British and boer regimes converged on segregation, cheap labor, and racial superiority

Evidence

In contrast to Cape rulers, then, both British in Natal and boer in their republics, if in idiosyncratic ways, shared the mix of racial ideas circulating widely across European societies and their satellites in the second half of the nineteenth century. But they shared also more than this, namely, harsh regimes of territorially segregated control, racially restrictive electorates, and a guaranteed supply of cheap black labor. Thus both invested in themselves the embodiment of racial superiority and saw “the native,” more or less invariably characterized under the sign of “the kafir,” as “savage” and subject to “witchcraft,” as inherently inferior, those whose primitivity was ordained by awesome dual authorities: racial science and God. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1431

In contrast to Cape rulers, then, both British in Natal and boer in their republics, if in idiosyncratic ways, shared the mix of racial ideas circulating widely across European societies and their satellites in the second half of the nineteenth century. But they shared also more than this, namely, harsh regimes of territorially segregated control, racially restrictive electorates, and a guaranteed supply of cheap black labor. Thus both invested in themselves the embodiment of racial superiority and saw “the native,” more or less invariably characterized under the sign of “the kafir,” as “savage” and subject to “witchcraft,” as inherently inferior, those whose primitivity was ordained by awesome dual authorities: racial science and God. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1431

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘kafir’ signifier packaged savagery plus witchcraft as ordained by science and God — a useful compound definition of the colonial inferiority tag.
• XREF: Though culturally opposed, both colonizer groups built with republican self-determination.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1431