Durban royal tour: protests and passion, 70 years on
FIRST there were insults, then scuffles and then individual fights broke out, man against man, punching, kicking and swearing.
The hall had become a battlefield. A Gandhi cap worn by one of the activists was set alight. Police vans were prowling around outside.
Dr Kesaveloo Goonam took centre stage shouting “Traitors! Traitors! I will shed my last drop of blood for the cause.” But the crowd howled back, drowning out her words.
So what was the commotion about and who was Dr Goonam? According to the book Passive Resistance 1946 by E S Reddy and Fatima Meer, Indian opinion in Natal was split on the subject of the forthcoming royal tour, with the Natal Indian Congress calling for a boycott.
The Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act No 28 of 1946 or “Ghetto Act” was behind it.
“Why should they pay homage to the king when they bore the badge of slavery?” This was one of the causes that Dr Goonam, a prominent member of the Natal Indian Congress and later its vicepresident, valiantly fought for.
She was a most unusual character. Durban-born, Goonam qualified as a doctor at the University of Edinburgh and returned to South Africa in 1936.
In Durban, she established a medical practice among black and Asian women but also treated white women from the poorer end of the social ladder.
She was jailed for four months in 1946 for her leadership in the Indian passive resistance campaign.
“I plead guilty and ask the court to impose the maximum sentence permitted by law,” she declared in court.
It was the first of 17 jail terms she served. Her experiences are recorded in her autobiography which she called Coolie Doctor, a reminder to us all about the attitudes of the day.
In February 1947, not long after Goonam’s release from prison, the royal tour of South Africa began in Cape Town. If you want to try to gauge the reception, imagine the arrival of the most famous pop star you know and multiply it by 10.
The cheers of the rapturous crowds can still be heard on Youtube where the old British Pathé News is available.
On tour were King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and their two daughters, the Princesses Elizabeth, 20, and Margaret, 16.
The royal party reached Durban on the ironically named “white train” on Thursday, March 20, 1947.
It is unlikely that Dr Goonam formed part of the adoring crowd that lined the streets. But our parents and grandparents were there and, no doubt, some of today’s readers too.
The royal party spent the next few days at various places in Durban including the city hall, the Cenotaph, Greyville Race Course, St James and Mitchell Park, where entertainment had been laid on.
The big question was: Would the Indian community support the royal family’s arrival at Curries Fountain?
Seventy years ago, Saturday, March 22 dawned, another beautiful day in Africa. The procession of Daimlers left King’s House in Morningside, made its way to the City Hall and then moved on to Curries Fountain.
They were greeted enthusiastically by the largest crowd that had ever assembled there, estimated to be about 65 000.
“Your South African Indian people of this city of Durban, the largest colony of Indians in the southern hemisphere outside India extend, with our homage and loyalty, a warm and cordial welcome to Your Majesties. Our hearts are filled with joy that you are in our midst,” said AI Kajee, chairman of the reception committee, in his welcome speech.
As it turned out, it was not the royal family itself but what it represented that the Indian community had a problem with. Goonam and her fellow activists must have known a long time before that this protest was going nowhere.
One of the lesser known aspects of the royal tour concerned another young woman. The king’s equerry (personal attendant) on the tour was the dashing, handsome and valiant Group Captain Peter Townsend, hero of the Battle of Britain.
One of his duties was to escort the princesses should they need to go anywhere.
He and Princess Margaret were in each other’s company every day. “We rode together every morning in that wonderful country, in marvellous weather,” the princess later told a confidante. “That’s when I really fell in love with him.”
A princess in love with a dashing war hero. What could be nicer? Nothing, except for one little problem: Townsend was married with two young children.
It was much later, long after the royal tour left our shores that this matured into a full-blown affair but was kept under wraps.
Finally in 1953, at her sister’s Dr Kesaveloo Goonam’s autobiography, published in 1991, vividly brings to life what it was like to be part of the struggle. coronation, the princess lovingly picked a piece of fluff from her by then divorced lover’s tunic, an intimate act that was filmed by television cameras perched high in Westminster Abbey.
The secret was out, the rumours were confirmed and the tabloids were in full cry. The young queen was not amused.
It was the biggest scandal since the abdication of her uncle, King Edward VIII who, 16 years before, had married his lover, the divorcee Wallis Simpson.
Despite the efforts of the queen to support her sister, and a sympathetic prime minister, the church and the government remained united against the marriage.
Looking back at the lives of Goonam and Princess Margaret, despite being on opposite sides of the colonial fence, they had a lot in common. Had they ever met, they would more than likely have got on. Both were feisty and didn’t suffer fools gladly, both loved causes, the one political and the other charitable, both smoked and drank, both died within a few years of each other, and both left their marks on the world in their own inimitable ways.
Princess Margaret eventually married Antony Armstrongjones, a photographer. They had two children but divorced in 1978. It is said she never got over Townsend and those halcyon days in South Africa.
As it is for so many, that first all-consuming love may fade with time but haunting whispers remain, whispers from a distant past to an empty present of what might have been.
As for Goonam, after a period in exile she returned to South Africa in 1991 and voted in the 1994 elections where, true to form, she said, “and I hope that means democracy, not bureaucracy or autocracy”, prophetic words, as it turned out.
• The Greenhams are historians based on the Berea in Durban.