Women’s suffering under indenture
They were not spared the abuse and beatings of early Natal’s sugar estate managers
SIXTEEN Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children concentrates our attention. South Africa is a violent society. The roots of that violence go deep into our history.
For the purposes of this project we have focused our attention on Indian indenture but not to the exclusion of the diverse strands that make up our nation. However coy the revisionist narratives, violence lay at the core of indenture. Nowhere do people willingly leave their homes and heritage and willingly sign up for bondage.
The British military conquest of India systematically set about destroying the economic base of the country.
British material prosperity in the 19th century industrial revolution was fuelled by and directly proportional to the impoverishment of India.
Add to that the natural calamities such as drought and one had a potent mix of desperation and hopelessness.
The British trader-military state fed off this to subjugate the last available resource – people’s labour.
The modus operandi of plunder was not unusual among colonial invaders. The Spanish impoverished and subjugated with far more genocidal success in Central and South America. The Belgian warlord Leopold reduced an entire nation to forced labour in the Congo.
The British military in South Africa, over a century, steadily seized African lands and cattle, impoverishing African peoples as it did in India. In the case of South Africa, the British fed their hunger for labour with both Indian indenture and African migrant labour.
As in India, the ravages of military conquest were compounded by punitive taxes. The last great uprising against British taxes was the 1906 Bambatha Rebellion, brutally put down. Migrant labour was coerced by punitive taxation and land dispossession.
The colonialists wanted a stable labour force they could corral and control, hence they turned to India.
Working and living conditions on the plantations were atrocious. People laboured from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, and reports of rations and wages being withheld were common.
The Kwazulu-natal Archives Repository records shocking reports by indentured Indians sent to the Protector of Indian Immigrants.
The extent of the abuse is captured in the words of the Protector, James Polkinghorne, written on September 28, 1907: “In my opinion, it is nothing short of absolute cruelty to treat Indians like this, and for what? Simply to be able to declare a larger dividend at the expense of human flesh.”
Between 1880 and 1911 hundreds of indentured souls were officially recorded to have committed suicide.
The Indian Opinion of June 4, 1904 called for a commission of inquiry. Perpetrators simply got away, many going on to become extremely wealthy public citizens of the colony of Natal.
Women and children were not spared abuse and in one instance, a woman, Sornam, was accused by her master of not working fast enough. In protest and desperation she “flung down her hoe and also threw herself on the ground”, whereupon she received a beating from the estate manager.
The British sugar barons, James Liege Hulett of Huletts, Marshall Campbell, the Crookes Brothers and the Reynolds Brothers, who accumulated obscene wealth from the plantations, have never been held to account for their direct involvement or complicity in the abuse of African and Indian labourers.
Their descendants today enjoy the privileges and trappings of 21st century luxury, all created by the sweat of an ancestry many of whose descendants still live in abject poverty.
It certainly gives one food for thought when swinging golf clubs on the many plantations converted to golf estates where most of the atrocities took place!
The #1860Project focuses on deepening non-racialism and highlighting the contributions of our diverse communities in the history of the struggle for freedom. Authors Ranjith Choonilall, Paul David, Subry Govender, Kiru Naidoo and Selvan Naidoo present weekly segments. The outcome will be a pictorial published by the 1860 Pioneers Foundation in 2020 to coincide with the 160th anniversary of the first Indian indenture.
Feedback from readers, especially to identify people or events depicted or to correct the record, is encouraged at kirunaidoo1@gmail. com or Whatsapp 0829408163.