It is generally agreed that the Cape Colony’s disenfranchisement legislation did what it set out to do: it drastically reduced the number of blacks who were eligible to vote. However, we find that empirical support for this view is weak. We argue that disenfranchisement was not as effective as is claimed. We question the literature on black disenfranchisement in the late 19th-century Cape Colony. Using a surname-matching formula in combination with manual methods, we counted voters in the Cape Colony voters’ rolls between 1887 and 1909 and found that the number of blacks who lost the right to vote in 1887 is much smaller than the 30,000 that has been claimed. Our empirical evidence shows it to be around a tenth of that number. Conversely, the number of disenfranchised white and coloured voters is larger than expected. Ours is an important contribution, as no researcher to date has systematically gone through these voters’ rolls to provide empirical evidence to support or refute the claims about disenfranchisement. The lower than expected number of disenfranchised black voters may be due to their resistance to being stripped of the franchise. The larger than expected number of disenfranchised white and coloured voters may have been due to recession and white poverty.

中文翻译：

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开普殖民地黑人剥夺公民权，约1887年至1909年：挑战数字

人们普遍同意，开普敦殖民地的剥夺公民权的立法是按照规定进行的：它大幅度减少了有资格投票的黑人的人数。但是，我们发现这种观点的经验支持很弱。我们认为，剥夺公民权不如所主张的那样有效。我们质疑19世纪晚期开普殖民地黑人被剥夺公民权的文献。结合姓氏匹配公式和手动方法，我们对1887年至1909年之间的开普殖民地选民名单中的选民进行了统计，发现在1887年失去投票权的黑人人数远少于当时的30,000人。声称。我们的经验证据表明，这一数字约为该数字的十分之一。相反，被剥夺公民权的白人和有色选民的数量则超过预期。我们的贡献是重要的，因为迄今为止，还没有研究人员系统地研究过这些选民名单，以提供经验证据来支持或驳斥有关剥夺公民权利的主张。被剥夺公民投票权的黑人选民人数少于预期，可能是由于他们反对被剥夺选举权的抵抗。由于经济衰退和白人贫困，被剥夺公民权的白人和有色选民的人数比预期的要多。