Navigating the troubled seas to a brighter future
HOW time flies! It seems like only yesterday when we commemorated, with fanfare, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of indentured labourers in South Africa.
Fast forward a few years and here we are, about to mark 157 years since the arrival of those pioneers.
Unbeknown to many of us, the ship carrying the first group of indentured labourers, the large barque Truro, actually set anchor at the port on the afternoon of Friday, November 16, 1860.
However, the Indians were only allowed ashore the next morning, after a health clearance by Dr Holland, the then resident health officer of Port Natal.
To the curious, and clearly surprised spectators of Natal, who expected to see a lot of dried, sleepy and vapid looking anatomies, the Indians, although somewhat dishevelled, were remarkably “chatty” and in good health. This disappointed a few agitators amongst the Anglo-Natalians as they had spread rumours that the “coolies”, who, after having spent such a long time at sea, would bring in cholera and other epidemics to Natal.
Remarkably, not one life was lost at sea. Perhaps they were blessed and cared for by “the gods”?
Or was it the first example of the unwavering spirit and resilience of those pioneers, one that has been passed on, and continues to manifest itself in every one of us who are their descendants?
Those that chose to leave the motherland were from a multitude of castes, faiths, education levels, vocations and linguistic groups.
There are several cases of those who changed their caste names and their identities in their haste to flee India for one reason or the other and perjured themselves on signing their agreements (known as girmits, due simply to the peculiar way in which the word agreement was pronounced by the “coolies”).
During the mid-19th century, the British were aggressively (to express it mildly) expanding their agricultural interests.
They drove many Indians from their ancestral land.
This resulted in them (the Indians) becoming poverty stricken peasants, with a bleak future.
Some of these folk opted to take up indenture, signalling the end of the chapter of their lives as Indians in India.
Does the story of land grabs by the British sound familiar?
Yes, in South Africa, indeed in all the colonies, more than 100 years later, we sit with the pain of such dastardly colonial offences, which have, in the main, gone unpunished and without international rebuke. Shame on them! Up to today, we wait for the British to apologise in a tangible way and to make reparations for much of the harm and pain they have inflicted.
Make no bones about it; indenture was the British colonialists answer to the banning of slavery.
It was a veiled form of slavery; a form of legal, forced labour.
Understandably, on arrival in Natal, there was a degree of trepidation, yet hope, and quiet confidence about the life that they were going to be faced with.
It didn’t take long for them to fathom the reality of indenture.
It was deathly difficult, working from sunrise to sunset in all weather conditions.
There have been many documented accounts about the suffering they endured, either on the sugar estates, or the mines, or wherever they were deployed by the colonial masters.
The pain of forced separation from family members, of illegal lashings and assaults, of a lack of supply of proper rations, of a lack of proper medical care, of squalid living conditions, of sexual abuse and of other human rights violations, all contributed to fanning the flames of the indefatigable spirit that permeated the souls of these pioneers. There was no looking back. Their aim was to overcome the odds and complete their periods of indenture, to save as much money as possible and to use their resultant nest-eggs to affirm their lives here in South Africa.
There was a realisation that returning to India after their periods of indenture would be arduous at best.
This was confirmed by the fact that the vast majority of those who had completed their indenture, chose to remain in Natal in order to make a life here for themselves and their children.
And so began the next chapter, that as permanent residents, and later, as citizens of South Africa.
Nothing in life came easily, literally everything had to be “fought” and toiled for.
Politically, Indians have been at the forefront of the struggle against oppression in South Africa.
Mohandas Gandhi, a lawyer, who came to South Africa in 1893, and honed his political views here, was central in the fight for the rights of the oppressed.
He returned to India in 1914 and fought for the independence of India via his Satyagraha (non-violent resistance) movement and eventually became a Mahatma.
From the roots of the indentured has emerged many a capable political leader.
It would be a disservice to the others if I were to name any of them, safe to say that some of them have paid the ultimate price in the fight for freedom in South Africa.
This is a fact that is often overlooked by many current leaders, who often forget that Indians have stood alongside their African brothers and sisters throughout the freedom struggle.
One of the cornerstones of the success of the Indians in South Africa has been the belief that education is the gateway to a better life.
From the very beginning, despite their paltry incomes, money was set aside by every Indian family for the schooling of their children. Schools were built by communities, teachers were hired and learning took place.
And so emerged an educated class of Indians, who would use their enterprising spirit to rise and become captains of industry and leaders in medicine, business, education, law, science, the arts, politics and agriculture. Despite the promulgation of the Group Areas Act of 1950, when families were uprooted and moved to racially designated townships, Indians were quickly able to re-establish and re-integrate themselves into the mainstream, despite the pain, trauma, hardship and losses suffered.
The ramifications of those events are still felt to this day.
And so let us examine the present chapter of Indians in South Africa.
Whilst many Indians still count themselves as part of the economically successful, there is an emerging, growing group of unemployed and poor Indian people, who are barely getting by.
Many amongst them are well educated, but are powerless in trying to secure employment, due to a shrinking economy, and, as some Indians will insist, to black economic empowerment (BEE), where Indians are behind their black counterparts in the queue for jobs.
This is the new reality and challenge we face.
Every one of us descendants of those 152 184 indentured labourers need to proudly take our place alongside our fellow South Africans, and navigate a brighter future for ourselves, drawing inspiration from the never say die attitude of those pioneering forefathers.
It will not be plain sailing, but then again, our modern ship is a little bit easier to sail on than the Truro was.
Rubendra Govender is the author of Sugar Cane Boy and The English Major’s Daughter. He is also a teacher, an actor and a social/political commentator.