Honour to a woman who can’t be ignored
In the final part of this series, in the run-up to the commemoration of the arrival of Indians in South Africa on November 16, 1860, Betty Govinden,a member of the 1860 Heritage Centre’s research and development unit, writes on a strong and resilient woman, Senthamani Govender
GRANNY’S story must also be seen against the backdrop of history.
When Granny’s father and mother arrived in South Africa in the early years of the 20th century, the Indian indentured labourers had already been in South Africa for over 40 years, having first arrived in 1860.
Thanks to the hard work of the labourers, sugar and tea cultivation did much to improve the economy of the colony. The succeeding generations built on this legacy and helped to consolidate the life of the colony. It is vitally important to give critical consideration to the way women’s experiences of the physical spaces of houses and memories of home are linked to the development of the national imaginary.
Black women’s experiences in South Africa, in particular, given the apartheid history of internal movement, dislocation and relocation, as exemplified in some respects in Granny’s life, need to be explored more closely. The early labourers experienced discrimination and hostility.
Mahatma Gandhi, who was in the country at the time Granny’s parents arrived, started his Satyagraha campaigns. The recorded history of this period shows many indignities that Indian immigrants were subjected to and the anti-Indian legislation that was promulgated.
Granny’s story must also be seen against the dominant historiography of the past century (and even into the 21st century).
The way people’s lives were deemed history-making or newsworthy or not is controlled by a number of influences and assumptions. Political activism or educational and cultural accomplishments assured selected Indian women of a revered, iconic place, and the “little women” were erased.
Class played an important role in this politics of recognition.
Fame may be also enjoyed for “achievements” such as winning beauty contests or engaging in daring feats such as riding the “wall of death”. Ironically, in the new democracy, there is a new silencing of people like Granny, who are cast in the role of liminal spectator.
Yet, the challenge is to resist hegemonic formations such as these and develop a subaltern historiography, where the lives of those relegated to the margins are explored.
After all, it was the unknown masses in the mass democratic movements in South Africa across the 20th century who played anonymous but pivotal (or different) roles in the political struggles (alongside the Gandhis, Mandelas, Tambos and Sisulus).
People like Granny are an important living and breathing archive that cannot be ignored. It is also necessary to explore how they script their lives, the way history, power and subalternity coalesce in their self-fashioning that makes them narrate their lives in particular ways.
During the rest of the 20th century, South Africans of all race groups faced difficulties and challenges caused directly by apartheid legislation.
Among these struggles was the fight for land and for homes, education and political rights. Granny tried hard to send both her son and daughters to school, but regrets that she could not afford tertiary education for them.
While the century saw some of the most oppressive laws and practices in history, it also saw remarkable resistance. This resistance took the form of the formal opposition of the broad liberation front.
It also saw the formation of strong community efforts for social upliftment and the sheer will and determination of countless ordinary individuals, who struggled, survived and succeeded in spite of apartheid. Granny did not participate in any political activism directly, but was aware of the many struggles being waged around her.
Her story, like that of so many women, may be seen as a counter-narrative (or parallel narrative) of women’s active participation in the liberation struggle in general and the passive resistance movements in particular. Yet, it is, arguably, no less valuable.
Indeed, the forces of history, as well as the personal agency that she herself displayed in her life, shape Granny’s story.
Her story is a testimony of faith and belief in oneself, in one’s dignity and intrinsic self-worth, in spite of systemic attempts to undermine this.
When reading oppressed women’s stories, post-colonial feminists have drawn our attention to the multiple pressures on women’s lives, and their resilience in overcoming the adversities of their lives.
At a time when women were “doubly othered” – as woman and as colonised person – we need to “capture what is at stake in the practices of the self or agency in the contested margins of patriarchy, empire, and nation”.
We must also not forget the existence of the hierarchies of caste (not to speak of class) that were inserted into South African Indian living. Indeed, Granny’s story reveals the over-riding compulsion to live life, not unaccommodated and bereft, but with beauty and truth, integrity and resilience.
It is the story of so many women who have dedicated their lives to “the making of a habitable world”.
We need to appreciate that there are many faces of the Indian (or black) woman, as I capture in my poem “I am Woman”, across the historical span of the 20th century, from indentured days to the present time. Many were not political or regarded as feminist; many were not professional women with formal training. Women of indentured stock, of the first generation, were largely labourers and combined in the public space with their domestic duties.
Narrative
The second generation, such as Granny, lived very much in the footsteps of their mothers and grandmothers. Women like Granny straddled the traditional and the modern and paved the way for the generations of women who took their place unambiguously in the public domain.
It certainly does not help to develop a linear narrative of women’s experiences and development and it is more helpful to consider the temporal and spatial differences.
Undoubtedly, for many women, especially our mothers and grandmothers, self-hood and subjectivity were shaped by and negotiated within an unquestioned patriarchal mould. But this does not deny the independence that was constantly struggled over and achieved.
Senthamani Govender joined the winding queues to cast her vote in 1994 in the first democratic elections in the land of her birth.
She was 71 at the time, and now remarks that she has not missed voting on successive election days. At the age of 95, she remains a very serene woman, thankful for a blessed life.
Her name, which she noticed is pronounced “Shanthamani” in India, means peace and calm.
Her hope for the future is that there will be peace and calm and that the country and the rest of the world will be free from fear.