Coloureds refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in South Africa who may have ancestry from African, European, and Asian people. The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa, with Dutch settlers, Bantu, and Malay slaves intermixing with the indigenous Khoi tribes of that region. Later various other European nationals also contributed to the growing mixed race people, who would later be officially classified as coloured by the apartheid government in the 1950s.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. In this minoritarian system, there was social stratification, where white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then Black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.