For the future’s sake, we must remember the past
AN AIR of festivity pervaded the community hall as I crossed the car park towards the main door.
Vibey music was playing and smoke billowed from the outside cooking area. The smells of different foods mingled and hung heavy.
Men and women were standing in groups of three and four outside the venue, slapping each other on the backs and bent double with boisterous laughter.
The scene inside the hall was just as jovial. People seated around two dozen tables laden with soft drinks, sev and nuts, murukku, chillie bites, chevda, samoosas and spring rolls were having the time of their lives.
The walls were plastered with black-and-white pictures of a bygone era – class photos, boy scouts, football teams and passive resisters. A giant banner featured a grainy photograph of a school, long since demolished, and a large bunch of bananas.
Through a door which led into a courtyard, I could see some high-spirited men talking and howling with laughter, each with their fingers curled around a glass.
This was the inaugural gathering a fortnight ago of folk who share a common thread: they can all trace their roots back to Welbedacht, a once-thriving farming community south-west of Durban.
Jayce Govender, one of the organisers of the reunion of pioneer families of Welbedacht and their descendants, said for many years there had been talk of arranging the get-together but nothing concrete was done.
“Then the realisation dawned that many old residents of Welbedacht had passed on since the idea of the reunion was first mooted.
“That’s when I and a group of relatives and friends decided there should be no further delays and we began arranging the reunification party.”
Dan Naicker, a member of the pioneering JP Naicker family, was enlisted to cook on an open wattle-wood fire.
Cornish chicken curry with gadra beans, mutton (no, not lamb) curry with gravy soaking potatoes, savoury rice, braised chicken giblets, dhall, vegetable biryani and a variety of salads and pickles made up the menu.
“The first-ever reunion of Welbedacht residents was an allround success. Many people had tears of joy when they met old friends and recounted tales of yesteryear,” said Govender, adding the get-together would now become an annual event.
It is indeed heartening that former close-knit communities which became scattered over the decades owing to political, social and economic upheavals, have grasped the need to organise reunion events.
There was a time, long before apartheid segregated races under the notorious Group Areas Act, when family and community were the same: our extended family was our community. Now, our extended family is often widely dispersed, and our community is composed mostly of strangers.
Some of those strangers may have been turned into friends, but most of the members of our community are not even known to us by name, resulting in a pervasive sense of loneliness and isolation.
By reaching out to the people we once shared a close bond with, we widely open the floodgates of memory – the memory of common happiness and the memory of common sorrow. Hearts, united by common experiences, again fill with joy and you no longer feel lonely.
The once-vibrant community of Illovo, south of Durban, which occupied the barracks around the sugar mill, was one of the first to arrange an annual reunion.
For more than two decades, on the first Sunday of December, present and former employees of the various mills owned by the Illovo Group have gathered at the Illovo Primary School with their families for a reunion party.
A few years ago, the former residents of Riverside just north of Durban, where the Pick n Pay Hypermarket now stands, began meeting on 16 December each year for a reunion party held near the mouth of the uMngeni River.
Residents of Durban’s Magazine Barracks who were evicted and dumped in Chatsworth in 1963 have met sporadically every few years since the late Nelson Veerasamy, a journalist, arranged the first reunion event almost two decades ago.
Last November the Durban Municipal Pensioners’ Club arranged a big reunion party at the Chatsworth Youth Centre and according to Kiru Naidoo who helped co-ordinate the event, many of the former residents of Magazine Barracks had not seen each other in 50 years.
“Their joy and emotion erupted with tears and laughter. They danced to old favourites, made merry over piping hot breyani and snapped pictures with old loves and lineages,” said Naidoo.
Danny Pillay, chairman of the Magazine Barracks Remembrance Association, said efforts would be made to host a reunion event more regularly.
Success
On 5 July, the first reunion of former and current Clairwood residents took place at the Clairwood High School grounds and was a huge success.
Siva Naidoo, a member of the Clairwood Roots Reunion Steering Committee, said he was overwhelmed by the support for the inaugural event.
“People came from as far as Gauteng to attend the get-together, which featured live music and games.
“Those who attended were encouraged to bring old photos so that they could recall memories of the years they lived in Clairwood,” said Naidoo, adding that the second Clairwood Roots Reunion would take place on 10 July next year.
From almost a century ago, Indian market gardeners eked a humble but honest living from the soil in Chatsworth by cultivating vegetables, bananas and other fruit.
However, they wished for their children to pursue less arduous but better-paying jobs. Hence they placed high emphasis on a sound education. Sadly there were insufficient schooling facilities for their children to attend in Chatsworth.
Classes
The Chatsworth Vernacular Institute was formed in 1938 for classes in Tamil, Hindi, Urdu and Telugu. Later the Bayview Government-Aided School was established for English education.
When the banana farms and market gardens began making way in the early 1960s for the Chatsworth municipal housing scheme, the school roll began dropping as pupils began attending the many new schools that were built in neighbouring areas.
However, in order to rekindle the memory of all those pioneers who sacrificed their meagre incomes to build the school and ensure their children had a sound education, the Chatsworth Vernacular Institute has for the past 15 years hosted an annual get-together of the pioneer residents and descendants of Chatsworth.
This year the function will take place on Sunday October 4 at the Bayview School (now Sai School), Powerline Street, Westcliff, Chatsworth, commencing at 2pm. The KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Human Settlements and Public Works, Ravi Pillay, will be the guest speaker.
It is hoped that more reunion events will be planned by members of other once thriving communities, such as the locations at Germiston and Pretoria, Dundee, Ladysmith, Newcastle, Dannhauser, Stanger, oThongathi, Verulam, Mount Edgecombe, Avoca, Umkomaas, Umzinto, Park Rynie, Sezela and Port Shepstone.
Complementing the reunion events to keep the memories alive are several books that have been published to document the history of once vibrant and colourful communities.
In the past three years, just as many quality coffee-table tomes have been published: Glimpses of
Rural Chatsworth documents Chatsworth when it was a banana-farming area, Clairwood:
The Untold Story covers the history of the suburb before forced removals, and Legends of the
Tide covers the history of the fishing folk of Durban’s Salisbury Island, Fynnlands, Bluff and Bayside.
A book on the history of Asherville is nearing completion, according to veteran political activist Swaminathan Gounden, who is assisting with this project.
Tomorrow (Thursday) South Africa celebrates Heritage Day.
Through the sharing of life stories, what is reminiscence for one becomes the heritage of another.
As a living thing, heritage resides in the lived experience of individuals. It may be tied to a way of doing something, or a place, but it is the connections we make with these more tangible aspects of heritage that tie us to others, to those who have walked this place, that make these things meaningful.
Reunions keep the memories alive. Let’s commit to arranging and becoming part of more community reunion events.