negative image created by the Taiwanese newcomers.
