Our forefathers worked hard to buy land and make homes
IF the lawns along Durban’s Golden Mile could talk, they would tell how, from the early 1950s until the late 80s, waiters worked exceptionally long hours only to get a few more rands in the pay-packet.
Many waiters would work the day shift which ended at 3pm. Since it would be too costly and time-consuming to go to their homes in Chatsworth, Phoenix and other areas to catch 40 winks, they would take a short nap on the grass along the esplanade and beachfront before resuming a second shift from 6pm until well past midnight.
It was the overtime pay and the tips they earned that helped waiters give their children a better education – many of them became professionals such as teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants.
Waiters worked hard so that they could pay the rent for their municipal houses on time or the bond on freehold property. Money was also needed to pay for extensions to the house to accommodate a growing family.
It was not only waiters who slogged for the sake of hearth and home. Many low-income earners took on additional part-time jobs to keep the home fires burning. Some sold vegetables grown in small gardens at the back of their houses. Housewives made murkhoo, samoosas and other snacks for sale.
Motor mechanics working at large car dealerships would run backyard workshops to supplement their income. Employed electricians, plumbers, bricklayers and carpenters would take on private jobs on weekends.
Decades earlier, the forebears of hardworking men and women were experiencing hardships in India. They were crippled by debt, drought or gridlocked by poverty due to the obnoxious caste system. Coming to South Africa to work on the sugar cane fields, coal mines and railways seemed a better bet. They were offered land and citizenship after completing their five-year contract.
But it was not all that hunky-dory for the Indians once they arrived in thenNatal. There were many reports of brutal and pitiless employers withholding rations and wages. They became veritable slaves.
The accommodation was shocking. Women suffered particularly bad conditions. There was only one woman to four men. Sexually transmitted diseases were rife and women did not have their own ablutions.
It was not long before the government withdrew the original promise of land and citizenship to discourage permanent Indian settlement in South Africa.
Indians also had to carry passes, and could not own land, vote or live outside designated areas. By then about 50 Indians had received free land from the colonial rulers.
Indians did not take land away from black people. It was white settlers who, at gunpoint, drove blacks off land they were already occupying, just as they had stolen, appropriated or forcibly taken land on other continents from Australia to the Americas.
Apart from the 50-odd indentured Indian labourers who received free land more than 120 years ago, Indians have always entered into purchase and sale agreements to acquire property.
For the Indian, his home is his castle. It is sacred. It is his sanctuary that others should respect. That is why he has always been prepared to shed blood, sweat and tears to own a house.
Welfare for the family remains a tenet of Indian society. Perhaps this cornerstone originates from the ancient Indus Valley civilization, or from the Vedas, which emphasised four stages of life. The Brahmacharya phase (student), Grihastha (householder), Vanaprastha (retired) and Sannyasa (renunciate). At each stage, the individual is supposed to fulfil duties. In the Grihastha stage, one is expected to raise money to maintain the household. The desire to own a house is part of the Indian’s DNA.
The indentured emigrants did not leave India for South Africa solely seeking adventure. They craved being home owners. The Natal colony’s offer of a gift of crown land proved incentive enough for many, particularly those of peasant families.
Despite grinding poverty in the Indian countryside, why else would thousands of young men and women have turned their backs on parents, siblings, relatives, friends, familiar neighbourhoods, their places of worship, medicinal plants and herbs, traditional foods, song and dance to board ships for Durban in far-off Africa?
They endured slavery and servitude at the hands of white masters and in all probability only stoically accepted the most inhuman treatment and merciless punishment on the promise of becoming a landowner.
In the ensuing decades since the arrival of the first Indian settlers, property ownership has remained the Indian’s hallmark of success. For many of indentured stock, nothing is more materially valuable than holding the title deed to a house.
Thus, in the early 1960s when Indians were uprooted under the notorious Group Areas Act from Riverside, Cato Manor, Malvern, Seaview, Bellair, Hillary, Magazine Barracks, Briardene and other areas, to name but a few, they felt crushed because the majority had been living in adequate accommodation under the joint family system.
They had their own homes with schools, bus service, shops, churches, temples, mosques, cinemas and halls. Small orchards and vegetable patches were the norm at almost every household. There was a spirit of community and camaraderie.
Uproot
When those who were uprooted in the name of racial ideology were resettled first in Chatsworth, and later in Phoenix, the people were aggrieved because their houses were taken and they were obliged to become tenants of mass housing schemes.
The houses built by the Durban Corporation were Spartan and it was the responsibility of owners to make improvements. Most houses lacked hot water; walls were not plastered and water seeped through when it rained; electrical conduits were exposed; and there were no interior doors separating rooms. Residents yearned to own the houses rather than remain tenants.
Community-based organisations made representation on behalf of residents for the houses to be sold. The residents protested with a rent boycott. Finally, the municipality decided to sell the houses.
Today, cement block dwellings have been converted into palatial homes. Using the last square metre of ground to expand the original council-built house, every architectural wonder is incorporated to create homes which can fetch up to R3 million.
Indians in Chatsworth, like Indians elsewhere in South Africa, have progressed from peasantry to privilege; have risen from the ranks of struggling tenants to wealthy landlords; from being unskilled to proficient.
It is his yearning to own property and other trappings of affluence that have contributed to the upward economic mobility of the descendants of indentured labourers. From waiters, they have progressed to become restaurant and hotel owners.
Many Indians also contributed in no small measure to the struggle for a democratic new order. They went to prison and some even lost their lives so that their children could enjoy a brighter future.
The Indian has earned his place under the South African sun. Thus, it is painful when land invasions take place on Indian-owned property.
Earlier this year a motion for land expropriation without compensation was passed in the National Assembly with a majority vote. The matter was referred to the Constitutional Review Committee to review Section 25 of the constitution which speaks to the right of property ownership, and to report back to Parliament by August 30.
The constitution currently states that property may be expropriated only in terms of law of general application for a public purpose or in the public interest, and subject to compensation. While government is still mulling over the vexed question of land expropriation, land invasion is on the increase.
Residents in Lenasia have been fighting a running battle against land grabbers for several years. Farmers at Inanda Tea Estate are living under the threat of land invasion.
Three weeks ago, shack dwellers staked claims to land at an upmarket gated estate on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast, fuelling racial tensions between the Indian land owners and the local African community. The land invaders claimed they had been given permission by a local chief who had charged them R50 per plot.
Many years ago, Indian property owners bought the land that is part of the Palm Lake Estate in Umhlali to build retirement homes. Today a plot can be bought for R780 000.
The EFF’s Vusi Khoza has encouraged people to occupy land and said people should not refer to it as a land “grab” but rather a repossession by blacks of their land which had been stolen.
Taking back what was duly yours and had been stolen is one thing. Seizing what was honestly acquired by dint of hard work and sacrifice is another.
Invading Indian-owned land is akin to the looting by whites of black-occupied land.