Honouring our ancestors
Selvan Naidoo, the curator of the permanent exhibition at the 1860 Heritage Centre called The Story of Indenture 1860 – 1911, reflects on the heroes and heroines, who have provided a better life for us . . .
IN THE gloom of the hopeless poverty experienced by our ancestry, I must draw your attention to heroes and heroines of our history, who systematically sought to end that vortex of misery to provide a better life for future generations of all races.
Without inherited wealth or an act of fate, breaking the poverty cycle is largely dependent on education.
The higher your educational qualification, the further you move away from the perils of struggle.
The provision of quality education remained a paltry affair for the majority of Indians in this country for 30 years from 1869 up to 1899 with only primary school education being offered.
The census of 1904 shows that only 5 211 (5%) of 100 918 of the Natal Indians were literate in English.
In the same year, there were only 40 Indian schools in Natal, 10 were privately run “Muslim” schools and there was one private “Tamil” school.
The other 29 were predominantly missionary establishments, most of them community driven and without any support from the government.
These schools were poorly resourced with inferior educational facilities.
Most parents of school-going children could not afford to send them to school.
Children were required to contribute to the family income either by working or by taking care of their households.
In 1927, the Cape Town Agreement threatened Indian people without educational qualifications with repatriation.
The building of schools had to be sub-vented by members of the community. Schooling for Indians was in an inadequate state with a few state aided schools, offering up to Standard 6 (Grade 9) passes.
The need to educate KwaZuluNatal’s Indian community by 1929 became a priority to break the cycle of poverty and also remain in the country.
By 1929, schools like Carlisle Street Indian School, Depot Road Government Indian School, Tongaat Fairbreeze Government-aided School, Umloti Indian School and Pietermaritzburg York Road Government Indian School were permitted to write the Standard 6 examination.
This lack of educational facilities resulted in the first community built school, the famous Sastri College in Durban.
This school produced many professionals that have richly contributed to the history and success of our democracy.
By the 1940s education was unequal with more money being spent on white government schools and less money being directed to government aided Indian schools.
In 2017, have the playing fields been levelled?
Previously black, coloured and Indian schools remained hopelessly under-resourced in comparison to white ex Model C schools.
If anything, these schools have become even better after Fifa “uplifted” their facilities for visiting 2010 World Cup teams. How ludicrous was this?
One hundred and fifty-seven years after our indentured arrival, struggling parents are still paying ridiculous school fees to keep their children in schools that have some level of functionality.
In the wake of poor primary and secondary education came a saviour for tertiary education in the form of Hajee Malukmahomed Lappa Sultan.
ML Sultan arrived in 1880 to find a better life, first working as a porter and then becoming a successful farmer. In seeing the lack of training opportunities for black people, Sultan donated funds for the building of a technical college in Durban in 1941.
Sadly he passed away by the time the technikon was finally opened in 1956. Today, this college has become the the Durban University of Technology that services the needs of all races in KwaZulu-Natal. Perhaps the rich patrons and civic communities of today ought to use the examples of Sultan and the ex-indentured communities of 1920s by building new tertiary institutions that aid government and also provide fresh hope in the face of limited places for minority communities at tertiary institutes.
Another hero was Hazrath Soofie Saheb, who arrived in Durban in 1895.
He bought land on the northern banks of the uMgeni River in Riverside, a stone’s throw from the Indian Ocean where he built a humble wood and iron house.
This place is now the site of the famous Soofie Saheb Mosque.
An orphanage (Yateemkhana) was then built to house the orphans and destitute.
A portion of the northerly end of the land was used as a cemetery and adjoining this piece of ground an old age home was built.
Soofie Saheb personally attended to alcoholics and drug-related cases in a wood and iron building, which served as a Mawaleekhana (Rehabilitation Centre).
They were instructed to be physically clean, read Salaah regularly and they were administered home-made medicine from the Darbar.
Social responsibility
Every Thursday, people of all races and religion were attended to by a qualified Hakim and free medicine was dispensed to all.
The other heroes I must mention bears testimony to the need to activate civic and social responsibility.
The Durban Indian Child Welfare Society formed in 1927 is worth mentioning.
Mrs S Moodaly, the first chairperson of the society, followed by Gadija Christopher (who hailed from a wealthy family) and her army of female volunteers provided love and hope to the sea of poverty stricken people from 1927 to 1952.
They developed clinics, giving free medical treatment and medicines to poor families.
They also provided child welfare and social services to the needs of people from the famed Magazine Barracks, Mayville, uMgeni and Cato Manor.
The sterling work they provide in the 1940s and 1950s in setting up the Milk Club at the Railway Barracks and sewing clubs in Cato Manor cannot go without mention.
It is this activism and social responsibility that we need to revive across all South African communities that will bridge this dangerous divide in a very unequal society that we now live in.
This divide is made even more pronounced with South Africa being rated the fifth country in the world with the biggest pay gap where the chief executives are paid on average 140 times more than the ordinary workers. Scary! I must point out that the eternal pursuit of finding happiness is no easy road.
Success in dismantling the vortex of misery remains a challenge for a growing majority. In the year of OR Tambo, I must remind you of a speech he delivered in accepting the 1979 Jawaharlal Nehru award for International Understanding on behalf of Nelson Mandela on November 14, 1980 in New Delhi:
“It is fitting that on this day, I should recall the long and glorious struggle of those South Africans who came to our shores from India 120 years ago.
“Within two years of entering the bondage of indentured labour, Indian workers staged their first strike against the working conditions in Natal.
“This was probably the first general strike in South African history. Their descendants, working and fighting for the future of their country, South Africa, have retained the tradition of militant struggle and are today an integral part of the mass-based liberation movement in South Africa.”
Today, 157 years after our ancestry stepped on these shores, let us channel their tradition of militant struggle in providing a better life for our children by drawing inspiration from heroes and heroines of our rich past.