Reclaiming Culture and Resisting Erasure in Coloured Women’s Identity Narratives in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Vollständiger Abstract

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This article explores how women who self-identify as Coloured in post-apartheid South Africa narrate and negotiate their cultural identities within the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. Drawing on cultural psychology with narrative identity theory and decolonial feminist psychology, the study examines how women reclaim cultural practices, resist deficit discourses, and assert belonging. The study employed a narrative approach and made use of purposive and snowball sampling to recruit 13 female participants who identified as Coloured, were 18 years or older and resided in Cape Town, in the Western Cape. Using narrative thematic analysis, the findings reveal that Coloured identity is neither fixed nor culturally lacking but actively constructed through embodied practices such as food, language, and faith, as well as through critique of master narratives. Storytelling emerged as a key tool for resisting symbolic erasure and reclaiming agency. The article contributes to cultural psychology by illuminating how identity is shaped through memory, emotions, and everyday meaning-making in contexts of historical and social marginalisation.