Indenture: more research is needed
IN THE trail of Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1834, the colonial government of India oversaw the migration of close to two million Indians signing contracts of indenture up to the end of World War I.
The new system of labour provision saw the “migration” of the Indian diaspora to British colonies that included the Mascerene Islands of Mauritius and Reunion, South Africa, the West Indies and Fiji.
Traditionally, the historical literature on indenture has been split into two narratives that speak of coercion or voluntary migration. Hugh Tinker’s A New System of Slavery and Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire speak of coerced indenture that resulted from the British destruction of a flourishing rural economy of India.
The destruction resulted in the audacious looting of India, leading to the rampant growth of the British Empire in the age of industrialisation.
Other authors have tended to turn the argument on its head, interpreting migration as a largely voluntary activity, a simple means of betterment and escape from the social and economic oppression of rural life.
At its extreme, this perspective suggests that the migration of indentured labourers to overseas sugar plantation colonies such as Mauritius and Fiji was a voluntary process.
In South Africa, the brutality of the system of indenture in the plantations brought the theory of enslavement into sharper focus. If indeed the indentured workers arrived here on African soil voluntarily, their condition on the plantations in the early years suggests that voluntary indenture developed into a new-age slavery of inescapable proportions.
Professor Surendra Bhana, an eminent scholar, spoke of 75-linear metres of archival material that lie in wait of further analysis. Listed in the 75-linear metres at the Pietermaritzburg archives is substantial evidence to validate that indenture in the colony of Natal developed into enslavement.
The extent of the abuse eventually resulted in a commission of inquiry, to stop the abuse after returning Indians aboard the Red Riding Hood had complained about their abuse on the plantations of colonial Natal in 1872.
In the Coolie Commission of 1872, complaints of returning Indians were listed as follows: “It having been stated at Madras by the returned Coolie, ‘Baboo’, No 3 049, that Mr Crozier’s manager and Sirdar used to worry and bully the Coolies, that four men hanged themselves to escape the annoyance of being compelled to work when sick, and of being beaten. It became our duty to ascertain the truth or otherwise of these statements.
“It appears that Veucamamony was assigned to Mr Crozier on the 9th February, 1866, and committed suicide by hanging himself on the 14th December.
“Veerasammy was transferred to Mr Crozier on the 23rd December 1865, and committed suicide by hanging, 21st February 1866. Both the Clerk of the Peace at Durban investigated these cases at the time, and no cause for the suicides could be traced. The reports of the medical officer do not give any information, beyond recording that the cause of death was hanging.”
In this context of the documented abuse of workers in colonial Natal, indenture was eventually stopped in 1911 and ceased globally in 1920. In the dominant narrative about indenture in South Africa, the focus is entirely on the Indian community.
An often overlooked fact is that in the newfound zeal to curb the slave expeditions of the Arabs and the Portuguese in the later 19th century, the British navy “rescued” shiploads of African slaves in the Indian Ocean and transported them to Durban, ostensibly to deposit them in a safe third country.
The group, presently identified as Makua from northern Mozambique, were misnamed “Zanzibaris”.
A number were also indentured since 1873, alongside Indians. When apartheid segregation was enforced in 1948, they were relocated to the Indian township of Chatsworth.
The significant presence of the Indian community contrasts sharply with perhaps the smallest minority in the country, namely the 5 000 descendants of the Makua-speaking slaves.
Like with Indian indenture, it is necessary to locate the “Zanzibari” shipment to South Africa within the colonial labour procurement processes that ran parallel with the abolishment of slavery. Among the first documentary records of this community linking them to colonial Natal is to be found in the Natal Government Notice Number 142 of 1873, dated July 11, 1873.
Under the hand of D Erskine, the Colonial Secretary, it reads: “The Administrator of the Government directs it to be notified that in the event of freed slaves received from Zanzibar, the Government will require the entire number received, at first to be employed upon the Harbour Works, the Public Wharves, the Roads and other Public Works.”
A later notice read: “Contracts for service or apprenticeship will be entered into before the protector of Indian Immigrants.”
In this year, that commemorates 160 years since the first indentured workers arrived to our African shores, the parallels between slavery and indenture ought to be given more highlight.
The exclusive nature of indentured research must look beyond the narrow confines of traditional agency for a better understanding of the context of indenture to suture the divisions of our fractured past.
The telling of this history must find its way into our school curriculum before it is lost entirely.