South African racial classification was fourfold, not tripartite, from 1921.

Evidence

Belying later characterizations of South African racial categorization as tripartite, the 1921 Census refined racial distinction into four prevailing categories that would dominate South African classification from that point forward: European or white, Coloured or mixed, Asiatic, and Native (Bantu) (in this order). Whites were defined as anyone of European descent; Asians as anyone of ‘Asiatic origin” and included Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Afghans, Arabs, and notably Syrians (all of whom but the latter had been included in 1911 under “Coloured”); “Natives” referred to “aboriginal tribes of the Bantu race”: and “Coloureds” were any mixed person not belonging to any of the other three racial groups and included “Bushmen and Hottentots” — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 103

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the precise operational definitions of each of the four racial categories that became the basis of apartheid classification.
• XREF: Connects to the author’s recurring theme of racial-state formation by building categories around whiteness; also resonates with US census construction of whiteness as in the Syrian case.

Related

• Apartheid unified all whites as beneficiaries, not just Afrikaners, beyond mere demographic expediency (similarity 0.81)
• Apartheid treated race as overdetermining while Latin America treated it as merely qualifying. (similarity 0.79)
• South African whites were themselves once labeled as separate races (similarity 0.79)
• Apartheid naturalized race rhetorically while shifting racial categories to serve white self-interest. (similarity 0.78)