MANY LIVES

150 years of being Indian in South Africa

 First published in 2011 by SHUTER
An imprint of Shuter & Shooter Publishers (Pty) Ltd
Shuters House, 110 CB Downes Road, Pietermaritzburg 3201
PO Box 61, Mkondeni 3212
South Africa
+27(33) 846 8700
www.shutertrade.com

© in text, Goolam Vahed , Ashwin Desai, Thembisa Waetjen, 2011

© in published edition, SHUTER, 2011
© The images from the Local History Museums Collection are the property of the Local History Museums,
Durban, South Africa.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorized
act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ISBN: 978-14306-0010-7

Photographic credits are relected on the pages.

The Publisher has made every effort to trace and acknowledge copyright holders. In the event that any images have been
incorrectly attributed or credited, the Publisher will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Publisher: Heather Hannaway

Cover and Pages Design and Layout: Sally Ellis
Photo retouching: Renette Lampbrechts

Printing and binding: Intrepid Printers (Pty) Ltd, Pietermaritzburg

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
xxxx
MANY LIVES
150 years of being Indian in South Africa

GOOLAM VAHED
•
ASHWIN DESAI
•
THEMBISA WAETJEN
iv
Picturing History
This book is a portrait of many lives. It draws attention to the diversity and complexity of
experiences that being Indian in South Africa has generated over a century and a half of dramatic
historical change. Beyond the well-recited narratives of origin through indenture and passenger
arrivals, the stories in these pages give glimpses into the varied and multi-layered worlds of
individuals and families, women, men, workers, sports teams, school children, fruit sellers,
housewives, journalists, boxers, activists, missionaries; people both ordinary and famous, rich and
poor, old and young.
On South African shores, the designation ‘Indian’ has had many meanings. It identified individuals
by geographical origin; also those whose parents, grandparents or earlier forebears came from
India. ‘Indian’ signals a range of specific cultural influences and practices: the ring of languages, the
savour of food, a flare of fashion, relations of family and kin, styles of worship and religious belief,
musical traditions and so on, which are associated with the diversities of the Asian subcontinent.
A popular conception of ‘Indian’ has been embraced as giving definition to a community with
common sets of interests, experiences and transoceanic references. The term has also operated as
a race classification and has been used by the State to count, to exclude, to calculate, to apportion,
to isolate, to privilege, to discriminate, to control. ‘Indian’ is politicised in minority party politics
and affirmative action registers; it is a box that can be ticked on official applications and forms; it is
idealised as a style of femininity in Miss India South Africa beauty pageants; it operates in economic
discourse both as a market and a brand, invoking styles of entertainment in cinema, sport and
music, as well as radio and television media programming.
With such a multiplicity of references and meanings, Indian diasporic heritage in South Africa is
a dynamic, vibrant and complex story. This year, 2010, marks a century and a half since the arrival of
the first indentured Indians in South Africa and it offers an occasion to consider the rich complexity
that transoceanic migrations brought to the tip of the African continent and, conversely, how social,
political and economic realities here have shaped the formation of identity and community for
several generations of migrants and their progeny.
The visual images that appear in this book tell stories. Heritage, we argue, is really a collection
of such stories, stories that engage our imagination and our identification, stories that invite our
admiration and our sense of the familiar. The stories of heritage affect the senses and emotions as
much as the intellect. They combine to make up a shared memory that gives meaning to identity
in the present.
Yet the importance of individual stories is also in their power to surprise and contradict, as
much as to affirm, what we have been taught about the past. The images presented here invite the
opportunity to look into faces, to see gestures, poses, movement and expressions of people who
have been captured by the camera and held fast in time. These faces challenge us to meet them on
their own terms, to try and imagine social conditions different from our own. They challenge us to
see them in three dimensions. Where there is a tendency to imagine the past as mired in hardship
and struggle against the liberated present, these visual stories insist that the past held its joys and

v
 creativity and that the challenges of poverty and inequality continue in the present.
Our encounter with the faces in these pages is also an encounter with the technology of the
camera and photography’s ever-changing conventions and literacies. If we pay attention, we will
recognise that some images portray people as they wished to present themselves while others
captured people unawares; some subjects look into a camera wielded by a professional and
stranger, others pose for a family member or loved one. With the 20th century’s emerging confidence
in modernity and in scientific invention, we get a sense also of the world of things (motorcars,
telephones, furnishings) that come onto the visual stage as ‘props’ and backgrounds. Formally
posed photographs of organisations and families taken in studios and on ‘sets’ come to be replaced
over time by the ubiquitous snapshot in the hands of many. The art of photography emerges slowly,
also as social commentary and journalism, to inform the compositional conventions of amateurs.
All photographs do work in revealing messages, intended and unintended. Asking why a particular
photograph was taken is also to ask what of value and meaning was being preserved by the people
in that moment. All images have many stories to tell.
If heritage is a collection of stories, how do we come to encounter these stories? How does
memory come to be shared? The processes of history-making, that is, how the past remains alive
or is collectively discovered anew, is just as fascinating as the content of the historical accounts
themselves. It is in the sometimes routine, sometimes passionate, amateur and professional activities
of people that preserve, restore, broker, chronicle, disseminate, document and commemorate
history. Through collecting, archiving and writing, but also through everyday activities like cooking
and storytelling, through photography and community participation and performance, people
contribute to the story of heritage by what they do and what they care for.
Consider that for the first century of Indian experience in South Africa, only a limited number
of individuals received a secular education. Though materials were archived by officials trying to
manage ‘groups’ of peoples, including Indians, there were no libraries or museums, and very few
trained historians, interested in presenting critical or celebratory ‘Indian’ histories. When historical
writing began to appear, most recorded history focussed on a few key individuals and organisations.
But, fortunately for social historians interested in ordinary people in their everyday lives, there
have been, and continue to be, individuals with a passion for preserving family history and the
ephemera of their own life and times, which have greatly helped to reconstruct a more nuanced
and comprehensive past.
The collective labour of generating a sense of the past comes in many forms, as showcased by
the following portraits.

vi
 Preserving the past
Amateur archivists Krish Reddy and Rama Thumbadoo exemplify what it means to have a passion
for the past. They are history custodians without having received specific training for this task. Many
individuals mentioned that when they were forced to move house, mostly because of the Group
Areas Act, and usually relocated to smaller premises, historical records of various kinds were the first
to be discarded. Others mentioned getting rid of material for fear of being incriminated during the
dark days of apartheid or of such records being seized and destroyed during police raids. A great
deal of documentation about the past has been lost, hence the value of material preserved by self-
appointed archivists, such as S.S. Singh, Rama Thumbadoo, and Krish Reddy

© Pearl Harris © Pearl Harris

Left: Krish Reddy, retired schoolmaster, possesses a vast collection of cricket memorabilia, books,
scorebooks, minutes of meetings, and photographs which he began collecting early in life. His journey as
‘scorer’ began when his father would ask him to listen to cricket commentary on BBC radio in the 1950s
and write down the scores for him to read when he returned from work. Krish was an avid reader and
found cricket writing in particular ‘absorbing because it is so diverse and brilliant. The best of it is in the
tradition of great literature.’ When Krish began to play league cricket in the 1960s, he lived in Tulip Place
in Asherville where his neighbour was sports administrator M.K. Naidoo who passed on some of his old
brochures. Krish read these closely to learn the history of the game in Natal and would ask fellow players
for their old brochures. S.J. Reddy’s The South African Cricket Almanac, compiled in 1969, increased
Krish’s determination to chronicle the full history of black cricket in South Africa and he collected current
brochures, cut out newspaper articles, and purchased books from second hand bookstores and fetes. For
Krish. It ‘has been a more than worthwhile journey. I will only stop collecting when I expire.’ Krish Reddy’s
archive has been used extensively to record the history of black cricket in South Africa, which has been
an important component of redress in post-apartheid sport.

Right: Rama Thumbadoo with an early twentieth-century photograph. He retained a rare collection of
books, photographs, minutes of various society meetings, newspaper cuttings, and other memorabilia,
some of which have been used in this book. Rama Thumbadoo, sadly, passed away shortly before this
book was completed.

vii
 Preserving Voices from the
past
E.S. Reddy, with a political science degree from Yale University, joined the United Nations
Secretariat in 1949 and worked to generate support for the anti-apartheid movement internationally.
He had a passion for documents of the struggle and has published the speeches of Yusuf Dadoo,
put the entire collection of ‘I.C. Meer Remembers’ online. According to E.S. Reddy: ‘I used to travel
abroad on missions and conferences and pick up as many documents on South Africa as I could find
… I felt that my papers belong in South Africa, which did not have most of the material because
of decades of censorship. But it was not safe to send them to any South African library [until] the
change in South Africa in 1990 … I did it as a service to scholars in South Africa, to the young
people of South Africa, as the history of the liberation struggle is precious’ (e-mail 11 October 2010).

© Shafur Rahman

Shanti Naidoo presenting the Sol Plaatje award to Enuga Reddy at a meeting of the Lenasia ANC branch,
14 September 2010, to honour him for his work on behalf of the anti-apartheid movement.

viii
Family trees, roots and
branches
Curiosity about ancestral villages and family origins in India and their stories of passage to Natal
has recently become pronounced among people who are several generations settled on South
African soil. Jay Singh, after his retirement as school principal in 1992, started the Verulam Historical
Society with Amber Ramdass, Mohan Supersadh, and Benjy ‘to record the history of state-aided
schools in the wider Verulam area, which they completed by 2000. An exhibition at the Verulam
Day Care Centre generated tremendous interest in locals who wanted to ‘know their history.’ They
widened their scope and started their own Historical Society and established a Documentation
Centre in 2002 in the basement of the Verulam Library, operating as an independent NGO. Relying
entirely on a small core of volunteers, and despite the lack of funds to digitize, theirs is a labour of
love. Singh is passionate about the project because, as he put it, ‘time is running out. We are the
last generation that related to grandparents that were indentured. We are a link to the past, the
present and future. We ourselves are finding it difficult to obtain information because so much has
been lost. It is a pity that we did not record the histories of the indentured generation. There is no
recorded history and if we add something, anything, it will be useful for the future.’

Jay Singh with photographs of his parents.

ix
 Photos from the Verulam Documentation Centre

Prince of Wales Reception, 1925. Tom Murugan Bros, New Glasgow, 1930
Left to right: J.S. Joshua, M.A. Maiter,
B. Talawantsingh, G.H.A. Kathrada,
R. Mathen. Sitting: Col. E.W. Barter (chairman).

Clerks in the office of Attorney Hughman,

Verulam. M. Yellan (seated left),
Mr Michael, and S.M. Moonsamy (standing).

x
Muharram Procession

Inder R. Beni (flowers)

departing for India on
the S.S. Karanja, 1956.

xi
 Efforts to record and preserve family histories are similarly under way at the Shree Emperumal
Hindu Temple in Mount Edgecombe in a project driven by Sunny Pillay. Mount Edgecombe was
the site of one of the largest concentrations of Indians in the sugar industry. It was established
by Captain William Semrdon who built a sugar mill in 1959. In 1895 the mill was sold to Marshall
Campbell who formed the Natal Estates Limited. Cambell’s company incorporated over twenty
sugar estates, including Mount Edgecome, Cornubia, Phoenix, Ottawa, Duffs Road, Effingham,
and La Lucia, and remained in operation until 1994. Harsh working conditions, terrible housing,
inadequate medical attention, and other disabilities suffered by indentured workers have been
widely chronicled. Equally important is the remarkable resilience that the indentured showed: they
built temples and schools, organized festivals, and established various organisations.
Sunny Pillay, born in Mount Edgecombe, worked at the mill for 36 years until his retrenchment
when it was closed in 1994. He started documenting the history of the community as a reaction to
the rapid industrialisation of the area ‘which has destroyed all traces of our roots.’ He chose the 135
year old temple as the site for the Documentation Centre because ‘it is the only identity of the past.
No matter how much they destroy, it is the only place that will always be here and I want to keep
the memories for posterity.’ (10 October 2010)

© Pearl Harris

Sunny Pillay

The Shree temple where

the documents are housed. © Pearl Harris

xii
Photos from the Mount Edgecombe Project

Photographs of family portraits, festivals, sporting

events, and organizations depict the crafting of
community life in Mount Edgecombe.

xiii
 Archival spaces:
The Documentation Centre is located at the University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville campus, which
was formerly the site of Indian tertiary education under apartheid. Its concern is the systematic
collection and classification of archival material, mostly concerning Indians in South Africa. The
value of the Centre is in bringing together widely dispersed records and making this information
accessible to professional researchers and academic historians and post-graduate students, with
much of it digitized and available online for global access. Many members of the public have
material of historical value that they may not regard as important, such as the minute books of local
clubs and account books of small businesses, and the Centre is involved in a concerted campaign
to recover such documentation to broaden the subjects of written histories.

© Pearl Harris

The Documentation Centre, now known as the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre, was started in
1979. Archivists K. Chetty, Siya Narie, and Vino Reddy are kept busy attending to queries from the public
and organising the material that is received almost daily.

xiv
 Municipal archives, such as the Durban Archives Repository, keep administrative records
of city planners and committees that span the colonial through to the apartheid period. They
offer the historian a wealth of knowledge about the formation of managerial, legal and material
infrastructure that shaped the urban spaces and everyday lives of residential communities. The
work of running an effective and publically useful archive requires careful administration and
meticulous organisation. The preservation of these rich sources of history is crucial because the
telling of history is never finished and done: new questions about the past require new encounters
with documents so that path-breaking and revised interpretations of the past can continue to be
written. These archival spaces have made the historians’ undertaking considerably lighter.

© Pearl Harris

Keeping historical documents organised in good condition requires professionalism and team work.
Zenande Sambudla, Toholakele Mhlongo, Bihm Singh, Unnay Narrine (l to r) are trained to preserve
records and artifacts that may include photos, sound recordings, electronic data files and paper records.

xv
 Making memory public:
Newspaper columns, such as in Indian Opinion, Indian Views, and The Leader, were a popular
form for recounting aspects of Indian South African history in the early to mid 20th century. Writers
such as Hassim Seedat and I.C. Meer attracted large readerships with their serial histories, with
articles circulating in South Africa and abroad. Both men relied on memories and oral traditions as
well as newspapers of the past. In using newspapers they emphasised the importance of counting
journalism and media as historical sources and windows to the past in a context of limited archives.
While newspapers such as Indian Opinion and Indian Views typically addressed the political
questions of the day, with little thought to the future, they are of great value to historians, amateur
and professional, in a community where there is little by way of literature, private papers, diaries,
and letters for the earlier period.

Hassim Seedat, lawyer by profession,

contributed to magazines and newspapers,
and especially The Leader, mainly writing
about Gandhi. Seedat is a prolific collector
of books, pamphlets, magazines, brochures,
and memorabilia on Gandhi, on Indians
in Natal, on the ANC, and the NIC. He also
has many rare photographs pertaining
to Gandhi and the NIC in Northern Natal
where his grandfather owned a business.

Page opposite: A.C. Meer’s memoirs appeared

weekly from 1985 to 1990, usually covering
a full page of The Leader. The articles were
in fact written by I.C. Meer who was banned
and could not be quoted and therefore used
his brother’s name. These histories were
© Pearl Harris based on I.C. Meer’s memory, coupled with a
reading of the newspapers of the time.

xvi
xvii
 Serving up a taste of
heritage
In the patriarchal Indian family, the task of cooking belonged to women. Historically they
utilized skills and culinary knowledge transmitted from senior women in the family. Dishes have
changed over time with the creolisation of various Indian regional traditions and the addition of
local African ingredients. From the 1960s, culinary knowledge was chronicled into recipe books
like Indian Delights. Some of these cookbooks serve not merely as a collection of recipes, but also
as a record of heritage. These days, with a new global interest in the food profession, promoted by
television programmes and lifestyle channels, food heritage is becoming an inspiration for new
generations and its flavours influence the new fusion styles of professional chefs.

© Z. Mayat © Z. Mayat

The first edition of Indian Delights, 1960. Zuleikha Mayat of the Women’s Cultural Group,
editor of the Indian Delights series.

xviii
 © IN

Ramola Makan, author of several

cookbooks, including The South
African Indian cookbook.

Asha Maharaj, culinary expert,

author and newspaper columnist.

© IN

xix
 © V. Padayachee

Head Chef Vani Padyatchi in the kitchen of the African Relish culinary school, located in the Cape
Karoo dorpie, Prince Albert. Vanie grew up in Chatsworth outside Durban and developed a love
for cooking in the family kitchen.

xx
Restoring the past:
Ike Mayet, engineer by profession, had a deep love for books and, upon retiring, began to
restore rare books in the Gandhi Library in Queen Street, Durban. Printers in the past did not have
acid-free paper and older books tended to turn brown and brittle with age. Mayet first developed
skills as a book binder and eventually mastered book restoration and preservation. In 1988, at the
age of 62, he opened ‘Ike’s Bookshop’ in Chapel Street, Overport, where he restored used and rare
books and made them available to the public. After his death, Ike’s work and legacy was continued
by his friend, Vishnu Padayachee, who specialises in Africana collectables, with a particular focus
on Natal and Zululand. Ike’s Bookstore has become the traditional venue in Durban for authors to
launch new publications.

© V. Padayachee © V. Padayachee

Ike Mayet Vishnu Padayachee (right) with Lewis Nkosi,

author and literary and cultural critic, at a
book launch at Ike’s.

xxi
 Autobiographies and
memoirs
The trend among ‘struggle stalwarts’ to write their autobiographies and memoirs provides
another interesting and fruitful avenue for the sharing of a sense of what being Indian has meant in
the landscape of South Africa. The value of such recollections is that they provide insider perspectives
in an area to which the public is not privy, are usually coherent in terms of chronology and events,
and give us a feel of ‘the times’. On the other hand, such accounts can be selective in terms of what
is remembered, and subjective, even inaccurate, becoming a vehicle through which individuals
attempt to present their point of view or defend their actions. The mass appeal of autobiographies
points to the changing relationship between private individuals and their public world.

© C. S. Reddy

Shahnaaz Meer signing a copy of I.C. Meer’s autobiography A Fortunate Man, with Abdul Bemath (left)
and Mac and Zarina Maharaj looking on.

xxii
Dynamic language
The words we speak or write to communicate with each other are also shaped by historical
events and by the movements of people. A historian of language, Rajend Mestrie, a Professor in
the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Cape Town, has examined the
evolution of languages among Indians from the time of their arrival in South Africa. His work
explores the story of the plantation history of Indian dialects that came to constitute Bhojpuri-
Hindi in the cane fields of KwaZulu Natal, as well as the rise of Indian English in South Africa and
its transformation over the past century. He has also published a dictionary of this dialect, which
looks at the origins and transformation of words and their meanings. Most Indians learnt English
in South Africa and Rajend Mesthrie’s work shows that while English was for a long time a second
language, used mainly by South African Indians to communicate with English speakers, from the
1960s it gradually evolved into a first language, with the peculiarities of dialect and slang serving
as an identity badge.

Through the study of language, Rajend Mesthrie has constructed an important story of the Indian
experience in South Africa.

xxiii
 Critical interventions:
Academic history and related social sciences, and their disciplined training and theoretical rigour,
can provide a critical voice and, often, a counterpoint to heritage stories that become romanticised
in nationalistic memory, or are used to reinforce particular identities, or that facilitate narrow

© Pearl Harris

Fatima Meer hands a copy of her book The South African Gandhi, 1893-1914 to Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie,
Associate Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape (and the great-granddaughter of
Mahatma Gandhi). Dhupelia-Mesthrie’s book Gandhi’s Prisoner? The life of Gandhi’s son Manilal, a
biography of her grandfather Manilal Gandhi, received wide international attention.

xxiv
 political and economic interest blocs. There may be a difference between memory and critical
history, and the productions of historians don’t always sit well with interest groups. Historians like
P.S. Aiyar, P.S. Joshi and Bridglal Pachai published the earliest accounts of Indian political struggles,
though much of the early work focused on Gandhi. Recent work has shifted focus to include the
lives of ordinary people in indenture, religious and community organisations, sport, and working
class passenger Indians.

© S. Bhana

Surendra Bhana, seen here with his grandson “Dries”, lectured at the University of Durban-Westville,
and in 1987 took up a Professorship at Kansas University, where he had received his Ph.D. Now retired,
Bhana considers future directions for historical scholarship regarding South African Indian history
and would like to see more exploration of how Indian consciousness and identity was shaped. As he
asks ‘what were [Indian organisations’] views of outsiders, most particularly Africans and Whites, in
relation to themselves? To raise such questions is not to revert to race-based research or to ignore issues
of class and gender, but to explore the interconnectedness among various groups through the lens of
community organizations. The answers will provide critically important components about what it has
meant to be an Indian in South Africa, but also what it has meant to be a South African among other
South Africans since more and more individuals label themselves as such.’ (e-mail, March 2010)

xxv
 Public memory and its
challenges
With memory there is, simultaneously, forgetting. What we remember is always a selection
of events and lives and trends that tell stories we prefer to tell about ourselves. There are many
different motivations, both personal and political, for selecting certain stories over others, for
emphasizing certain experiences or figures as representative of the common picture. And, because
South Africa has long been organized around divisive group identities as a distribution strategy for
political control, privilege and rights and for organising labour exploitation, there yet exist – in the
post-apartheid context – rewards and disadvantages forged through group-identity claims and
conceptions of the past. For this reason, while an Indian heritage in South Africa can be celebrated,
it can also be put to critical scrutiny. Often, emotional and highly important historical events are
commemorated in a way that takes poetic licence with hard facts. Considering the reasons, good
and bad, why a public monument is presented in a certain way is part and parcel of being a critical
consumer of heritage and its stories.

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu at the

unveiling of Ganhi’s statue, 6 June 1993.
The statue of Gandhi in Pietermaritzburg
commemorates the night of 7 June 1893,
when he was pushed out of a first class
compartment at the station. At that time
he was a lawyer, fresh out of Oxford and
dressed for success in his field. Yet he is
portrayed by the sculptor in the dress and
style of self-presentation he adopted many
years later, his nationalist deeds being most
easily recognizable to the public.

xxvi
 Photography is not innocent. The manipulation of photographs has a long history though
high-resolution digital cameras and sophisticated photo-editing software has made photographic
manipulation more common. In the photograph below, found in the Local History Museum, Durban,
the original photograph of a group of passive resisters from Kimberley was doctored to include
Gandhi and Kasturbhen. We don’t know who did this or why, but sometimes an alteration in itself
can tell us something historically interesting, something that is just as valuable as an unaltered
representation.

xxvii
 The past is also about the
present
Present hopes and fears become a basis for reading the past in a certain way. For example, fears
that the heroic actions of Indian participants in the anti-apartheid struggle are being forgotten have
prompted a number of commemorations and events of key figures who espoused non-racialism.
In the context of South African history, the possibility that racialised identities can easily become
a basis for division, economic gain and political mobilization is a concern to many. Is the assertion
of Indianness in this context a valid or problematic politics? What is lost and gained – and who
benefits – from communitarian readings of the past? Nostalgia can be an emotional reaction in
societies such as South Africa which experience rapid change – what is sometimes ignored is that
it was small groups of brave activists on all sides of the racial divides who pioneered non-racialism.

© UKZNDC

xxviii
 The power of the past can be harnessed in a variety of ways. An example is the annual
commemoration of Gandhi’s Salt March, initiated in 2004, which involves a 22kms walk from
the Phoenix Settlement to Durban’s Athletic stadium. The original Salt March was an act of civil
disobedience in which Gandhi and other satyagrahis walked 241 miles in 24 days from the Ashram
in Ahmedabad to the seaside village of Dandi, and broke the salt tax by making their own salt. The
message of the 2010 Durban Salt March organising committee was:

In this year when we commemorate the arrival of the indentured workers let us remember
that there are among us those who will continue to try to ind new ways of exploiting
the poor and the weaker sections of our community … We have to stop this by learning
from our history which shows clearly how slavery was replaced by indenture, and indenture
with forced labour through imposing taxes on people who did not have any money, that
was again replaced by prison labour and now we have sweatshops. The system becomes
sophisticated but the result is the same and that is exploitation of people by people. Yet
our culture Indian and African alike believes in the philosophy of service to others is service
to God or ubuntu. As we march let us remember this and think how far we have reached
towards realizing this philosophy.

© UKZNDC

xxix
 The politics of street
naming
Colonial state-making mobilized public figures in promoting political action. Those in positions
of power are able to evoke those memories through banal ways: the naming of streets, parks,
airports, and buildings means that certain names are encountered by the public everyday. With
new conditions of nation-building come new ideas about which names should be called to mind
in the collective memory of citizens. In 2006, a campaign of name changes in South Africa effected
street name changes in municipalities like Ethekwini/Durban. This process is not an innocent one.
For example, despite many representations by his family, Dawood Seedat, imprisoned during
World War II for his anti-war position, a treason trialist, a man who stood on street corners to sell
the Guardian newspaper, who was banned for many years, and who was regarded by the likes of
Ebrahim Ebrahim as their political mentor, failed to get a street named after him. Some names also
evoked controversy, such as re-naming Point Road, with its reputation as Durban’s pre-minent ‘street
of sin,’ “Gandhi Road.” There were also murmurs of disagreement when Grey Street was renamed
Yusuf Dadoo Street. Dadoo’s pedigree was not in question, but he hardly spent time in Durban.
‘Dr. Goonam Street’ might have been a more appropriate choice, many felt, given that she was a
pioneer in many respects, especially as far as women were concerned. There was general approval
about renaming streets after Monty Naicker and Lenny Naidu, who was killed in a police ambush
near the Swaziland border on 16 June 1988.

© Pearl Harris

xxx
© Pearl Harris © Pearl Harris

© Pearl Harris

Leela Naidu (left) and Maggie Govender (centre), MEC for Public Works, at the renaming of Pelican Drive,
Chatsworth, 13 June 2009.

xxxi
 Ordinary heroes
Although official histories often favour the rich and famous, stories worth remembering – of
heroism and inspiration – may be found more widely if we are prepared to dig a bit deeper. Such
heroes include Marimuthoo and Gengan Padavatan, who led a rescue effort during the 1917
Umgeni river flooding. At 3:00 am on the morning of 17 October 1917, the Umgeni River burst its
banks, threatening around 500 market gardeners who lived in Springfield Flats. Many families were
sitting on rooftops and watching the water level rise when the Padavatan brothers and four other
men (Kuppusamy and Rungasamy Naidoo, Sabapathy Govender and T. Veloo) used their fishing
boat and rescued 175 people. They received gold medals for their efforts and a primary school was
named in their honour. T. Veloo, who was involved in the rescue effort recalled what happened:

Together with the crowds of people I arrived by tram at the Umgeni bridges. The whole
Umgeni Valley presented a picture of utter desolation as it appeared to be one great
inland lake. The surging river was pounding furiously against the Railway and Connaught
Bridges and the level of the water was within inches of flowing over the bridges. A
number of houses that stood alongside the banks was either missing or floating down
the rushing river. Clinging on to the roof of one house was a family which shouted and
wept for help in vain. In a moment the house was sucked by the surging torrents and the
whole family was lost forever. Then I made my way across the hill through Burman Bush to
Springfield Flats. The Flats, as far as the eye could see, was a huge sheet of water and many
families were either desperately perched or hanging on to their flimsy roofs. They were in
a piteous plight as every swirl of water brought death and destruction to some of them.
The thousands of sightseers who stood on the higher banks were in no position to help.
It was here, near what today is the intersection of Quarry and Alpine Roads, that I saw
our fishing boat which was carried earlier, with much labour, over the hill … as the river
current proved too dangerous Chief Constable Donovan decided to abandon any further
rescue work. It was then that I saw Marimuthoo and Gengan Padavatan talking to Police
Inspector W. Alexander. I made my way to them. Sabavathy Govinden, Rangasamy Naidoo
and Kuppusamy Naidoo arrived at the scene. Marimuthoo, sensing our eagerness and
enthusiasm to have a go at rescure work, asked us to jump into the boat. Although we
were accustomed to riding the swells of the sea, the river currents proved to be very
treacherous and very often I feared we would be swept away to death and disaster at any
moment. But it was not to be, as there was team spirit, split second team work, very able
leadership under Mariemuthoo, and determination to save lives … After making five trips
we were restrained by Constable Donovan from making the sixth as the light was failing
badly and we were completely exhausted. It was said that we were staggering like punch-
drunk men. I do not remember this but all I remembered was a need for a brief rest.
T. Veloo *

* Guru Pillay. Come to the Point. Durban, 2002:50-51.

xxxii
 © UKZNDC

© UKZNDC

xxxiii
 As the portraits above show, a myriad of sources were tracked down to reconstruct the
many lives that are brought to life in this book. Sometimes we have had to plead and appeal for
materials, but mostly, by being creative and relentlessly pursuing leads, we have managed to track
down information. Many Lives focuses on ordinary people and on the variety of experiences that
constituted ordinary life in the multi-faceted, century and a half story of Indians in South Africa.
While well-known figures, of course, appear here, the aim of this collection is to reveal a broader
and more diverse picture than is available, using a range of formulas, styles and conventions. Here,
historical documentary photo sits beside family portraiture and annual membership images of
clubs, teams and associations. The photos are drawn from the collections of museums, newspapers,
individuals, families and professional artists. They feature compositional styles that are at times
banal and at times remarkable in their creativity and beauty, each with its own value.
Many Lives is not a ‘representative’ picture. The selection of stories and photographs it
contains was influenced by a number of factors, including the location, research and networking
opportunities in KwaZulu-Natal of the authors in collecting and following up photographs and
stories. The aim and value of this collection is in its opening up for public consideration a wider set
of histories which reveal the ‘Indian experience’ in South Africa as far from unitary or monolithic.
The way we collectively imagine history and heritage requires that we expose ourselves to new
ways of seeing and reading the past and we hope this photographic collection proves an engaging
contribution for readers interested in the continuing story of Southern African history.
We are indebted to many people who helped us along the way. Goolam Vahed would like to
thank Rama Thumbadoo, Khorshed Ginwala, the Reverend Victor Lazarus, Khatija Vawda, Kreesen
Naicker, Daya Appavoo, Balraj Pilllay, Muthal Naidoo, Khatija Jhaveri, and many others for sharing
their experience, stories and photographs, and responding promptly to queries by telephone
and e-mail. These interactions added pleasure to what seemed at times a never ending research
journey. Siya, Vino and K. Chetty at the Documentation Centre, University of KwaZulu Natal, and
archivists and museum curators at a number of institutions were exceptionally helpful. Omar
Badsha, Pearl Harris, Jenny Gordon, and Rikesh Mahraj are thanked for allowing us use of their
photographs. Goolam would also like to thank Taskeen, Naseem, Yasmeen, and Razia for their
unfailing encouragement. Finally, we would also like to thank Primi Chetty, Heather Hannaway
and Sally Ellis of Shuter and Shooter for their support throughout.

xxxiv
Many Lives

© J Brain collection
Migrant workers board a ship in India.
 ‘Master Coolie arrives’

On 16 November 1860, a British vessel, the Truro, sailed into Port Natal harbour after a 100 day
voyage from Madras, India. Three hundred and thirty-nine people disembarked. They were the
very irst migrants under a system of indenture. They had been given a physical inspection by the
immigration oicers and issued a certiicate of emigration. This bit of paper indicated their status as
indentured labourers, and the conditions under which they would work the coastal sugar plantations
of colonial Natal for an initial contract of ive years.
In the wake of the Truro, other ships followed and by the end of the indenture system in 1911,
152,641 workers had been transported. Most were adult men. Boarding at Calcutta and Madras, they
departed from their home shores a diverse collection of villagers. Drawn from geographically distinct
regions of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, as well as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, they bore diferences
of caste identity, cultural tradition, religious practice and language. The system of indenture was
designed to erase these histories and traditions and upon their arrival in Natal they were incorporated
into a labour system as an undiferentiated and racialised mass.

‘Master Coolie arrives’, the Natal Mercury proclaimed to its English-speaking public on 22 November
1860:
A very remarkable scene was the landing of the irst batch of Indian indentured labourers
and one well worth remembrance and record. Most of the spectators who were present
had been led to expect a lot of dried up, vapid, and sleepy-looking anatomies. They were
agreeably disappointed. The swarthy hordes came pouring out of the boat’s hold, laughing,
jabbering, and staring about them with a very well satisied expression of self-complacency
on their faces… Master Coolie seemed to make himself quite at home, and was not in the
least disconcerted by the novelty of his situation … The boats seemed to disgorge an endless
stream of living cargo – Pariahs, Christians, Malabars, and Mohommedans.

Through the documents of indenture, new arrivals oicially entered imperial history. As Vijay
Mishra observes:
People without history, people who are illiterate, inally spell out their personal genealogies
– their father’s name, their village, their next of kin, their marital status, their age – and
undergo, for the irst time in their lives, a medical examination by the depot surgeon. The
emigration certiicate are, in one signiicant manner, the document that interpellates [the
indentured] as ‘modern’ or ‘Enlightened’ subjects … The migrants can’t use these certiicates,
they do not know their contents; nor will they ever know that they will be preserved in
colonial archives so that their children and grandchildren would dig them up some day
to legitimate their own lives. Removed from their immediate use value as documents of
self-identity, they nevertheless function as erstwhile documents through which a certain
(retrospective) humanity may be given to a people without ‘history’. *

* Vijay Mishra. Literature of the Indian Diaspora. Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary. Routledge, 2007: 82-83.

2
© J Brain collection

3
 © ‘Wenketazami, Ind Kooli, Madras, Durban,’ by G.
Hisfritsch, c. 1863-1866

During the period of indenture migrants

saw themselves as ‘Madrassi’ or ‘Calcuttia’, their
ports of origin, rather than ‘Indian’. They were
often oicially classiied as such in the records.
For example, the title statement for this
photograph reads ‘Ind Kooli, Madras, Durban,’
by G. Hisfritsch, c. 1863-1866.

4
“Wish you were here”

As Christraud M Geary writes, postcard production and consumption emerged as an aspect of

the European imperial project in the 1890s. Postcards ‘popularized the colonial endeavor in Africa by
depicting the peoples and their indigenous settlements that had come under Western domination …
documenting the ever-widening spread of colonial infrastructure … Postcards helped to perpetuate
and encode images of Africa, and they greatly appealed to the Western imagination.’ * Photographs
often came into the public gaze as postcards and relected a desire to portray the indentured as
productive and content workers in orderly plantations.

© CTNL

* Christraud M Geary, ‘Diferent Visions? Postcards from Africa by European and African Photographers and. Sponsors’. In Christraud M. Geary and
Virginia Lee-Web. Eds. Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington. 1998: 147

5
 On postcards, colonial subjects all across Africa were frequently depicted as representatives of a
classiicatory ‘type’ rather than as individuals. However, occasionally, as in this portrait of ‘A Coolie Girl’,
individual personality shines brightly through. Oicial intention can never fully contain or control the
range of meanings viewers can ind within a photograph.

Kuli, in Tamil, referred literally to payment for those at the lowest levels of the industrial labour
market but, as a letter-writer calling himself “White Man”, explained in the Natal Mercury on
26th August 1899, the ‘word “coolie” can only be used in speaking of Indians. Neither work nor
anything else under the sun can make a white man a “coolie”’.

6
Men and work
While 60% of indentured men and women worked on sugar estates, the rest were allocated
to other sectors, including hotels, private clubs and households, and public works projects. Male
workers targeted for such jobs, who often spoke some English, were frequently recruited from urban
settings in India. At the request of the African Boating Company, skilled boatmen from Madras were
incorporated as indentured labour in the Durban Harbour.

The Natal Government Railways Department was the largest single employer of
indentured labor, with a total allocation of 8000 indentured workers.

The municipalities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg relied on unskilled labour for street sweeping and
grass cutting, for night soil removal and in the street lighting department.
7
 Some of the indentured Indians worked as rickshaw pullers, a vocation dominated by Africans in the
twentieth-century.

Several thousand Indians worked in the coal mines of Northern Natal where conditions were especially
harsh and diseases rampant. It is not surprising then that coal miners were the irst to join the 1913 strike.

8
 © MA
Royal Hotel, West Street, Durban

‘The most noticeable feature of Durban is its coolies. They make capital servants – cooks more
especially. They cook an excellent curry and give an oriental aspect to life. Indian waiters are
found in all the hotels and are preferable to the average run of English stolidities.’ *

* Life at Natal a hundred years ago, by a Lady. Cape Town: Struik, 1972: 13.

9
 Images which tell stories of age, vocation and
masculinity: A telegraph messenger and a rope
maker ofer diferent glimpses of dignity.

© LHM

Doulati, telegraph messenger,

Coedmore Estate

© S. S. Singh Collection

10
The end of indenture
The transport of indentured labour from India was ended in 1911 as local African people were
incorporated into the wage economy, having lost independent ground with the destruction of the
Zulu Kingdom through war and its aftermath. The 1913 Native Land Act reserved just 13 percent of
the land for two-thirds of the population. Sol Plaatje, in a powerful eyewitness account, Native Life in
South Africa, wrote: ‘Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913 the South African native found himself,
not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.* The Act, of course, came in the wake of the
pincer of taxation and progressive White land invasions over several decades. Africans forced of the
land were siphoned into the mining and the myriad of industries that arose alongside it. Many were
drawn to the sugar plantations.
After ive years of indentured servitude, a person had a choice between between re-indenturing,
returning to India at his / her own expense, or seeking an independent living in Africa as ‘free’ Indians.
Many chose to make their lives in Africa, and had by then begun to build new lives and families.
Conceptions of home had become complicated, as customary traditions such as eating habits,
religious practices, leisure activities and family strategies had been just as often transformed as
replicated in Natal. There were concerns too about ‘out-casting’.

Migrants returning to India.

* Sol T. Plaatje Native Life in South Africa. Echo Library, 2007: 6.

11
 © Ranjith Kally

12
 © MA

© Museum Africa

Life under indenture was also shaped by ideologies and practices of gender. Gender roles migrated
across the ocean and were recreated by indentured people in new conditions. Gender gave structure
not only to work and household but also to community life. However, as was the case in British India,
many occupations for indentured men in the colony – such as cooking and table waiting – required
some gender-bending of customary roles. Gendered labour was in these cases remade through the
institutionalisation of colonial job descriptions.

13
 Post-indenture lives

© CTNL

Following the end of

indenture, most Indians moved of
plantations. While African workers
replaced them in the ield, Indians
who remained on plantations
acquired skills in sugar producing
mills or found other means of
making a living.

© Sunny Pillay

14
Salisbury
Island

© NMP

Fishing was an important means of earning a livelihood for those who had completed their
indentures. Many Indians engaged in ishing and ish curing on Salisbury Island in the Durban Bay.
According to the Wragg Commission of 1885, 218 Indians were living on the Island in 1884. They
owned 12 nets and 14 boats, sold £800 worth of ish and cured 26 tons of ish, of which 8 tons were
exported to Mauritius. A ishing village was later opened at Fynnlands, until it was destroyed by Group
Areas. Others earned a living through surf and seine ishing.

© LHM

15
 Market
gardeners
and
hawkers

© LHM

Many of ex-indentured migrants showed enterprise and engaged in diferent types of work –
some took to being washerwomen and dhobi’s, ayahs, waiters, and basket makers, but the majority
took up market gardening, farming and hawking. A few became successful large scale farmers or
moved into retail trade. From the very beginning free Indians rented land in the vicinity of a market to
grow fruits and vegetables such as potatoes, cabbages, garlic, paddy rice, melons, beans, chillies, and
tobacco, which they either sold at a market or to hawkers. Hawking was a practical option for those
who did not want to reindenture but who had little capital, education or skills other than agricultural.
They formed an important link between the market and the public.
Prior to 1890 Indian market gardeners had diiculty selling their produce at the market held by the
Durban Town Council where the fees were high and the produce of settler farmers received priority.
The trustees of the Grey Street Mosque, built in 1885, allowed Indian farmers to sell their produce on
mosque premises.

16
 © LHM

Swami Shankeranand, a Hindu missionary visiting Natal, formed an Indian Farmer’s Association
in 1908 and requested land from the City Council to establish a market for Hindus. Mayor Walter
Greenacre met with an Indian delegation in August 1909 and announced that the Council would open
a market but would retain control of it. Irate Hindu farmers boycotted the market which was opened
in Victoria Street in August 1910. Indian traders, instead, took occupation of the market. This created a
problem because farmers still had no outlet for their produce. To resolve this crisis, the Council began
a street market in Victoria Street, which operated from 4:00 am to 9:00 am each morning. It remained
in existence until an enclosed market was opened in Warwick Street in 1934.

17
 © LHM

Indian hawkers were a ubiquitous feature of economic life in Natal well into the twentieth century.
These men and women, who became targets of settler stereotyping as ‘vegetable Sammy’ and ‘Coolie
Mary’, walked from house to house, their fruits and vegetables piled in baskets which they carried on
their heads. Accordning to ‘An Australian’ (African Chronicle, 22 August 1908.)

The Indian hawker is a great convenience especially to the poor white. A rich lady can bowl
down to the market in her carriage and purchase all her requirements in the vegetable line
for the day, but where does the poor woman come in who perhaps has a child or two to
nurse at home, besides having to go through the drudgery of her household duties. To her,
“Sammy” is a very welcome sight and a saving of time and trouble. Her marketing is done at
the door and she hasn’t to hurry and scurry away to make purchases. You can readily imagine
what the abolishing of the Indian hawker would mean to poor people living on the outskirts
of the city.

18
© Ranjith Kally

19
 Family and class mobilty
The Raboobee family ran a butchery at the Indian Market from 1910. Rabos Bee was nine when
she arrived in Natal on the Rajasthana in January 1864 with her parents. After her marriage, she joined
the Railway Department in a clerical position. With her savings she bought a property and opened
a business in Victoria Street in 1882. In 1896 she sold the grocery store and started a butchery. As
recorded by Gandhi, Raboobee was one of only two subscribing women members of the Natal Indian
Congress in 1895.

© Nasir Hassan

In this 1920 photograph, Raboobee’s son Sheik Ansari is pictured seated on the left. He was the chairman of the
Indian Market Stallholder Association at the time. Standing on the extreme right is Raboobee’s grandson Sheik
Hassan, the son of Raboobee’s youngest son, Sheik Emam.

20
 Sheik Hassan, born on Christmas Day 1899, relected the upward mobility of his generation by
expanding the businesses, hosting the Indian Agent Generals at his home, making over twenty trips
to Makkah on pilgrimage, visiting Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Greece, and donating the black
cloth of the Kaaba that graces the entrance of the Orient Islamic School. Above all, Sheik Hussan was
a bike and car enthusiast.

© Nasir Hassan

Sheik Hassan on his 1916 Harley Davidson.

21
 © CTNL

22
 © MA

© LHM

© LHM

23
 © Katija Vawda

Remembered only as ‘Gov’, this indentured migrant cared for gardens in Newcastle from the 1920s to the 1940s.

24
 Rungama Chetty

© Primi Chetty

Standing: Pathi Subba Naidoo, who

opened the well-known Durban store
S.K. Naidoo Bridal Sarie Boutique.
Sitting: Reeku Perumal Reddy © Primi Chetty
1946

25
 Kimberley

© MMK

Many Indians who had completed their indentures became part of the “diamond rush” when
the diamond ields of Kimberley were opened in 1866. The Diamond Field reported on 28 March 1874.

Our Coolie friends are on the rampage just now. Generally speaking, the mild Hindu on the
diamond ields takes life and its cares more easily than other exotics. How these people
earn a living Heaven only knows, at all hours of the day, let alone at night, they may be
found in their odorous quarters, some playing pitch and toss for shillings and half crowns,
some chanting their devotions in the whine of primitive piety, some professing to sell stale
cucumbers and other green and yellow impositions; all enjoying an enviable immunity from
solicitude.

26
 © MMK
Pupils representing many linguistic and cultural backgrounds attended the Perseverance School in the
Malay Camp, Kimberley in the late 19th century. Here, on a day in 1892, they enjoy a picnic.

27
 © MMK
This is a photograph of Baboo Naidoo, seated with miners around a miner’s sieve in Kimbrley in the early
1870s, most likely the same Baboo Naidoo who was brought from Mauritius by Edward Morewod in 1855
to assist with sugar production in Natal. According to the caption accompanying the photograph in the
museum, ‘The Naidoo family also believes that one of the men in the photos is Cecil John Rhodes.’

28
© Joy Brain collection

Ramsamy Padayachee and his family in Kimberley, 1908

The arrival of powerful South Indian trading families in South Africa has been under-considered in
the historical literature, as it is sometimes assumed that most ‘passenger’ Indians were from Gujarat.
Ramsamy Padayachy arrived in Port Elizabeth from Mauritius in the late 1870s. He settled in
Kimberley in 1883 after an eight month trek by ox-wagon and, with his family, established himself as
a fruit trader. Padayachy was active in the religious and cultural activities of the town. He bought an
old house and converted it into a temple, which served the Hindu community in Kimberly until the
area was proclaimed ‘white’ under the Group Areas Act.

29
 Marriage and family ties
Vadivelloo arrived from Mauritius in the 1890s and settled in De Aar. He married Lutchmee
Vandayar of Mauritius by arranged marriage in Port Elizabeth. The family lived in McIvor Street in
a stately home surrounded by pepper trees with a windmill and dam on the property. The boys
attended Lovedale College in the Eastern Cape for higher education. Shunmugam and Nadarasen
were then sent to study medicine at Edinburgh. Shunmugam returned to establish a medical
practice in Port Elizabeth and Nadarasen in East London. Both were drawn into anti-apartheid
politics in the 1950s. Vadivelloo himself was a founder member of the Valley Temple in Port Elizabeth,
now a national heritage site, as well as the Cradock temple. The annual Kavadi at the Valley Temple was
a major event for South Indian migrants from Mauritius who had settled in the Eastern Cape.

Lutchmee died in the

Spanish lu epidemic
of 1917.

© Daya Appavoo

30
 © Daya Appavoo

Vadivello and his sons,

Velaithum, Armugam,
Shunmugam, and
Nadarasen, and daughter,
Marimoothoo (Marie).

In many parts of the world during this period, family

photographs showcased pride of ownership in emerging
modern technologies. Port Elizabeth was no exception. Here,
posing in their Studebaker are Vadivello and his children.

© Daya Appavoo

31
 © Kreesan Naicker

South Indian families forged bonds across South Africa.

Vadivello and Lutchmee’s daughter Marie married Dr GM Monty
Naicker of Durban, whose father, PG Naicker was a migrant
from Mauritius and a leading fruit exporter. Marie and Monty
married on 29 November 1936 at the Shri Vathianatheasparan
Temple on Umgeni Road. Monty subsequently became
president of the Natal Indian Congress in 1945.

Marie and Monty Naicker had two children,

Vasugee and Kreesen.

32
Civic association
Singaravaloo Ruthnam Pather (seated), a prominent Barrister-at law, was born in Durban in 1886
to migrants from Mauritius, Shunmugam and Angalammah Pather, who were in the jewelery business.
S.R. Pather’s life demonstrates that class distinctions between Indians of ‘passenger’ and indentured
background were often tenuous. He married Rookaniammal, the daughter of indentured parents,
on 26 January 1913. Pather was educated in Durban and London, where he qualiied for the Bar at
Lincoln’s Inn and was active in the Committee of London Indian Society. Back in Durban he was part
of a trend among professional and middle class colonial urbanites, being actively engaged in civic and
religious societies. He served as co-secretary of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, organized the
Natal Indian Lawn Tennis Association, and was secretary of the Colonial Born Indian Association. The
scouting movement was a feature of this trend, and here, J.S. Done appears in uniform.

S.R. Pather (seated) and J.S. Done (see pp. 62)

33
 Transnational home
For many immigrants to South Africa, India remained central to a conception of ‘home’.
R.K. Naidoo (seated, right), born in Mayavarum, a village in Tanjore in South India, migrated to South
Africa in the 1890s but would return to live in his ancestral village in the 1940s after a half century of
business, family life and high proile associations in South Africa. From a fruit business in the Transvaal,
to Durban to grow a business in exports, Naidoo became well-connected. Gandhi was a regular
visitor to his home, as was Agent-General Sir Srinivas Sastri. Naidoo challenged all traditions when he
sent his daughter to Edinburgh to study medicine. She returned as Dr Goonam (seated, left) in 1934,
the irst Indian woman doctor in Natal. As Dr Goonams daughter explains, ‘For all his sophistication,
Mayavarum clung to [her father] like the well-worn dhoti he put on at home to relax in.’ *

© Dr Goonam

* Dr. Goonam, Coolie Doctor. Durban: Madiba Publishers, 1991: 123.

34
TransOceanic association
Indian migrants to southern Africa frequently relied on friends, relatives and ‘word of mouth’ to
make their way across the ocean.
The photograph below was taken in 1911 in the village of Kathor in Gujarat and most of the men
pictured here would later settle in the Transvaal. According to family members, they established the
Mahile Ronakul Islam (Charitable Zanana Dispensary) in Kathor at the turn of the twentieth century.
‘Zan’, in Persian, means woman and Zanana refers to a dispensary for women. The man in the middle,
gun in hand, is Ebrahim Mohamed Jadwat whose father had arrived in the Transvaal in the 1880s
and settled in the then Eastern Transvaal. Ebrahim also settled in the Transvaal but when he died in
1919, a victim of Spanish lu, his wife Khatija relocated to Durban. Her sons Ebrahim and Mohamed
opened Feejee Stores in Field Street. The irm was well known for importing the latest fashions from
Paris and London. Later, they opened Ideals and Models in Grey Street, household names in the
retail trade in Durban.

© E. Jadwat

35
 Developing local solidarities
The man seated behind the wheel is G.H. Miankhan, who was born in 1860 in Ahmedabad and
arrived in Natal in 1879, where he established G.H. Miankhan and Co. in Durban’s Field Street. Miankhan
stood apart from other traders who mainly imported workers from Gujarat. When Miankhan died in
1919, Indian Views (14 March 1919) mentioned in its obituary: ‘Colonial-Born Indians will remember
him with gratitude for he was the irst among the Mohamedan Merchants to employ them instead
of getting his shop assistants from India. His conidence in them was further testiied by the
appointment of Mr Shaik Emmamally, the well known Colonial-Born Indian Sportsman to the sole
management of G.H. Miankhan & Co. during the absence of himself and his partners in India.’ Shaikh
Emmamally, standing in the back with a fez and bow tie, came to Natal in 1882 at the age of four with
his indentured parents Chamroo Roheeman and Nasiban Saira Alli. For almost 20 years Emamally was
manager of G.H. Miankhan & Co. before opening S. Emamally in Queen Street. Wealthier merchants like
Miankhan even employed white chaufeurs.

© Yusuf Emamally

36
Dukawallahs
For those migrants who came with capital or were able to accumulate it in the colony, shopkeeping
was a good choice for generating a livelihood. While a few traders operated bases in urban centres,
the majority were rural-based. Known as dukawallahs (small retailers), they helped shape the Natal
economy by extending trade throughout Natal.

© F. Meer © MA

“Passenger” stereotyping? Migrants such as Jadwat, Rustomjee, Appavoo, and Miankhan are
described in the literature as ‘passenger’ Indians because they came at their own volition and expense
and were, in theory, unlike those arriving under indenture, subject to the ordinary laws of the Colony.
The term ‘passenger Indian’ has led to the stereotype of the wealthy Gujarati trader which, like all
stereotypes, fails to capture the complex and diverse composition of this migrant stream from South
Asia. According to Dhupelia-Mesthrie:
The term passenger Indian … requires redeinition. Its simpliied deinition leads to a divisive
understanding of migration from the Indian subcontinent and contributes to the stereotype
of the rich Gujarati. The term needs to embrace workers and in terms of regional origins to
include not just those from west India and certainly not just Gujarat but also those from
other parts of India … [Many] Passenger Indians secured work in menial positions and some
remained in these for more than just an initial phase. *

* Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie. ‘The Passenger Indian as Worker: Indian Immigrants in Cape Town in the Early Twentieth Century.’ African Studies 68
(April 2009): 111–134. 37
 © MA

38
Migration and family

© Khorshed Ginwala

Parsee Rustomjee was an inluential member of the trading elite, whose philanthropy embraced
Indians of all faiths. His works exemplify the eforts of intellectual leaders at this time to promote
Indianness as a primary identity for political claim making.

39
 The Ginwala and Rustomjee, Parsee families of Durban and later Mozambique, enjoyed close
bonds. Parsee Rustomjee is seated in the middle. To his right are Soonabai and Sorabjee Ginwala. The
diferences in age between the children of Soonabai and Sohrabjee Ginwala point to a common trend
among migrants, that of single male migration. Sohrabjee initially migrated to Natal but relocated to
Mozambique where he established himself as an oil manufacturer. Godrejbhai, his eldest son (third

40
from right, back row), was born in 1887 and Naswan, the youngest (toddler seated in front), in 1907.
The twenty year diference is explained by the fact that Soonabai remained in India while Sorabjee
was busy establishing his business. Sorabjee Rustomjee is seated on the right and his brother Jalbhoy
is second from the left in the back row. Naswan was the father of Frene and Khorshed Ginwala. In post-
apartheid South Africa, Frene was the irst Speaker of the National Assembly and Khorshed became
an ambassador to Italy.

© Khorshed Ginwala

41
 The M.K. Gandhi Library and Parsee Rustomjee
Hall in central Durban are an important legacy
of Rustomjee’s contribution. Hassim Joosab,
M.C. Camroodeen, E.M. Paruk, and H.L. Paul,
amongst others, established the Durban Indian
Public Library in September 1906 because the
municipality refused Indians entry to the public
library. In 1921 it became the M.K. Gandhi library,
thanks to Rustomjee’s contribution of £17,500. By
1931 the library had had a total of 2,500 books in
English, Gujarati, Tamil, Hindi and Urdu and 202
newspapers and periodicals.
Because there was no Parsee priest residing
locally, Durban’s Parsee community were
compelled either to travel to India or invite a
visiting priest into the household to carry out
some religious rights, like the navjote ceremony
which initiated children into the Zoroastrian fold.

© Khorshed Ginwala

42
 Global capital and global
marriages
Aboobaker Amod Jhaveri (1852-1887) is generally regarded as the irst Muslim trader to settle in
Natal. Born in 1852, he entered the world of commerce at a young age and emigrated to Mauritius in
1869. From there he went to the Transvaal and in 1872 to Natal where he opened stores in Tongaat,
Verulam, and West Street. He told the Wragg Commission of 1885-1887 that he also had businesses in
Calcutta and Bombay, and imported goods from India and England for his stores in Natal. Aboobaker
died of cholera in August 1887 while visiting India.
Aboobaker and his wife Rabia had one son, Ismail who was born in Durban in 1876, making him
the likely irst colonial-born passenger. The family business was co-owned by Ismail and Aboobaker’s
brother O.H.A. Jhaveri. Ismail returned to Porbander in 1892 to marry Fatima. They had three children,
Ayesha, Abubaker and Mahomed. Ismail maintained close links with Porbander in other ways: he
presided at the Kathiwar Muslim Educational Society at Porbandar in 1918; was chairman of the
Porbandar Jooma Mosque and Madressa Managing Committees; was a close friend of His Highness,
the Rana Sahib of Porbandar, and was invited to annual meetings of the Indian National Congress.

Natal-born Ismail Jhaveri

(1876-1925)
© Khatija Jhaveri

43
 Like his father Ismail, Mohammed Jhaveri returned to the ancestral home of Porbander to marry Halima
in a traditional wedding.

Global links also had religious content.

Mohammed, his mother Fatima, and
sister-in-law Rabia on pilgrimage.

© Khatija Jhaveri

44
Mohammed, Abubaker and their families.

Men like Mohamed Jhaveri maintained global

frames of reference but were makers of modernity
in local city life.

© Khatija Jhaveri

45
 Ambaram Thaker (1861-c.1930)
Ambaram Thaker (1861-1930), a Brahmin priest and teacher in Porbander, was summoned to Natal
by Mohandas K. Gandhi. He left his home village shortly after the birth of his son Harrilal in 1895. As
was customary with most migrants, his wife Luxmiba remained in India and he visited her periodically.
Six more children were born, two sons, Shantilal and Jentilal, and four daughters, Vrajkumar, twins
Mani and Moti, and Kastur. Only Shantilal and Harrilal joined their father in Natal. Ambaram was a
priest at the Depot Road Temple and renowned poet whose poetry on satyagraha drew heavily
on Hindu religious symbols and was published regularly in Indian Opinion. As per tradition Harrilal
married in India before leaving for Natal in 1909. He was only thirteen at the time and was joined by
his wife Kamala in 1922. When Ambaram sufered a stroke in 1928, he returned to India to be with
Luxmiba. Shortly before his death in 1982, Harrilal wrote an eight page summary of his life, ‘Who am I?’

46
© S. H. Thaker

47
 The Gandhi-Desai family of the North coast
Abichand Amretlal (A. A.) Gandhi was persuaded to come to Natal by his cousin Mohandas K.
Gandhi in 1896. He served with Gandhi in the Indian Bearer Corps during the Anglo-Boer War before
starting a business in Tongaat in 1900. Girhardas Desai, who, like Amretlal and Mohandas Gandhi,
was from Porbander, also came to South Africa on the advice of Mohandas Gandhi, and had by 1900
established himself as a successful businessman in Tongaat. His son Purshottamdas, born in Porbander
in 1874, married Anandben, daughter of A. A. Gandhi, in 1902. They had eight sons and ive daughters.
Twelve of the children would marry in India, handpicked by A. A. Gandhi. While the sons returned to
Natal, the daughters settled in and around Mumbai. Such marriage and family connections explain
how pioneer migrants sustained links with India over several generations.

© Jeavan Desai

Dr. N. P. Desai (seated second from left), A. A. Gandhi (seated fourth from left), Pushottamdas Desai
(seated fifth from left).

48
Mohamed Essop Nagdee
In 1960, at the age of 101, Mohamed Essop Nagdee journeyed back to his birthplace of Kacholi
to attend a ceremony opening a new water works which had been built with funds he had collected
in South Africa. The irst prime minister of Independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru attended and ofered
his thanks to Nagdee. Friendship with Gandhi in South Africa and involvement in the satyagraha
campaign of 1906 had developed Nagdee’s already strong ties to South Asia.

© Nagdee family

© Nagdee family

Like Nagdee, many other irst and

second generation migrants had
access to Indian leaders.

49
 Vasanjee Naranjee (V.N.) Naik
Vasanjee Naranjee (V.N.) Naik was born in Katargam, Surat in 1875. He came to South Africa in
1904, lured to Newcastle by fellow-villager M.E. Seedat who was looking for a teacher in Newcastle
as well as a bookkeeper. ‘Master’ Naik, as bookkeepers were addressed, taught Gujarati and wrote the
books of account for several businesses. Legend has it that that being a Brahmin, he took a cold bath
irst thing every morning and could not tolerate the cold of Newcastle and so moved to Durban. He
established himself as a successful merchant and farmer and contributed widely to social welfare
causes.

© IN

50
Family and moral belonging
One of the most powerful themes of indenture was the determination of migrants to build a family
in their new home, a desire which confounded the oicial colonial rationale of importing single labour
‘units’ who could be returned to India after service. Eighty per cent of all migrants arrived unmarried,
70% of these, male. Hopes to establish a domestic household that could recapture what they had
left behind was complicated by this gender imbalance. Sex disparity in the Indian population was not
ameliorated by crossing racial boundaries in formal marriages. Moreover, the long hours of work in
extreme conditions that characterized plantation life, as well as housing that rarely aforded privacy,
were additional barriers. Despite these unpromising conditions, indentured families were created and
by the end of indenture, the ‘moral family’ was very much a feature of Indian society.

51
 © LHM

© Primi Chetty

52
Marriage and boundary-
crossing

© S. Lawrence

Josephine and Vincent Lawrence, 1901

The story of Vincent Lawrence and Josephine Gabriel is an example of the crossing of boundaries
between indentured and ‘passengers’. Vedanayagum ‘Vincent’ Lawrence was born a Catholic in
Madras in 1872. He qualiied as a teacher and taught English in missionary schools. During a visit to
Natal in1894 he met and joined Gandhi as a clerk and private secretary for six years. Lawrence married
Josephine Gabriel in late 1901. She was the daughter of indentured migrants Perumall and Amonee,
who had arrived in the 1860s. Josephine and Vincent had nine children. All the Lawrence children
were well educated and made contributions in the ields of education, music, health, religion and the
advancement of women.

53
 Above: Churches established a choral tradition and were the primary organisations encouraging
essimilation to Western musical practices. A famed feature of Durban society for many decades of the
twentieth century was the ‘Lawrence Trio’ of Sylvia, May and Christina entertaining appreciative audiences.

Opposite Above: Vincent Lawrence’s son Joseph Claudius (seen here with his mother, Josephine) studied at
the seminary in Ceylon and in Rome, before settling in Ceylon to serve the church.

Opposite Below: Ralph Lawrence was the irst black medical doctor to qualify from the University of Cape
Town, where his experience of racism left him disillusioned with local medicine. After qualifying in 1945 he
emigrated to London where he married Bronwen Arthur. He served on the council of the British Medical
Association and was made an Oicer of the British Empire.

54
© S. Lawrence

© Ralph. Lawrence

55
 Creating community life
The story of VN Thumbadoo and his extended family shows how indentured migrants, one step
out of indenture, established structures around education, sport, music, and religion that allowed
them to construct thriving local communities. When VN’s father Veersamy completed his indenture he
took up market gardening and provided education to his three sons, VN Thumbadoo, VN Richard, and
L Veerasamy. VN married Bomeemall, who was the daughter of Mari Kuppann (22469) who came to
Natal in June 1880, and sister of well known sportsman Billy Subban. VN Thumbadoo and Bomeeamall
had ive sons who played a crucial role as educationists in Natal.

© Rama Thumbadoo (RT)

Veerasamy Lutchmiah and Nanjreamah Soobroyen, the parents of VN Thumbadoo,

arrived as indentured children, ages 12 and 6 respectively, in 1863.

56
 © RT
Crimson League Football Club, c 1900. Veerasamy, founding member and patron by the turn
of the century, is seated second from left with the turban. Seated to his left is VN Thumbadoo.
VN Richard, who captained the team, is the second person seated to Veerasamy’s left. Jimmy
O’ Brien (Subrooyen), Nanjreamah’s brother is standing on the extreme left. Standing second from the
right is Mogambery, and to his right is RL Munpath.

© RT

Sydenham Hindu Young Men’s Association (SHYMA), 1912. This is a well known photograph but included
in this collection, it emphasises the various organisations that the ex-indentured established in creating
a community. Swami Shankeranand is seated in the middle. To his left is VN Thumbadoo. To his right
are RL Munpath and Durga Lalla (extreme left), a civil servant and father of B.D. Lalla. In the middle
row on the left is Nellanah S Sullaphen who was an outstanding sportsman. Fourth from the left in the
middle row is Billy Subban. A brilliant goalkeeper he captained the South African Indian team to India in
1921/22 and represented the Natal Indian team at the Barnato Cup Tournament in Kimberley in 1913.

57
 © RT

VN Thumbadoo and others in the Overport area also formed the Sundiah’s Christy Minstrel Band in 1903.
The band sang, danced, and cracked jokes as they entertained large audiences. Seated in the centre of the
photograph is band manager and community ‘leader’ HL Paul (1864-1935), a court interpreter who was
prominent in almost all Indian sports, education, and cultural organisations. Sandiah is seated to the left
of HL Paul. Billy Subban is seated on the extreme left and VN Thumbadoo is seated on the right.

Rama Thumbadoo provided us with some of the band’s songs:

Rose in Her Hair I Took My Girl …
In her eyes there was moonlight, Oh! I took my girl to the ball one night
and a rose in her hair ‘Twas called a social hop
In my arms there was no one We stood round here and stood round there
So I just put her there Until the music stopped
On her lips was a promise, and in my Then to a restaurant we went
heart was a prayer
The best one in the street
When I inally went, I went home with
She said she was so hungry
the scent of the rose in her hair.
But you should see her eat
It was a mutton chop and a chicken crop
Oysters by the score
Asparagus with apple sauce
Until she hollered “more”
Oysters too and biscuits too
Her appetite was immense
When she called for a pie
I thought I’ll die
‘Cause I had eighteen pence!
58
 Bomeeamall Thumbadoo

© Rama Thumbadoo

The sons of VN Thumbadoo and Bomeeamall: George, Reggie, Teddy, Herbie, and Rama. George
taught English and History at Sastri College and was principal of SM Jhavary and Springfield schools;
Reggie worked for Woolworths; Teddy played intertown cricket for Durban, was the manager of the
Northern Natal Sam China team, and principal of Dundee Secondary, St. Oswald’s in Newcastle,
Tagore, and Surat Hindu, and an executive member of the Natal Indian Teacher’s Society; Herbie was
a bookkeeper; and Rama taught Biology and English at Dundee High, Sastri College and Springfield
College. The brothers played a crucial role in education. They not only taught several generations of
school children but also trained hundreds of teachers.

59
 Family across racial
boundaries
Born in the village of Yathavoor in Salem, South India, Athilatchmy Velu Naiken arrived in Natal in
September 1884 and was assigned to the Natal Government Railways. She was 22. When Athilatchmy
died on 4 October 1940, her death certiicate listed her marital status as “Never Married”. Yet, in truth,
she had married twice and had ten children. Athilatchmy’s irst husband, Arunajalum Padayachee,
was born in Natal to indentured migrants Ramsamy and Meenatchie, and they had three children:
Soobramaniam James, Sadasevan Manassen, and Rajmanikum Lydia. After their divorce, Athilatchmy
married John Edward Powys, a clerk at the Durban Post Oice and, later, a supervisor on an Isipingo
sugar estate. Powys’ parents were Welshman Robert Horace Powys and Ellen Elizabeth Budd, the
daughter of William Henry Budd, a Lieutenant-colonel in the Indian army, who had married in Madras.
Athilatchmy and Powys had seven children: Samson, Jacob, Reuben, Meenatchie, Marian, Richard
(Dickie), and Susan. Athilatchmy was closely connected to the Methodist Mission in Natal and Sunday
services were conducted at her home in Merebank from 1905 to 1930. Her sons Jacob and Reuben
Powys were well known educationists.

© Victor Lazarus

60
Seated in the middle in
this 1916 photograph is
Dr. Yenebera Abraham
Lazarus. To his left is his wife
Ammayamma, carrying
her daughter Vazhramma.
The boys at the back are
Charles Edward and George
Washington (right). Seated
in front on the right is
Yenebera Steven Lazarus
and on the left is Benjamin
Lazarus.

© Susan Lawrence

Migrants reconstituted family in the new setting and we see this, for example, in the way the
Powys’ became linked to the Lazarus’ through marriage. Yenebera Steven Lazarus (1909-1968) arrived
in Natal as a toddler in August 1910 with his twenty-three year old indentured mother Ammayamma,
who was the daughter of the Reverend V. John in the village of Dupad in Markapuram, Kurnool. They
were assigned to the Kearsney Tea Estate near Stanger. Baptists comprised an important segment of
Natal’s indentured Christian population. They were mostly Telegu-speaking and settled in Kearsney,
following a request from the American Baptist Telegu Mission in Madras that Baptists should be sent
to one area. Ammayamma’s husband, Y.A. Lazarus, who was described as a trained medical assistant,
arrived in Natal as a passenger in 1911 and obtained a position as a medical assistant with J.L. Hulett
and Sons, Darnall. It is of intrigue that Ammayamma and her son came as indentured migrants and
Y.A. Lazarus as a passenger. In 1933 Steven married Esther (1910-1970) the daughter of Athilatchmi’s
daughter Rajamanickum. Ammayamma died during the Spanish lu epidemic of 1916-1918 and Y.A.
Lazarus remarried. When he died in the early 1930s his wife took all the children and returned to India
except Steven and Charles Edward. After a break of half a century, the Reverend Victor Lazarus, son of
Steven Lazarus, visited India in 1987 and rekindled family ties with uncles and cousins.

61
 Champion of Education
In a climate of segregated schooling, Herbert Sell-Dura Done was the epitome of that small sector
of the colonial born population which had access to education and, in a new position of status, saw
in education a means to uplift the local Indian population. Done was born Soobramoney to Narayana
and Rama Chetty who had arrived in April 1890 and worked for RJ King of Nottingham Road. H.S. Done
was born in Durban in October 1897. He passed his Teacher’s Training classes and began teaching in
1911 at the age of 14 at the Stella Hill Government Aided School.

© UKZNDC
H.S. Done (seated)

62
 Done married Coopoomal, daughter of Rajoo Chetty of Sea View, in Clairwood on 16 January
1921 and, after her death in 1925, married Anapooranee Moodley. H.S. Done was headmaster of the
Clairwood Government Aided School from 1919. Under his leadership the school grew into one of
the largest Indian schools in the country. He also founded the Clairwood Girls School and Clairwood
Preparatory Boys’ School and was a trustee of the Clairwood Tamil School. Done was a founding
member of the Natal Indian Teacher’s Society. A keen sportsman, he was a founder member of the
Clairwood Tennis Club. Done was especially interested in Indian youth and sought to ind ways to
engage them productively and teach them values such as discipline, courage, fairness, character, all
perceived as crucial in the making of South African citizenship.

H.S. Done and Coopoomal

63
 Artists
Latchmy was born in 1857 in the village of Veerapatcheepooram in Vellore, North Arcot and
emigrated to Natal in 1885, arriving on the Dunphaile Castle with her four year old son Manickam.
Her reasons for leaving her husband Karian and emigrating to Natal is one of those mysteries that will
never be known but many women took this bold step. Mother and son were assigned to H. Perron’s
Muckle Neuk Sugar Estate in La Mercy. Latchmy married Munien in Natal and their twin sons, Ramsamy
and Lutchman, were self-taught artists. Two of Lutchman’s best-known works were his near life size
portrait of his mother Latchmy and that of Sir Srinivasa Sastri, which was exhibited at the retail store
Greenacre’s in West Street for almost a year and later donated to Sastri College. Ramsamy painted
a water colour portrait of Swami Shankeranand, amongst a number of works, and was a popular
cartoonist for the Natal Witness in the 1930s. Latchmy died on 23 December 1937 at the age of 80.

Latchmy, painted by her son Lutchman.

M. Ramsamy Pillay, seated left. Behind him is Peter

Soobramoney. (see page 111)

64
Balraj Pillay with a painting
of Swami Shankeranand
by his father M.R. Pillay. The
Swami was a key igure in
forming the South African
Hindu Maha Sabha in 1912.

M.R. Pillay looked into

the mirror on New Year’s
morning 1941, smiled, and
did this painting of himself.

© Pearl Harris

65
 © LHM

66
Fashioning the
self
Through the spread of new media like photography
and through a variety of cultural inluences, men and
women used style to craft identity and individuality.

© LHM

© Z. Seedat © MA

67
 Muharram
Although Muharram was a Muslim festival, Muslims, Christians and Hindus participated in
Muharram or ‘Coolie Christmas’ as it was known in Natal.

68
 All the indentured were given their three-day annual leave around the time of the festival. This was
the one time in the year that the indentured from diferent plantations came together outside the
persistent gaze of the employer.

69
 Molvi Fateh Mahomed was a charismatic igure in the early history of the Grey Street mosque. He
was Imam from the mid-1890s until his death in September 1929. Fateh Mahomed was born in Surat
in 1867 and brought to Natal in the mid-1890s by the trustees of Grey Street to perform the duties of
Imam at the mosque. He married Zaithunbee in Natal in 1910. She was the colonial-born daughter of
indentured migrants. As a result of this link Fateh Mahomed was highly respected among the working
class congregation of the mosque.

70
‘The Temple that will not die’
By G.R. Naidu, Drum December 1960.

The Umbilo Shree Ambalavanar Alayam – more popularly known as the Umbilo Temple – has more fact
and iction wrapped around it than any other place of worship in the country. The temple, which stands in
all its battered glory amidst bricks and mortar and amongst the wings that were torn of its structure - has
a strange and fascinating history. A few years after Indians had arrived in South Africa, a group of young
Hindus went swimming in the Umbilo River. One man dived into the river and brought up an old rusty
spear which resembled a Hindu religious symbol. Public interest was immediately aroused at the strange
ind and the spear was partly buried on the banks of the river, and small temple of reeds was built around it.
Then came the disastrous loods of 1904. Many people drowned but Mr. Nadesan Odayar was one of those
who escaped. This is how he described his adventure:

I was a priest at the temple at the time. One night I woke up to ind the wooden bedstead on
which my brother and I were sleeping, rising up with the level of the water. When the bed reached
roof level, we thought that we would never get out of it alive. The water was now up to our chins.
Fortunately, the water did not rise any further. We hung on for the rest of the night and during
the irst hours of daylight, we managed to wade into the temple. We found that the water had
covered the idols in mud. We cleaned the uppermost part of the idols and clung on to them. We
prayed throughout the time. It was only in the evening of that day that we are rescued by some
lifesavers who came from Durban. My father died in the loods, but my brother and I were saved.
It was indeed a miracle that we lived through it all.

© MA
Umbilo Temple, under water in the lood of 1904.

71
 Shortly after the looding, Mr Shunmugam S. Pather, an Indian pioneer who settled in Natal from
Mauritius, built a more spacious temple upon land adjoining the previous one. In the early 1940s
the Railway Administration expropriated the land for railway expansion. The organisation which
conducted the afairs of the temple built a more modern temple on the outskirts of Durban. There are
strange stories attributed to the irst temple which was damaged in the great loods. I visited the ruins
recently and witnessed hundreds of men, women and children worshipping at the site throughout
the day. Two of the three places of worship are underground, and one has to walk into what appears
to be a dark cave to ofer one’s prayers. I entered the principal place of worship which is a cave and
which is almost under the main road. There is a dark entrance foyer with a small hole on top of it. The
smoke from burning camphor and clay lamps seeps through the hole where it joins the smog of the
adjoining railway area. Believers, young and old, are prepared to crawl into the ruins to pray, in what
has been described as a notable resurgence of faith.

Worshippers visit the ruins of the Umbilo Temple in1960.

72
Festivals
Hinduism in Natal was replete with festivals and drama which became a means to build a collective
consciousness of Hinduism. Festivals such as Draupadi (ire-walking), which is celebrated in March in
honour of the Goddess Draupadi; Kavadi, celebrated in honour of the god Muruga who, devotees
believe, has the power to cure illness and get rid of misfortune; and the Mariamman ‘Porridge’ festival,
associated with the popular Goddess Mariamman, were celebrated within years of the arrival of the
indentured. According to John Kelly, ‘temples, drama and festivals helped Indians to survive and resist
the harshness of indenture. Festivals] made real an alternative, disintegrating understanding of the
“coolie” situation. They were rituals of resistance, and more. They did not merely open a temporary
communitas (a feeling of well-being), but profered the vision of a self on diferent terms of order, a
permanent new start beyond the girmit.’ *

* John Kelly, ‘Jaikumari.’ In Brij V. Lal. Ed. Bittersweet. An Indo-Fijian Experience. Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004: 47-69, 57.
73
 © MA

74
Sport
This is a 1913 photograph of Black cricketers from across the country who participated in a non-
racial tournament in Kimberley. Indians participated in formally organised athletics, cycling, boxing
and wrestling. Organised cricket and soccer was played from at least the 1880s, with teams such
as Blue Bells, Greyville, Pirates of India, Railways, and Higher Grade School. Sport was played along
racial lines, but in 1913 Natal sent a team to Kimberley to participate in the Barnato Cup which had
been organized by the South African Coloured Cricket Board. The Cup had been donated by Sir
David Harris, president of De Beers Consolidated Mines. Traders donated liberally and Natal’s players
wore a blazer with a green body with gold braid, the national colours of white South African cricket.
The tournament was dominated by Western Province. While the Natal team lost all its matches
the experience, according to a reporter for a Durban weekly, was ‘an eye opener to almost all the
Natal men who, because of an occasional score put together by them, have plumed themselves as
cricketers of knowledge and experience’ (Latest 5 April 1913). Tsala Ea Batho, a Kimberley newspaper,
reported on 12 April 1913 that the tournament ‘brought from Natal the inest type of British Indians,
natives of Natal who ever graced any company with their presence. Sociable, reined, gentlemanly,
scholarly, they seemed to combine these qualities in a manner which captivated all who came in
contact with them, and could scarcely have had a more enthusiastic reception than was accorded
these modest sons of tea and sugar planters’. Hopes of continuing this non-racial tournament
were dashed with the outbreak of the First World War which resulted in the cancelling of the 1915
tournament. Some recognizable faces in this photograph are Billy Subban (third row from front, ifth
from the left) who was the leading run scorer. Behind and to his left is Shaikh Emamally, the manager
of the team. To Emamally’s left is Joe Soodyall, a leading sports promoter in Natal.

75
 Gandhi
The story of indenture and its struggles was to be linked to another signiicant arrival on the shores
of Port Natal – English qualiied lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi came in 1893 at the behest of a
wealthy Indian merchant who was involved in a private litigation. His arrival marked a period in which
British settler hostility was aroused by non-indentured Indians who were seen to upset ideologies of
a 'natural' hierarchy of labour exploitation by white planters and citizens of Africans and indentured
Indians. The 1885 Wragg Commission put forth that the Indian trader was the cause of ‘much of the
irritation existing in the minds of European Colonists.’ *

© E. S. Reddy

* In Y.S. Meer, Documents of Indentured Labour, 1860-1917. Durban: Institute of Black Research, 1980: 131.
76
 Gandhi became increasingly central to eforts to counter the strident racism of white settler rule,
and the spate of anti-indian legislation passed by the new government which placed restrictions on
Indian immigration, franchise and trading rights. The most broadly contested legislation was an act
stipulating that all non-indentured Indian males over 16 and females over 13 had to pay an annual tax
of £3, which resulted in high rates of re-indenture and return passages to India by those completing
their contracts. Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) on 22 August 1894. While Gandhi’s
tactics and strategies, and their efectiveness continues to be the subject of intense debate, he was
indisputably central to Indian political life in South Africa until his return to India in 1914.

© LHM

Katurba, Gandhi’s wife, with their children Harilal (b. 1888), standing left; Manilal (1892), standing
right; Ramdas (1897), sitting; and Devdas (1900), baby.

77
 Satyagraha
Between 1906 and 1910, Gandhi launched his satyagraha campaign in the Transvaal against the
“Black Act”, a law requiring Indians to register themselves and provide ingerprints. Failure to do so
could result in arrest and deportation. While he initially used the phrase ‘passive resistance’ to designate

78
 his movement, by 1906 he argued that that
the two concepts were quite far apart. He
wrote in chapter thirteen of Satyagraha
in South Africa, entitled ‘Satyagraha vs.
Passive Resistance’, that he ‘coined the word
”satyagraha” … in order to force a wedge
between this power and the movement
which was referred to in Great Britain and
South Africa as “passive resistance”.’ Gandhi’s
key strategies were Satyagraha (truthforce),
Ahimsa (non-violence / refusal to inlict
injury upon others), Tapasya (willingness for
self-sacriice), trust in one’s adversaries, and
a refusal to take advantage of the weakness
of one’s opponent.
Gandhi organised mass meetings which
were attended by thousands of Indians and
Chinese, whose spokesperson was Leung
Quinn. Only 511 of almost 13,000 Indians
and Chinese in the Transvaal registered.
Gandhi was among the 2,000 Indians
and Chinese who were imprisoned for
embarking on satyagraha in protest against
the law. Even while the issue of registration
was being contested, the Transvaal
Government passed a law in 1907 restricting
the entry of Indians into the Transvaal from
Natal and the Cape. This encouraged many
Indians from Natal to enter the Transvaal
illegally and court imprisonment. While
the Satyagrahis pledged to ight on until
victory was achieved, the failure to achieve
anything tangible, heavy ines, and some
deportations, resulted in support gradually
petering. By 1909 only Gandhi and a few
loyal supporters were engaged in the
“movement” in the Transvaal, and between
1909 and 1913 Satyagraha essentially
constituted of negotiations between
Gandhi and the government.

Satyagrahi’s released from detention

79
 Thambi Naidoo
Govindasamy Kristnasainy ‘Thambi’ Naidoo (seated right) was one of Gandhi’s lieutenants in the
Transvaal. Fluent in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Creole, he addressed many mass meetings organised
by Gandhi. Between 1906 and 1914, he was imprisoned ten times, the longest single term being
six months. Thambi and his wife Veeramal (seated left) were among the earliest settlers at Tolstoy
Farm. Veeramal became a resister in 1913 when she joined a group of eleven women who crossed
into Newcastle to speak to the mine workers and was sentenced to three months in prison. Her son
Pakiray sufered the same fate. Thambi Naidoo spoke at Gandhi’s farewell dinner at the Empire Theatre
in Johannesburg in July 1914 in his capacity as President of the Tamil Beneit Society. He announced
that ‘on behalf of myself and my wife, I have the honour to present four boys to be servants of India.’
The boys were his sons Pakiry, Roy, Barthasathy and Bala and they were to stay in India for six years. It
is said that Veeramal collapsed when she heard the news. Thambi Naidoo continued to play an active
role in politics until his death in 1933.

© Shanthi Naidoo

80
Imam Abdul Kadir Bawazeer (left) and Thambi Naidoo.
Throughout his South Africa stay, Gandhi worked hard to break down caste, ethnic and religious
barriers and forge a sense of being Indian. The close relationship between Imam Bawazeer and
Thambi Naidoo attested to this. Imam Bawazeer, a Muslim priest, and a close ally of Gandhi, followed
him to India and participated in satyagraha campaigns. Imam Bawazeer died in Gandhi’s Ashram at
Ahmedabad in December 1931.

© Shanthi Naidoo

81
 Tolstoy Farm
In early January 1910, there were a hundred satyagrahis in jail, while around thirty were awaiting
deportation. To accommodate them and provide training to future satyagrahis, Gandhi spoke to his
friend and supporter, the German-Jewish South African architect Herman Kallenbach about building
an ashram in the Transvaal similar to the Phoenix Settlement which Gandhi had established in
1904. Kallenbach bought a farm in 1910, about 1100 acres in extent, where houses were built to
accommodate 60 men and 10 women. Gandhi named it Tolstoy Farm, after Leo Tolstoy, the Russian
writer whose ideas of non-violence and simple living had inspired him. It was at Tolstoy Farm that
Gandhi simpliied his dress from a suit and tie to a trousers and shirt that was similar to that of a
prisoner’s clothes. Kallenbach sold most of the farm after the 1913 campaign but retained a small part,
which has been restored in the post-apartheid period as a heritage site.

82
 Gokhale

G.K. Gokhale (1866-1915) The Isipingo Committee that organized

Gokhale’s visit to the area.
© Indian Opinion Golden Number

Sports Day in Gokhale’s honour, Albert Park, Durban

The question of registration in the Transvaal and the tax in Natal were among major Indian
grievances when Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a high-ranking Indian diplomat, visited South Africa in 1912.
Gokhale had been Gandhi’s mentor since 1896 and actively canvassed against the indentured labour
system. He had been a member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council since 1902 and as such had the
ear of British authorities. Gandhi hoped that he would persuade the government to abolish the tax.
During his visit from 8 October to 17 November 1912, the South African government made Gokhale

83
 The Cape Indian Reception Committee

© Indian Opinion Golden Number

Gokhale arrives at Johannesburg station where he was met by the Mayor and
Mayoress and a large crowd of Indians.
a state guest. He had a private state railroad car at his disposal, and the entire visit was marked by
red carpets, extravagant banquets, and illuminations. Mayors, government oicials, and white
businessmen hosted him. The visit helped to create a sense of Indian South African consciousness as
he toured the entire country, including the sugar-producing areas, and addressed meetings that drew
crowds that numbered in the thousands. Thousands of Indians also packed railways stations as he
moved from town to town. The visit of Gokhale was also important in boosting Gandhi’s international
proile. Gokhale discussed the tax with the Union government and left behind the impression that it
would be repealed.

84
1913 Strike

After Gokhale’s departure, Indians expected some redress, especially on the question of the tax.
When Smuts denied making any such promise to Gokhale, Gandhi considered it ethically proper to
pursue the repeal of the tax. The tax was one of several demands listed by Gandhi, the others being
the removal of residential barriers in the Transvaal, the right to inter-provincial migration, including
right to enter the Orange Free State, more evenhanded trading licensing laws, recognition of the
validity of Indian marriages, removal of restrictions on the entry of wives and children from India, and
the right to domicile after three years absence from the country. The government refused to yield. This
intransigence laid the basis for the historic coming together of the Indian working classes and Gandhi.
Its spark was the coming out on strike of 4,000 Indian workers on 16 October 1913 at the coal mines
in Northern Natal.
The power of the strike was enhanced when 15,000 Indian workers on coastal sugar estates joined
at the end of October. They struck for a variety of reasons. Some believed that Gokhale was returning
to liberate them while others said that they were acting on Gandhi’s orders. The decision to strike is
an indication of the depth of sufering caused by the £3 tax. About 65 per cent of indentured Indians
were serving their second or subsequent term. Tension was greatest on the plantations because of
the larger numbers, the total dependency of planters on Indian labor, the year’s crop still had to be
cut, and it was rumoured that Africans were going to join in the strike. The violence associated with
the strike, police brutality, and the use of mine compounds as prisons led to widespread negative
coverage in India and England. The 1913 strike was a collective reaction to terrible working conditions
and a realization that the poll tax meant perpetual indenture. The strike was thus not only a political
phenomenon but an uprising by economically depressed Indians experiencing harsh material
conditions. It left a powerful impression on those who participated. Their struggles hitherto had seen
divisions between merchant and indentured, on the plantations they had been either individual or
restricted to one area. 1913 showed their ability to galvanise across such divisions.

85
86
 Gandhi shortly after being released
on bail in Volksrust for leading a
march into the Transvaal.
He is lanked by Hermann Kallenbach
and Sonja Schlesin, his secretary.
Gandhi rejoined the marchers and
both he and Kallenbach were again
arrested and jailed.

© LHM

87
 Valliamah
The 1913 strike resulted in a number of women participating in Gandhi’s campaign for the irst
time. One of them lives on in many commemorations. She is Valliamah, who is standing on the left in
the back row.

‘Valliamah’, (Drum, November 1960)

In practically all the diferent phases of our history, individuals stood out as heroes and
martyrs. The world knows of the greatest of them all, Mahatma Gandhi, … but there were
lesser heroes the present generation scarcely knows. One of the most outstanding was
a woman who gave her life for the cause of her people. She was Valliamah Mudaliar, the
daughter of a Johannesburg labourer. Valliamah was a mere wisp of a woman who was
imbued with the spirit of Gandhi and his passive resistance movement. She served her
irst term of imprisonment at the age of sixteen and when she returned from her term of
imprisonment, she contracted a fatal fever. It was on February 2, 1914 that Gandhi was
summoned to her bedside. He could not help but brush aside a tear when he saw the tall
girl, her body emaciated beyond description. Though she was dying, she had a licker of a
smile on her girlish face. “Valliamah, you do not repent of your having gone to jail?” asked
Gandhi. “Repent? I am even now ready to go to jail again if I am arrested,” replied the girl.
Gandhi was deeply moved by the simple and sincere words of a girl dedicated to his faith.
He later told friends that if he had only a dozen Valliamahs, the cause of the Indians would be
won. Valliamah hovered between life and death after her last conversation with Gandhi. But
within a few days she died. Gandhi paid the following tribute to her: “She built her temple
of service with her own hands and her glorious image has a niche even now reserved for it
in many a heart.’

88
The last group photo of Gandhi in Durban. O.H.A. Jhaveri is seated to
Gandhi’s left; Vincent Lawrence is seated on the extreme right; Parsee
Rustomjee is next to Lawrence; G.H. Miankhan is seated third from the
left; Albert Christopher is standing behind Gandhi (with bow tie); to his
left wearing a turban is R.K. Naidoo (Dr. Goonam’s father); and Shaikh
Emamally is standing behind Naidoo (wearing a fez).

89
 Colonial born identity
Albert Christopher was the son of Paupiah Narrainsamy and Goovadoo Lutchmee who arrived
indentured in Natal in September 1863 and August 1864 respectively. Christopher was born in Durban on
7 April 1885, educated at the Higher Grade Indian School in Durban, and Lincoln’s Inn, London. In the story
of Albert Christopher we see the transition of colonial born Indians who begin to see themselves as South
Africans rather than as Indians or, perhaps more accurately, begin to see themselves as Indians whose
home was in South Africa. His is also a story of crossing the indenture / passenger divide, of breaking the
barriers of race and religion, of challenging racial discrimination but rallying to the cause of Empire.
Christopher married Ghadija Gool of Cape Town in 1923. Ghadija was an activist and community worker
in her own right who came from the highly politicised Gool family of Cape Town. Her brother Goolam
Gool was a key leader of the Unity Movement, and her sister Jainab (Jane) was a founding member of the
Workers Party of South Africa in the 1930s who married I.B. Tabata. Christopher held the highest positions
in Indian sporting, religious and political life in the irst half of the twentieth century. He worked closely
with Gandhi but was also involved in attempts to provide a platform for the political voice of colonial-
born Indians. He led the ‘Christopher Contingent’, comprising of around 700 colonial-born Indians, which
served in East Africa during the First World War. Their “reward” for this show of loyalty was an intensiication
of racist legislation. Christopher’s assessment of the Indian Relief Act of 1914 articulated the aspirations,
contradictions, and dilemmas of his generation:
The Hon. Mr. Gokhale, when he was here, advised colonial-born Indians to seek their own
salvation, as to them this land is their home, however much they might look to India as their
motherland. Patriotic they might be, and there can be no doubt that they are, but immediately
they were concerned with the afairs of South Africa, and their eforts should be directed to
their acceptance in its polity … With the stoppage of Indian immigration – free, restricted or
conditional – and with the elimination of the Indian-born Indian by the hand of death or by
return to India, gradually, in the course of a number of years, the entire character of the future
Indian population here would be South African. To the South African-born Indian, then, must
they who would solve the Indian question turn, and in him they will ind material worthy of a
part in the structure of South Africa. He is in a state of transition from the East to the West, and,
if it were possible that the virtues of the Occident and the Orient could be blended in him, then
the prediction of Kipling, that the East and the West will never meet, will have been falsiied …
The Indian may become anglicised but not denationalised. Evidences of this are not wanting, for,
with the absorption of much that is English, such as, for instance, certain sports, there goes along
with these their national games, and this process is noticeable in almost everything connected
to them. But at the same time, the attractions of the West appear to be gaining in strength, and
the risk of the colonial-born Indian eventually in the course of generations losing his power
to withstand them even partially is very great indeed. The position, however, is not hopeless,
if the communication that existed between India and South Africa by the immigration and
emigration of Indians is restored, in any case for the present, by the organisation of a means by
which colonial-born Indian boys and girls may spend some years of their life in India, learning
as much as is possible during those years of something of India, its wealth of intellectual and
spiritual knowledge, its greatness and its resources, past and present, and, if he or she dare, peep
into the future. *

* In S. Bhana and B. Pachai. Eds. A Documentary History of Indian South Africans. Cape Town: David Philip, 1984.pp

90
 Albert Christopher
© Kader Hassim

Ghadija Christopher

91
 Tour of Duty
Vambly
This photograph of one ‘Vambly’, who served in Christopher’s Contingent, was provided by
Rama Thumbadoo. Like the 700 others who served in the contingent in East Africa, they were
disappointed when they returned to ind not only that racist legislation was intensiied in areas
of trade, residence and employment, but that the Durban Town Council built a ‘Roll of Honour’ for
white municipal employees killed during the war but refused to do the same for Indians. In fact,
Indians who were injured in conlict were not even allowed to sit at the bottom of tramcar as this was
reserved for white passengers. An editorial in Indian Opinion (14 September 1917) made the pointed
observation, `if this is the way men who have all but met their deaths for the sake of the Empire’s
cause are treated by our Town Council, what treatment are we to expect for other Indians?’

© Rama Thumbadoo

92
AP Thomas
The story of AP Thomas speaks to how an individual's desire to imagine new possibilities for life
and experience could take form in relation to the web of empire. Born to indentured migrants in
Durban in 1882, Thomas completed his education and then worked as a cook aboard the ship Alert,
which carried fruit and other merchandise between Durban, East London, and its home port, Port
St. Johns. During this period “Cookie” set up home in Umtata. In 1916, he sold all his possessions
and travelled to London at his own expense. After three days of sightseeing he volunteered at
Whitehall and was drafted to the 2/19th London Rear as Private 61493. He was sent to fight in the
Middle East by way of France, Italy, and Salonika. Thomas fought mostly in Palestine as a member of
Major General Chetwode’s bodyguard and was wounded a couple of miles outside Jerusalem. When
he was released from the army on medical grounds, he returned to Umtata where he established
himself as a post and cartage contractor. The Territorial News of Umtata reported his death in 1947.
Thomas’ grandson Fred Hendricks is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Rhodes University,
and his other grandson John Hendricks is Executive Dean, Social Sciences and Humanities, at Fort
Hare University.

The original photographs are lost but photocopies are in the possession of Fred Hendricks.
This a scan of the photocopy shows AP Thomas in civilian and military dress.

93
 Africa or India?
With economic recession and the progressive racialization of South African law that
followed the Great War, the inancial inducements ofered by the 1914 Smuts-Gandhi
Agreement saw many migrants return to India. Yet some found that the homeland of
their imagination was not the homeland of reality and opted for a passage back to South
Africa, where they faced the challenge of carving out a status and identity within a maze of
exclusions and legal limitations. The stories of Munigadu and Devadasen point to how war
and the geographical links making up the British empire could inluence how a generation
became Indian or African.

Paul Joe Devadasen

© Phyllis Naidoo
Phyllis Naidoo and Paul David’s
maternal great grandparents, Royappen
Anthony and Sowryammah Nagayam
arrived in September 1878. Royappan’s
son Paul Joe Devadasen took part in
the satyagraha campaign of 1913 and
a few years later shipped of to ight
in World War 1, where he lost a leg in
battle. Shortly after his return, his wife
Annamah died during the Spanish
lu pandemic. In the face of this loss,
combined with the ever tightening
noose of racism, Devadasan returned
to India with his son Patrick under
the repatriation scheme and lived in
Cochin until his death in 1961. Patrick
grew up in India where he married and
had two children, but then joined the
British army in World War II. After the
war he abandoned his wife, and settled
in England where he married an English
woman and had two more children.
In the process Patrick Devadasen
became Patrick Davidson. Mary Violet,
the mother of Phyllis Naidoo and Paul
David, and her brother Joe took their
father to court for the right to remain in
South Africa.
Annamah (Mary) Devadasen (standing),
wife of Paul Joe Davadasen, with her sons Jo
(left) and Patrick, and daughters Mary Violet
(left) and a sister who died as a young child.

94
 Munigadu Rangadoo (seated left) completed his indenture in 1900 and lived in Natal
until the death of his wife to the Spanish Flu in 1918. In April 1920, he took advantage of
the repatriation provision, giving up his South African citizenship for a free passage back to
the land of his birth. He found India ‘almost a foreign country’. With his children, Narainsamy,
Amasigadu and Muthialu (left to right) he made his way to Dar-es-Salaam and from there
sought re-entry into South Africa. When his request was denied, the family walked 2000
miles from Tanzania, through Mozambique to northern Zululand. They were apprehended
in Mkuzi. They were again denied permission to remain, despite challenging the decision
in the Supreme Court. The family was deported to India. However, Muthialu married
Marimuthu, a Natal-born India and remained in South Africa.

95
 Generational politics
Organised Indian politics in South Africa was largely dominated by Mohandas K. Gandhi,
the Congress and the trader elites, most of whom were born in India. Periodically the small
educated elite of colonial-born Indians would make its voice heard. The leaders of such
organisations were not openly hostile to Congress but argued that certain grievances were
speciic to them and they needed a platform to articulate these. A Colonial Born Indian

96
Association was formed in March 1911, for example, to protest against restrictions on inter-
provincial migration since, due to shrinking opportunities in Natal, many educated Indians
hoped to seek jobs elsewhere in southern Africa. This is a photograph of an attempt to
rekindle the body in the 1920s. Similar attempts would be made in the 1930s to coordinate
protest aginst repatriation. Bernard Gabriel, the president, was the son of indentured
immigrants, who qualiied as a lawyer at Cambridge University and was the irst colonial-
born barrister. From the late 1930s colonial born Indians had suicient political clout to
challenge for leadership of Congress itself.

© UKZNDC

97
 Urbanisation

During the inter-war years, the majority of Indians became part of an urban-based
proletariat. But as H.R. Burrows noted, this flow was ‘due less to the offer of attractive
employment or even of any employment at all than to economic pressure driving them
off the land.’ * Widescale poverty was a pervasive feature of Indian life in Durban. A survey
by the Economics Department at the University of Natal reported in 1943/44 that 70.6% of
Indians were living below the poverty datum line and that 40% were destitute. ** CS Smith,
a visitor to Durban, reflected on Indian poverty in a letter to the Town Clerk in 1940:

As a stranger to Durban from overseas, one of the first things that struck me was the
appalling conditions of the majority of Indians here, malnourished and housed in hovels,
without any sanitation. These people, like the Natives, do all the manual work and menial
work of this country; they put money into the pocket of the white man, but he is regardless
of their well-being, and seemingly utterly callous to their sufferings. I have been working
in South Africa for two years. Just before Xmas I was working at Hulett’s in Rossburgh and
had to give out the meagre Xmas boxes to the Indians. I have never seen such hopeless,
emaciated specimens of humanity. Some were too dazed to say “thank you” and had the
apathetical look of the half-starved. ***

*.H.R. Burrows. ‘Durban’s Growing Pains: A Racial Problem.’ Race Relations 7 (1940): 28-31, 29.
** Frene Ginwala. ‘Class, Consciousness and Control: Indian South Africans,1869-1946.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 1974: 303.
98 *** NA, 3/DBN, 4/1/3/2033, 642, 14 February 1940.
 © IN

White officials, like Councillor Kemp, were concerned that Indians, ‘living as they do
in dirty, dilapidated, tin huts … are a great menace to the Public Health of Durban.’ *
A.I. Kajee pointed out that the living conditions of Indians was was due to poverty rather
than cultural choice. The question, he said, was ‘purely an economic one. The mode of
living of Indians who had acquired wealth approximates, if not excel, the white man. The
remedy therefore, primarily and fundamentally, lies in the improving of the economic
condition of the mass of the Indian people.” **

* NA, 3/DBN, 4/1/2/1296, vol. 1, 81/540. 1 December 1924.

** A.I. Kajee. ‘Indian Housing In and Around Durban.’ Speech delivered before Durban Indo-European Council, 6 December 1929. KCM 17790.
99
 © Sally

Sally is the wide-eyed girl standing with her grandmother, siblings and cousins,
photographed at the Magazine Barracks where her family lived. Her father worked for the
Durban Corporation and her mother was a domestic worker for more prosperous Indian
families in central Durban. Now a grown woman, she provided this photograph to us.

100
 An average of 2 500 Indians were employed by the Durban Municipality during the inter-
war years. But workers and their families, in 1949 for example, totalled almost 10,000. Most
performing unskilled work such as street sweeping and grass cutting, and were among
the lowest paid workers in the city. Their housing at the Magazine Barracks was within a
racialised zone for black labour, which included barracks housing for single Zulu-speaking
men and a separate barracks settlement for Christian African families, the Baumannville
Married Quarters. Conditions in the Magazine barracks were deplorable. Following an
inspection in 1928, the Indian Social Service Committee reported that men and women
had to bath in toilets which had no doors; there were no ventilators with the result that the
whole house was illed with smoke when food was cooked; the kitchen was so small that
food and utensils were stored in bedrooms; roofs were old and rusty; and because there
were no gutters and drains stagnant water bred diseases. * A 1946 survey of the Barracks
found that the average family size was 6.1 with 1.4 wage earners per household; income of
municipal employees accounted for 61.74% of the total income; the balance consisted of
the income of women peddlers and domestic servants and males who worked a second job
to supplement their meagre incomes; 70% of families were in debt, the major causes being
payment for food, clothing, and medical fees. ** Despite the grinding poverty, the Magazine
Barracks was a vibrant community, and over the years produced sportsmen, musicians, and
leaders who made important contributions.

A.P Dearianathan winner of irst Angling Kamalanathan

competition1950.

* ISSC to Mayor, 5 May 1928. NA, 3/DBN, 4/1/2/442, 15/135 vol. 3.

** V.S. Naidoo. ‘Survey of the Income and Expenditure of dian Employees of the Durban Corporation, living at the Magazine Barracks, Durban.
Race Relations (1946): 40-61, 45. 101
 The Agent-
Generals
Although many Indians fought for the British
cause during World War One, anti-Indian agitation
swept across the country in the post-war period
and manifested in legislation to curb Indian trade,
residence, and immigration. When the Hertzog
government introduced a Bill in 1925 to enforce
segregation and reduce the number of Indians to an
‘irreducible minimum’, South African Indians pushed
for a round table conference, which was held in
Cape Town from 17 December 1926 to 12 January
1927. The Indian Government agreed to a scheme
for the voluntary repatriation of Indians; the Union
Government, in turn, promised to “uplift” the social
and economic position of Indians who remained;
and the Indian government was to appoint an Agent
to monitor the workings of the Agreement.
The oicial title of the Indian government’s
representative changed from ‘Agent’ to ‘Agent-
General’ to ‘High Commissioner’. The three Agents
were Sir Srinivasa Sastri (1927-29), Sir Kurma Reddy
(1929-32), and Sir Maharaj Singh (1932-35); the two
Agent-Generals were Sir Syed Raza Ali (1935-38) and
Sir Benegal Rama Rau (1938-42); while the two High
Commissioners were Sir Shafa’at Khan (1941-44) and
Ramarao Deshmukh (1945-46). There was a certain
aura around the person of the Agent-General and
most South African Indians held them in high social
esteem. Sir Srinivasa Sastri, the irst Indian Agent
General, was struck by the fact that the mainly British
‘white population of Natal … have taken the lead in
the anti-Asiatic campaign, and the fact is universally
admitted that the position of Indians … is now
most acute in the most British of the provinces. *
In general, a xenophobia with reference to Indians
pervaded Anglo-Saxonist political thought, despite
the irony that – in the late 1940s – twenty-ive per
cent of of white people in Durban were born outside
South Africa whereas foreign birth applied to only
ten per cent of Indians. *

* S.R. Naidoo and D. Bramdaw. Sastri Speaks. Pietermaritzburg: The Natal Press, 1931: 14.
** L. Kuper et.al. Durban. A Study in Racial Ecology. London: Jonathan Cape, 1958: 157.
102
 © LHM

Delegates to the Round Table conference, garlanded, on board the R.M.S. Balmoral Castle on their
arrival in Cape Town in 1926. From left to right are: The Rev. CF Andrews, who had taken up the cause
of the nationalist movement in India and the plight of Indians in Fiji and Natal: Sir Darcy Lindsay;
Ahmed Ismail (partly obscured); Sarojini Naidu, the ‘Nightingale of India’; _____; Sir Geoffrey Corbett;
Sir Muhammad Habibullah, a lawyer who was India’s delegate to the first League of Nation’s session in
1919; and VS Sastri, who became president of the Servants of India Society when Gokhale died in 1915.
Sastri opposed Gandhi’s satyagraha and founded the Indian Liberal Federation in 1922.

103
 Separate Development?
For Sastri, upliftment was the key to Indians becoming ‘civilised’
He accepted that ‘the right of the European to political domination
must be neither disputed nor endangered … The European mind
must be relieved of the fear of being swamped by an excess of
Indians.’ * But, speaking at a welcome banquet arranged by the Natal
Indian Congress on 1 August 1927, he urged whites to ‘treat Indians
with sympathy and toleration … If you help them, you will ind them
it to live among you as good South African citizens, of whom you
need neither be ashamed nor afraid. But do not believe for a moment
that I advocate race mixture. All who have lived in India have seen
the disastrous consequences which come from such attempts at
removing racial distinction. I myself come from a race, Brahmin,
which, amid a sea of surrounding nationalities, has kept its blood
pure.’ **
Unlike A.I. Kajee, who saw development as related to economics,
Sastri held to the pervading racial theories of his time. He believed
that whites had sacriiced enormously to attain a ‘western’ standard
of life and had the right to protect it. Although he was not explicit
about what constituted a western standard, he pointed out that
‘those who visit Durban and notice the diference between the
quarters which are predominantly white and the quarters which
are predominantly Indian will not ask for precise deinitions of
standards.’*** Sastri thought that there were some Indians who
‘might not by any process of upliftment ever be enabled to do so.
There are no visible marks by which one class might be distinguished
from the other. A rough test is aforded by the ofer of a free passage
and bonus. Those who accept it belong to the one class; those who
do not must be presumed to belong to the other..’ † One way was
to inluence opinion was through alliances with White liberals who,
Sastri hoped, would pressure the authorities to be more generous in
their treatment of Indians. Sastri formed Indo-European Councils in
Durban, Pietermaritzburg, and Johannesburg with this end in mind.

*V.S. Sastri. ‘The Cape Town Agreement: Its Full Signiicance.’ The Hindustan Review L (April 1927):187-197, 190.
** Sastri addressing an NIC meeting, Pietermaritzburg, 1 August 1927. In Sastri and Naidoo, Sastri Speaks, 69.
*** Sastri, ‘Cape Town Agreement,’ 193.
† Sastri discussing the Cape Town Agreement with the Natal Witness. In Naidoo and Bramdaw, Sastri Speaks, 21.
104
© MA

105
 Extracts from Sastri’s farewell speech, Johannesburg 1929
Since I came to this country I have endeavoured to ask you, if possible, while considering the
merits of each Indian problem, not to lose sight of the fact that you were not dealing merely
with hawkers, with Indian waiters in hotels, or with Indian traders, but with members of a
great people in India; great not merely by numbers, but great by their ancient civilization,
and by the part they have played in saving the British Empire from the cataclysm which was
threatened by the Great War… If we ask of you to bring to the treatment of the Indian some
largeness of heart, some breath of vision, some enthusiasm for Empire, some preparedness
for sacriice and a lowering of standard, if necessary; if we make that demand of you, I
know that we make a demand to which you dare not turn a deaf ear. But upon our side, I
undertake that my community will make your sacriice, and the lowering of your standards,
as far as possible unnecessary. Give us fair facilities, and you will ind that you need make
no great sacriices … And now one word to my countrymen. I will ask them to remember
that the treatment that they get depends entirely upon their attitude. Be patient… Before
you ask that your rights should be respected and maintained, be sure that their rights are in
no danger from your existence and your modes of life. Convince them that your continued
presence among them is no danger to their level of civilization. *

* Naidoo and Bramdaw, Sastri Speaks

106
 © Vishnu Padayachee

The Kunwar Sir Maharaj Singh was educated at Harrow and Oxford, and the only Christian
to hold this position. He and his wife were congregants of the St Paul’s Anglican Church
in Durban. The Kunwarani held a teacher’s diploma from St Mary’s College, University of
London. In South Africa she inaugurated women’s organisations, urged girls to attend
school, formed the Red Cross Society, and was the irst woman president of the Indian Child
Welfare Society.

107
 © Museum Africa PH2005-4684)

Miss Ponnoo Sammy

108
 © Daya Appavoo

In January 1936, the marriage of Sir Sayed Raza Ali, the irst Muslim Agent, to Miss
Ponnoo Sammy of Kimberley, a Hindu woman from a South Indian Mauritian family, broke
with convention and brought into the open political and religious tensions inside of the
Indian community. Raza Ali had been educated at Aligarh Muslim College and Allahabad
University and set up a law practice in Moradabad in 1908. He was involved in negotiating
the Congress-Muslim League compact in 1916, and was a member of the 1925 Paddison
deputation to South Africa, which investigated the situation of Indians prior to the holding
of the Round Table Conference. When he announced his plans to marry Miss Sammy,
Indian politicians appealed to him to call of the wedding as they feared religious tension.
He refused to back down and appealed to Indians to not ‘make South Africa a part of India
in introducing communal diferences’ (Daily News 30 July 1936). Hindu members of the
Natal and South African Indian Congresses resigned due to what they saw as an insult to
the Hindu community. Opposition in Indian government circles centred on the belief that
Miss Sammy’s lower caste status would relect poorly on the oice of the Agent-General.
Raza Ali brushed aside the opposition and completed his tenure on 13 February 1938.
He and Ponnoo returned to India, where he became a member of the Indian Legislative
Assembly.

109
 Sir Benegal Rama Rau had a
long and distinguished career
in the Indian civil service. He
was educated at Presidency
College, Madras, and Kings
College, Cambridge. When he
returned to India he helped to
draft the Constitution of India,
was Ambassador to the United
States, and Governor of the
Reserve Bank of India. Rama Rau
married Lady Rama Rau in 1919.
She pioneered family planning
in India, establishing the Family
Planning Association of India
in 1951 and was president
of the International Planned
Parenthood Federation from
1963 to 1971. She was also
the president of the All India
Women’s Conference in 1946.
Sir Radhakrishnan was educated
in Madras and was Professor of
Eastern Religion and Ethics at
Oxford University from 1932 to
1952, and served as President of
India from 1962 to 1967.

Sir Benegal Rama Rau, Lady Rama Rau, and Sir Sarvapalli
Radhakrishnan during the latter’s South African visit in 1939.

110
 © Balraj Pillay

© Khorshed Ginwala

Peter Soobramoney of Overport was chaufeur to Rama

Rau, Shafaat Ahmed Khan, and Ramrao Deshmukh.

Sir Shafaat Ahmed Khan (with © Nasir Hassan

glasses), hosted at the Florida Road
home of the Raboobee’s, a family
with roots deep in indenture but
which achieved rapid upward
mobility. To Shafaat Khan’s right
is Abdulla Raboobee and to his
left (with fez) is Hassan Raboobee.
Shafaat Khan held a a doctorate
from Dublin University and was
Professor of History at Allahabad
University from the 1920s. He
was made a Minister of Education
in Nehru’s Interim Government.
This did not sit well with some in
the Muslim League and he was
stabbed in Shimla shortly after the
announcement. He failed to make a
full recovery and died shortly after.

111
 The Agency: ‘Spearhead of compromise’?
Agents generally toed the official line of the Indian government
because they did not want to compromise the relations of the Indian
government with the Union Government. One exception was Raza Ali.
When he accepted the position, he told the Natal Witness that Indians
looked to India for protection because they did not have ‘the safeguard
which democracy could offer’ in South Africa. White citizens had done
nothing to remove the political disabilities that black citizens faced.
He did not agree with those who said that Indians ‘should not lose
their [Indian] identity. If they did not lose their identity they could not
be good South Africans … although, as long as disabilities remained,
the natural desire was to cut themselves adrift from their mother
country – South Africa.’ One irony was lost on white Natalians, added
Raza Ali. They complained that there were too many Indians in Natal
but forbade them from moving to other provinces (Natal Witness, 12
December 1934)
In his farewell speech on 6 February 1938, Raza Ali said that whites
enjoyed ‘all those benefits that made life worth living. Those who were
not fortunate enough to possess white skins were subjected to…
disadvantages which make it impossible to make an honest living.’ The
government should not, he insisted, govern workers by different ‘sets
of rules’ because of their skin colour, and he regarded a non-European
front as inevitable –‘could there be anything more natural than for
[people of colour] to unite against Europeans?’ Governor-General
Patrick Duncan complained to the Viceroy on 10 February 1938 that
‘public criticism … is not conducive to the maintenance of desirable
relations between such representatives and the Government to which
he is accredited.’ The Viceroy assured Duncan on 22 March 1938 that
they would impress upon Raza Ali’s successor ‘the great importance
of avoiding statements in his public utterances that may jeopardize
desirable relations between him and the Government of the Union.’
Raza Ali’s comments aside, most Indians became disgruntled with
the office of the Agency. A letter to the Indian Opinion (4 May 1938)
signed ‘Old Congressman’ questioned the effectiveness of the Agency
as the ‘watch-dog of [Indian] rights and interests…The money spent
on the Agency comes out of the pockets of the poor, half-starving
peasantry of India, and they should have at least the satisfaction of
knowing that their money is well spent in attempting and striving
© Museum Africa- PH2005-4853
hard to protect the rights of their brethren overseas.’ When radical
leaders came to the fore from the mid-1930s they complained that
the Agency, ‘being muzzled by the dictates of Whitehall, has become
a very useful medium of holding back any form of radical and
progressive leadership.... It has become the spearhead of compromise
and defeatism’ (The Call, June 1940).

112
The High Commissioner for India in South Africa, Ramrao Madhaurao Deshmukh (middle) visiting the
Gold Street Indian Government School in Johannesburg, 11 December 1945. His host is the ‘sporting
padre’, the Reverend B.L.E. Sigamoney (left). Deshmukh, a graduate of Cambridge, was a member of the
government of Madhya Pradesh and elected to the chamber of Princes Ministers’ Committee in 1941-
1944. He was recalled as High Commissioner in 1946 when India cut off ties with South Africa. In post-
independence India, he was appointed Director of the Reserve Bank of India.

113
 Repatriation
In terms of the Cape Town Agreement, the governments of India and South Africa
agreed to a scheme of assisted emigration. There was strong opposition from colonial-born
Indians who objected to giving up their birthright in South Africa. D.F. Malan, who stated
that ‘the Indian, as a race in this country, is an alien element in the population,’ saw the main
objective of the Agreement to get as many Indians as possible repatriated. But Indian South
Africans were unwilling to return to India in any signiicant numbers. The assisted emigration
scheme started with 1,655 Indians leaving for India in 1927, 3,477 in 1928 and 1,314 in 1929.
In 1932, 2,881 returned, the highest number since 1929. This is partly explained by the Great
Depression. Thereafter, numbers dropped dramatically with only 48 applicants in 1940. One
reason for the drop was the publication of a report in 1931 by Bhawani Dayal and Benarsidas
Chaturvedi, A report of the Emigrants Repatriated to India under the Assisted Emigration Scheme
from South Africa and on the Problem of Returned Emigrants from all Colonies, in which they
chronicled the neglect and sufering of returned migrants.

Swami Bhawani Dayal was born in Johannesburg, studied in India,

participated in the 1913 strike, and edited several newspapers in Durban
and Ladysmith. After the death of his wife he dedicated himself to a life of
spiritualism until his death in India in 1950. He was a transnational figure
who was involved in the politics of the Indian diaspora in South Africa, Fiji
and others colonies where Indians had settled.

“1932: Unwanted in the country of their birth: South Africans of Indian

ancestry in Calcutta, courtesy of the assisted emigration scheme.”

© UKZN Documentation Centre

114
Visiting

© UKZND
Nightingale
Sarojini Naidu took South Africa
by storm during her visit in February
1924. Speaking at the Wanderers Hall in
Johannesburg on 28 February 1924, she
said that the attitude of the British was,
‘we conquer, we rule, we trample down,
we make graveyards where there were
gardens, we rule with the iron heel, we
lash the sword and daze the eyes of
those who would look us in the face …
The Englishman came [to South Africa] to trade, because those dear little islands were not
big enough. My brothers came though from India which was big enough, to give food and
raiment, as miners and sappers for the white settlers, and now it is said: “Go now, thou pig,
to thy pigsty.” I have come to ask for justice, not concessions. I scorn concessions. I want no
favour.’ She urged Indians to refuse ‘a position of inferiority.’ Gandhi, she reminded them, ‘left
passive resistance as a legacy and warning to the European people in this land. I earnestly
hope that it is not necessary to remind the people of the lessons of passive resistance.’
The Cape Argus (1 March 1924) described these remarks as ‘outrageous’ as she gave ‘free
rein to her very considerable gifts of oratory.’ Inspired by her visit, the South African Indian
Congress (SAIC) elected her as its president.

© UKZND

Sarojini Naidu escprted by Y.A. Lazarus, (see p 61), Darnall, 1924.

115
 Fresh from the left
Members of the Communist Party who initially took an anti-war stance during World
War II were given a boost by the visit of Indira Nehru (Gandhi), future prime minister of
India and daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, who arrived in Durban on 31 March 1941 en route
to India from England where she was studying. Nehru also opposed India’s participation
in the war and Indira snubbed moderate politicians A.I. Kajee and Sorabjee Rustomjee
and instead attended a reception organized by young leftists on 2 April 1941. This was
a great boost for the likes of H.A. Naidoo, I.C. Meer and Dawood Seedat (who made

116
impassioned anti-war speeches at this event) in their struggle against the moderates. Indira
Gandhi was accompanied by future husband Fhiroz Gandhi, Chupta Gupta, and Parvathi
Kamaramangulam whose parents were also imprisoned for resisting the British. For Pauline
Podbrey, who subsequently married H.A. Naidoo,‘the unexpected arrival of these people
was like a gust of fresh air; it linked us to the liberation struggle of the world beyond our
borders from which we had too long been isolated. Everyone was agog to see and hear our
visitors, to rub shoulders with the famous, the sophisticated, the men and women from the
world stage.’ *

Lord Headley (seated second from left) and Khwaja Kamalud-din,

(seated fourth from left) hosted by Duran’s Muslims, 1926.

* P. Podbrey. White Girl in Search of the Party. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1993:81.
117
 The Aga Khan
The Aga Khan was a founding member and irst president of the All-India Muslim
League, member of the League of Nations from 1934-37 and President in 1937-38. His
wife, Om Habibeh (‘Little Mother of the Beloved’) was born Yvonne Blanche Labrousse and
married the Aga Khan on 9 October 1944 in Geneva, Switzerland. After paying tribute to
the pioneering eforts of Indians in South Africa, the Aga Khan urged unity and educational
development:

I have known and studied the case of the Indians in South Africa for a very long time. First
of all, and by far the most important, let there never be any question of Hindu and Muslim
in South Africa. The Hindu and Muslim diiculties and squabbles and diferences in India,
are not articles for export. Here, once and for all, you are all in the same boat. You will sink or
swim together and, for goodness sake, do not allow questions of religion or geography ever
to disunite the Natal Indian Congress … I implore you, with all my strength, to go in more
for education. No one can stop you if you sincerely and honestly try to raise the standard
of every Indian boy to that of the level of the European. In the long run education will go
further than any amount of other action in bringing about a better understanding of your
qualities as citizens of South Africa. These doors are open. They must always be kept open,
for the standard of material life will depend upon the standard of moral and cultural life.*

© Khorshed Ginwala

The Aga Khan in Durban, 16 August 1945. L to R: Advocate J.W. Godfrey, Jalbhoy Rustomjee, Aga Khan,
Khorshed Rustomjee (Sorabjee’s wife), Om Habibeh, Sorabjee Rustomjee. Looking at the camera in front on
the left is Abdullah Raboobe and on the right is Mr. Hargovan.

118 *From http://simerg.com/literary-readings/literary-reading-sir-sultan-muhammad-shah-aga-khan-iii-imams-message-in-south-africa /

 Ties with the ‘Motherland’
In the inter-war years, a series of transoceanic sports matches began with a three month
long visit by Indian South African football players to India in 1921. The team departed
on 30 November, arriving three weeks later. Their tour included a visit to the All India
Congress at Ahmedbad, where they met Gandhi. A report in the Statesman (11 January
1922) commented that although the players were ‘of pure Indian descent, none of them
has hitherto visited this country. They were all born in South Africa and speak perfect
English – two in fact are teachers in English schools – yet, amongst themselves at home,
they speak Hindi. India, they ind, quite comes up to expectation. All the members are keen
dancers incidentally, and some of them are excellent exponents of the very latest steps
from London and Paris. They have dances every Saturday at the tennis club in Durban of
which the majority are members.’
© Rama Thumbadoo

South African Touring Team to India, 1921-22

119
 Before ive thousand spectators, the team won its irst match against Mohan Began
Club on 11 January, but lost a return ixture against the same opposition, drew with a
Calcutta European Combined team; were beaten by a Combined European Military team,
a combined Indian team, Calcutta University, Benares Hindoo University team, East India
Sports Club, combined Agra University team, and the European Queen’s Bay Military team,
but ended the tour on a high by beating the Lancaster Regiment European team.

South African team visiting Presidency College, Calcutta

120
 On their return, they were accorded a public welcome at the Tamil Institute in Durban
on 8 March 1922, under the auspices of the Durban District Indian Football Association,
whose president JM Francis described the team as ‘pioneers who had gone to India to open
up a connection with that country which would lead to an interchange of visits.’ Albert
Christopher said that the Contingent had ‘shown to the Motherland that her sons away
from home are doing everything to uphold its honour and ancient traditions.’ (Latest, 15
April 1922)

© Rama Thumbadoo

121
 An Indian team returned the compliment in 1934, arriving on the Karanja on 30 May.
Indian Opinion (8 June 1934) commented:

We extend to our distinguished visitors a very cordial welcome and wish that their visit to
this country will not mean the mere playing of soccer but that it will draw the minds of
their brethren living in this far of land more towards the Motherland and her great ancient
culture. Our sincere wish will be that India will give a jolly good licking to South Africa so that
South Africa may remember India with reverence as the victor and not as the vanquished.

Manilal Gandhi’s prayers were answered for the Indian team, which played barefoot, and
won most of the 14 matches played throughout South Africa before crowds of up to 10,000.
These sporting events were occasions of building a diasporic identiication. When a tour by
the Indian Olympic team was proposed in 1948, the Leader (19 June 1948) recalled these
earlier exchanges and how they had …

… made the Indian people conscious of their tradition and background. We are South
African by birth but we still maintain our cultural heritage and spiritual ties with India. The
visit will serve to throw all Indians together, for they will have a common purpose to meet,
see and talk with people from the Motherland. It has been estimated that over 80 per cent of
the Indian people of this country are South African-born … but ties of language, culture and
tradition cannot be thrown of overnight. India is the fountain-head of our origin and when
the proposed visit materialises the Indian people in South Africa will take a special pride in
recognising the fact that they are Indians and they have connections with the Motherland.

122
123
 Education
Access to education was a perennial problem for Indian children. In 1926, only 9,913 of
32,000 Indian children of school going age were in school. Increased access to education
after the 1927 Cape Town Agreement was mainly in ‘aided’ schools. Indians had to buy
land, build a school and pay for its upkeep while the government only reimbursed half the
building cost. In 1949, 84 per cent of Indian schools in Natal were aided (The Leader, 30 July
1949). By comparison 83 per cent of white schools were government-run in 1945.

© Rama Thumbadoo

Sastri College was the brainchild of Sir Srinivasa Sastri who raised funds from Indian
traders to get the project of the ground. It was oicially opened on 14 October 1929.
Sorabjee Rustomjee, Durban’s mayor, the Reverend A. Lamont, and Agent-General Sir
Kurma Reddi, were among the large crowd present. The staf comprised of a white principal,
William Buss, and local white teachers, six Indian teachers who were brought from India,
and three local Indian teachers, M. Moodley, B. Somers, and M.B. Naidoo. The four pillars in
front of the school stood for ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’, ‘Truth’, and ‘Beauty’.

124
© Z. Barmania

Shortly after the opening of Sastri College, a high school was opened for girls in Dartnell
Crescent. While parents were reluctant to educate their daughters, the perseverance of
Pauline Morrell, principal for over two decades, paid dividends and it became established as
one of the foremost educational institutions in the country. In this photograph, Ms Morrell
is presented with a bouquet of lowers in appreciation of her work.

125
© Khatija Vawda

There were pockets of educational

discipline throughout the province, such as
St. Oswald’s in Newcastle which had relatively
good facilities and produced outstanding
individuals over the decades, including A.D.
Lazarus and Mac Maharaj.

© Rama Thumbadoo

A group of students at Sastri College formed an informal group known as the Polons
Club to raise funds for social welfare causes. Several of them were to distinguish themselves
in later life. Seated in front, second from the left, is A.N. Naidoo (dentist); to his left is Masla
Pather, a medical doctor and member of the Communist Party who served imprisonment,
house arrest and bannings; J.N.Singh, standing in the back row on the left, was prominent in
the political struggles of the 1950s until being banned; Dhara Randeria, back row, third from
the right, was one of Durban’s irst ophthalmologists; and in the second row, in the middle
is Lesley Vinden, a popular musician of the 1950s and 1960s.

126
 Dr Somar Sundaram Cooppan, the son of teacher Muthal Cooppan, who had arrived as
an indentured migrant in 1887, was born in 1913. He was one of the irst three matriculants
from Sastri College, with Vadival Thomas and Michael Joseph. Cooppan completed a BA at
Fort Hare, MA in Psychology (1939) and Education (1941) at the University of Cape Town, and
he completed his Phd in Psychology at UCT in 1949. Cooppan taught at Springield Training
College, and was a researcher in the Department of Economic Afairs at the University of
Natal before joining the UN. Now 97, he remains deeply interested in matters of education.

127
 © Sayeda Ansari

The Crescent School in Pine Street was established in 1917 to provide a combined Islamic and
secular education. Mawlana Bashir Siddiqui is pictured with a boys class in the mid-1940s.

128
 © UKZNDC

Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement in England, during his visit to South Africa, 1936.

© Rose Pillay
Sports Day at Greyville Primary, which catered mainly for working class children from the nearby
Magazine Barracks.

129
 Higher education,
local and global
Fort Hare, established in 1916 in Alice in the Eastern Cape, for
African students, began admitting Indian students from the early
1920s, helping to nurture a broadly deined black political elite.
The ‘uplift’ clause of the Cape Town Agreement stated that while it
was ‘diicult for the Union Government to take action, in advance
of public opinion,’ it was willing ‘to consider sympathetically the
question of improving facilities for higher education by providing
suitable hostel accommodation at the South African Native College
at Fort Hare and otherwise improving the attractiveness of the
institution for Indians.’ This indirectly sanctioned the prohibition of
Indian students at the universities of Natal, Rhodes, Wits, and Cape
Town, just as it did Africans.
During the 1930s, Wits and Cape Town began to accept small numbers of black students,
while Natal University created a separate section for ‘Non-Europeans’. Black students
experienced racial discrimination at all the institutions and those with inancial means went
to study in the United Kingdom and India. In 1946, Sorabjee Rustomjee met with Éamon de
Valera, Chancellor of the National University of Ireland, and negotiated with him to accept a
small number of South African students each year.

© Rama Thumbadoo

At Fort Hare, standing in front of the Presbyterian Hostel, c 1946, are from left S Panday (who qualiied as a
doctor), L Pillay (teacher), J Kissoon (lawyer), Charles Njonjo (Attorney-General of Kenya), Rama Thumbadoo
(lecturer, Springield), Beny Van Vaugt, Soobiah Naidoo (doctor), and Geofrey Christopher (doctor).

130
 © Rama Thumbadoo
© Daya Appavoo

Indian students shared lectures,
cafeteria and hostel accommodation
with African and Coloured students at
Fort Hare.
© Herby Govinden
Fort Hare: Beda Hostel Cricket Club, c 1946. Standing from left to right are D Matabese,
C Mayekiso, Rama Thumbadoo (vice-captain), Ossie George, and A Sigeu (captain).
In the middle row are E. Fenner and L Green. Sitting in front, wearing a hat is Dennis
Brutus, who would become a famous struggle poet, A Ngcobo, and Arthur Pillay.

© Rama Thumbadoo
Herby Govinden, seated, middle, with his students at Fort Hare before the further racial balkanisation of
education. Herby was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1928, matriculated from Woodlands High in 1945, and
attended Fort Hare where he completed a BS.C in Physics and Chemistry. He went on to complete his Doctorate
at Rhodes, becoming the first Indian South African to hold a PhD in Physics. In 1959 he joined the Faculty of Fort
Hare. After lecturing for four years, he took up a post-doctoral fellowship in Canada. While he was overseas, he
received a letter that his position had been terminated and that he should report to the “Indian” university at
Salisbury Island when he returned.

131
 Student Christian Association meeting, Durban, March 1947. The association met three to four times per annum,
mainly during vacations, to discuss matters affecting Christian students. Its members included university and
high school students and their ‘associates. In the middle of this photo in front is Herby Govinden. To his right is
Krishna Somers, brother of Sastri teacher B. Somers. Krishna Somers was not a Christian and was attending as
an ‘associate’. Somers would qualify as a medical doctor at Wits, specialise in cardiology in London, and work in
Uganda and Papua New Guinea, before settling in Australia where he established the Krishna Somers Foundation
at Murdoch University to foster research in the study of diasporas.

132
 © Kreesen Naicker

Gangathura Mohambry Naicker, afectionately known as ‘Monty’, was born in Durban to fruit exporter P G
Naicker. He matriculated from Marine College and proceeded to Edinburgh where he qualiied as a doctor
in 1934. His set up a practice in Durban and made his mark in politics as part of a new guard that took
control of the Natal Indian Congress in 1945.

133
 Dr Moseda Ismail (1904-1978), daughter of a Bengali father and Malay mother, qualiied as a medical
doctor at Edinburgh in 1938. She established a practice in Durban and married Shaik Abdulla Raboobee,
grandson of an indentured family (see p.20 )

134
 All in the family. Williamson
Godfrey (right) and Dr. Ernest
Godfrey, father and son,
both received degrees from
Edinburgh University. Williamson
was born in Mauritius in 1875
and moved to Natal in 1890.
He completed a law degree
at Edinburgh University and
married classmate Catherine
Swan. He opened a practice in
© Khatija Vawda
Johannesburg and was a close
associate of Gandhi. Ernest was
born in Johannesburg in 1907
and also educated at Edinburgh
University where he secured a © Khatija Vawda
position as lecturer in Anatomy.
This photograph was taken in
Newcastle in the late 1930s
when the Godfreys were visiting
family friend IS Vawda.

Self-portrait. Dr GH Vawda of
Newcastle, attended St. Oswald,
Sastri College, and Fort Hare
before completing a medical
degree at Edinburgh University
in 1939. He spent the war years
in London and qualiied as an Ear,
Nose and Throat specialist. When
he returned to South Africa, Dr
Vawda worked at various hospitals
and was an accomplished amateur
photographer.

135
 © Khatija Vawda

This photograph was snapped by Dr Vawda of friends from his Fort Hare days, (left to
right) Dr Nadaresen Appavoo, Dr Robert Mahlangeni, and his wife Dr Beatrice Bikiche.
Appavoo and Mahlangeni were classmates at Lovedale, and were joined by Vawda at Fort
Hare. The three shared ‘digs’ in the UK. Mahlangeni was the son of Dr Maweni Mahlangeni,
perhaps South Africa’s irst African doctor. Beatrice, also a medical doctor, was an American.
Together with Dr Sililo of Pietermaritzburg, they maintained a lifelong friendship and would
holiday annually. These doctors took pride in the non-racial friendships fostered at Fort Hare
and through their professional careers.

136
 Durban-born George
Singh (garlanded), B.A.,
LL.B. was admitted as an
attorney of the Supreme
Court of South Africa
in 1943. He studied law
at the University of the
Witwatersrand because the
University of Natal, under
pressure from the Natal
Law Society, refused to
admit black students to its
Law Faculty.

© Tensingh Singh

Yusuf Motala returning as a medical

doctor from London with his wife Mariam.
Motala was a contemporary of Ralph
Lawrence, the irst black student to qualify as
a doctor at UCT. He could not come to terms
with the racial barriers that students faced
at UCT, which included not being allowed
to observe post-mortems involving white
patients, and left for London where he earned
his medical degree. He established a practice
in Durban and his wife, Miriam, was active in
the philanthropic women’s organisation, the
© Marya Motala
Women’s Cultural Group.

137
 © Maryam Jeewa

It was considered scandalous for Muslim girls to attend high school in Durban during the 1930s.
Ebrahim Jeewa, father of Mariam (right), was determined that she should receive an education and
he took the rather unconventional step of relocating to Aligarh so that she could graduate from high
school, the occasion pictured here. Jeewa proceeded to Calcutta University where she qualified as
a medical doctor. She returned to South Africa and upon marriage to Dr Ismail Sader of Ladysmith,
she moved into private practice there. After the death of her husband, Dr Jeewa worked at a public
hospital in KwaDabeka near Claremont, Durban, until her retirement in 2001.

138
© Khorshed Ginwala

Multi-national education
Frene Ginwala was born in Johannesburg, schooled at St Anthony’s school in Durban and St Joseph’s
College in Mumbai, India, matriculated in London, and enrolled at the University of London, where she
completed her LLB. She holds a D.Phil from Oxford University obtained in 1973. She was active in the
African National Congress and, in 1994, was elected Speaker of the National Assembly of the South African
Government.

139
 © Ahmed Meer

Horse play
Durban-born Ahmed Meer is standing on the extreme left in the back row in this photograph of the
Aligarh Muslim University Horse Guard. Meer matriculated from Sastri and did an Inter-Science course
at Aligarh, after which he completed his medical degree at the University of Punjab in Pakistan. It was
at Aligarh that he was introduced to equestrianism, where the activities of the university’s polo squad
was followed passionately. Meer became an expert horseman and was selected for the university’s
racing team. He opened a medical practice in Kranskop and later served as the District Surgeon of
Pinetown.

140
© Khorshed Ginwala

High Drama. Indian students from Africa who were studying in Dublin, participating in a university
theatrical production, c 1950. Standing from left to right with turbans on are Keshav Bhoola (Durban),
_____, Edul Rustomjee; Gertrude (East Africa), _____, Kanti Bhoola (Durban), Mohamed Shaikh
(Durban); Ebrahim ‘Bhai’ Seedat. Sitting from left to right are Dhun Rustomjee; Carol (Kenya); Tehmi
Rustomjee; Usha Gautama (Kenya); Khorshed Ginwala, _____.
© Fatima Meer

Farouk Meer (left) departing to Dublin where he studied medicine from 1955 to 1962.
Seeing him of are his cousin Haroon Meer and wife Gorie.

141
 Public transportation
The irst Indian-owned busses began operating on the streets of Durban in 1919. They
were welcomed because the trams were racially segregated and reserved a few seats for
black passengers. They provided an important service in transporting passengers to the
fast-growing suburbs. During the 1940s and 1950s it was required of bus drivers to dress
smartly and wear a coat to work. Busses were iconic symbols and many couples even got
married on busses. Ironically, following the 1949 one the issues raised by African witnesses
to the Riots Commission was the Indian monopoly of bus routes.

The family-owned Danny Shanpat’s Omnibus Service.

142
 The Warwick Avenue bus rank in the 1940s

Khan Bros Bus Service began operating in the early 1960s

143
 Print media and Indian
identity
Print culture and the publishing of news by and for Indians in South Africa has a long
history, with journalism both informing and galvanising a sense of community among
people of Indian origin and ancestry. P.S. Aiyar was one trailblazer. Aiyar was born in
Madras, completed a BA in English and Tamil at Madras University, and settled in Natal
in the late 1890s. He launched Indian World (1898), Colonial Indian News (1899-1901) and
African Chronicle (1908–1921; 1929-1930) which were published in Tamil and English and
targeted South Indian passenger migrants, many of whom came via Mauritius. Lack of
funds meant that Aiyar’s companies became insolvent. While they existed, his newspapers
covered the indentured, the debilitating efects of the £3 tax, and religious and cultural
issues. Osman Ahmed was another press pioneer, pitching to a Muslim readership. He
started the Al-Islam: Religious and Political Mohammedan Organ in South Africa (1907-1910).
Two short lived Hindi language newspapers The Dharma Vir (1916-1918) and Hindi (1922-
25) were published by Swami Bhawani Dayal.
Two papers which proved more durable, surviving for half a century were Indian Opinion
(1903) and Indian Views (1914), which were published in Gujarati and English. According
to Gandhi, he founded Indian Opinion ‘to voice the feelings of the Indian community, to
remove the misunderstandings which had bred the prejudice of white settlers against
Indians, to point out to Indians their faults and give them practical and moral guidance
and a knowledge of the motherland and to promote harmony in Empire.’ * After Gandhi’s
departure, the paper was run by his son Manilal Gandhi, assisted by his wife Sushila. Indian
Views was started by M.C. Anglia and articulated a rival political vision from the Opinion.
The newspaper’s circulation peaked under the editorship of M.I. Meer who, from the
1930s, travelled around South Africa and into Mozambique collecting subscriptions. These
newspapers were important in their calls for full citizenship and a non-racial state. They
also gave extensive coverage to news from India, in particular the struggle against British
imperialism. By the early 1940s there was a vibrant tradition of journalism in Natal, with
two newspapers added to the existing suite, The Leader and The Graphic, while the Post
was published from the 1950s.
Indian Views and Indian Opinion were sold in Durban at four centres only: Burma House
and Sun Brand Tobacconists in Grey Street, Union Printing Works in Victoria Street, and
Dhanjee’s Corner (Grey / Victoria Street). The Leader, which proclaimed that it was ‘for the
quarter million Indians of South Africa,’ was the irst Indian newspaper to be sold on the
streets of Durban and relied heavily on these sales. For a while, Ritson Road in Warwick
Avenue became known as Durban’s ‘Fleet Street.’ M.I. Meer lived on Ritson Road. From
No. 62, the Sastri College magazine was edited in 1939 by I.C. Meer, who wrote also for
Passive Resister, Cape Standard and Guardian. Dhanee Bramdaw edited The Leader from
No. 64. Ranji Nowbath, who wrote a column for The Leader under the pen name ‘The Fakir’
lived at No. 84.

* From http://www.mkgandhi-sarvodaya.org/mass_media.htm

144
 Manilal and Sushila Gandhi at
the Phoenix Settlement, 1950.

© IN

M.I. Meer did not

have an opportunity for
formal education, but
was a voracious reader
and his Library at home
carried hundreds of
books of every kind–
politics, religion, and
literature. He serialised
the works of Victor
Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, and
Charles Dickens in
Gujarati in Indian Views.

© Fatima Meer

145
 ‘The irst Decade’
This issue marks the end of a decade of
publication of The Leader … When the Leader
was launched the auspices were far from
favourable. World War II had been in progress
for over a year; paper was scarce; printing
costs high; advertising, the very life blood of a
newspaper, was at a minimum for men were
ighting for their very existence and had no time
for marketing commodities; the peace time
economy of plenty was giving place to the war
time economy of scarcity. But it was this very
war which focused attention on the need for a
newspaper to cater for the needs of the Indian
people, for, to European newspapers the war
had been the most important thing and none
could be found to support the Indian cause
without reservation or limitation … The need,
then, was imperative for a newspaper to carry
the Indian point of view as opposed to that of
the rulers, the point of view of the Indian people
and not that of any Indian political party and, at
the same time, to provide a medium to mirror
the contemporary social and sporting life of the
people.
Ranji Nowbath, November 1950

146
 Dhanee Bramdaw studied at Fort Hare
where he edited the student publication.
He joined the staf of the Natal Witness and
was invited to edit an Indian section of the
paper. He also served as a correspondent
for the Rand Daily Mail and Natal Mercury,
as well as Indian newspapers such as The
Hindu, Madras Mail and The Pioneer of
Lucknow. He produced several publications
of his own, including a compilation of the
speeches of Sir Srinivasa Sastri, Sastri Speaks
and the South African Indian Who’s Who in
1936 and 1939.

© Nirode Bramdaw

© Nirode Bramdaw

Dhanee Bramdaw established the weekly

newspaper the Leader in 1940. But for most of its
existence, the paper was run by his wife Saraswati
who took over the reins in 1952 and oversaw its
production until her retirement in 1989.

147
 At the Press. Dhanee Bramdaw (extreme left) overseeing the newspaper’s publication.

148
© Nirode Bramdaw

149
 The Graphic
By Rajendra Chetty (e-mail, 25 June 2010)
Kunnabiran Muthukrishna Pillay launched The Graphic as a monthly magazine in 1950
and, two years later, encouraged by public response, transformed the mini-magazine into
a weekly tabloid, competing with the well-established Leader for Indian readership. Pillay,
the conirmed bachelor, had taken a wife, Dr Thirupurasundari, a famed author from South
India, who ofered her knowledge and expertise in creating an India-friendly series for an
image-building campaign to boost the sales of the weekly. Dr Thirupurasundari or ‘TPS’ as I
addressed her, turned out to be quite an authority on the South Indian Film Industry, which
was revealed weekly in brilliant and captivating details. In addition ‘TPS’ revealed ‘gems’ in
the fascinating and untold stories of some great men and women of India. I realised then
we had set up a remarkably efective network partnership and her concept of new features,
like a series on ‘Visiting Homes’, added greatly to the paper’s circulation.

Kunnabiran M. Pillay (standing

right), Dr K Thirupurasundri,
and V Manickum Pillay (left).
K. Thirapurasundari was a
gynaecologist and obstetrician,
and prolific writer who wrote
26 novels and around 300 short
stories, winning several Madras
State Literary Awards, and had
her own programme on All-India
Radio.

150
The pugilists

In Durban, boxing matches were initially staged at the skating rink in Victoria Street,
moved to the Royal Picture Palace after World War One, and then organised at a newly
built hall on the beachfront from the mid-1920s. George “slim” Bull, wrote in the weekly
newspaper The Latest (15 April 1921):

Boxing breeds cosmopolitanism, drives away class and national prejudice, and develops
broadmindedness in the individual. The crowd at the ‘Vic Rink’ last Satuday night on the
occasion of the Dixon-Hommel contest was a sight worth seeing. Asiatics far from Bombay,
woolly-haired non-descripts from the African recess, Fair-headed Saxons from the chilly
North, Whites, near Whites and Blacks all jumbled together and the best of it was that nobody
minded. Every class of several races was represented in the mob from a white Magistrate to
a coloured peanut vendor. Seldom has a boxing contest attracted more enthusiastic and
albeit orderly audience. The uninitiated would imagine a coloured boxing tournament to
be a chaotic thing without order or system, but let me disillusion them. Everything was as
advertised. Enough seating accommodation was available as advertised. The promoters of
last Saturday’s show have set a high standard for us whites to follow. 27

Mixed-race bouts were prohibited from 1922. According to legendary promoter Benny
Singh, this was another ‘of those measures introduced by the Boxing Board of Control
to prevent non-Europeans getting ahead too fast. For years … all races beneited from
meeting opponents with a variety of style, until some oicials, in consultation with other
oicials, decided that it was not a good idea.’ A non-European Boxing Board of Control for
Durban was formed in June 1923 by Peter Johnson.

Who was South Africa’s best Indian ighter? ‘A very diicult question when one has to pick
from the string on hand … Having summed up the performances of these Indians ighters,
I would rank them as (i) Young Sadow and Harry Appal; (ii) Peter Sam and Bud Gengan; (iii)
Bob Narandas and Jack Moodley; (iv) Percy Vengan and L. Veeran; (v) Seaman Chetty and Kid
Sathamoney’ (Benny Singh, 1952).*

*Benny Singh. My Baby and Me. A Story of Non-European Boxing in South Africa. London: The Knox Printing and Publishing Company, 1952: 78

151
 Jimmy O’ Brien (changed from
his original name Subrooyen), was
South Africa’s irst Indian heavyweight
champion, and won the national
championship in 1903. After losing his
heavyweight title to Bob Narrandes
a year later, O’ Brien settled in East
London where he worked in the
catering trade.

© Rama Thumbadoo

‘Diamond’ Jack Moodley defeated Jimmy O’

Brien for the championship in 1906. His ight with
Peter Kunyapen of Pietermaritzburg, who went
by the ighting nom-de-guerre “Terrible Black”,
attracted thousands. Moodley battered Terrible Black
who raised his hands in surrender. Unfortunately
for Moodley, his friends rushed into the ring to
congratulate him before the decision was oicially
announced and he was disqualiied. He gained
revenge later in the year by knocking out Terrible
Black. Moodley subsequently toured India where he
claimed the light heavyweight crown. Jack Moodley
had a reputation for being a ‘dandy’. Regarded as the
best dressed man about town, he was said to have
owned 30 suits at any given time. He started the irst
physical culture and boxing academy in Clairwood,
was the irst Indian boxer promoter, and owned a bar
© Benny Singh
in Cemetery Lane, Durban.

152
 © Bailey Archives 19-955

55
FROM: gh 19-9
ORDER ailey Benny sin
tB
Bongi a

Born in Durban in 1906, Benny Singh became apprenticed to a jeweller but fell in
love with boxing and became a professional ighter against the wishes of his parents who
regarded it as a disgrace for a Brahmin to ight for money. Singh won the Natal lightweight
championship, but it was as a trainer and promoter that he became famous. His most famed
ighter was Baby Batter, whom he took to London after World War Two. Regarded as the
“father” of South African boxing, Singh became frustrated with apartheid and moved to
England where he was refused a boxing licence and lived a life of virtual anonymity as a clerk.

153
 © UKZNDC

Nat Moodley, small of frame and large

of heart, was always smartly dressed. For ive
decades he promoted boxing, receiving an
award from Ring magazine for being the world’s
longest serving promoter. Born Sabapathy
Natesan Moodley in 1903, he promoted his irst
tournament in 1933. Many greats fought for him
over the years: Arthur Cupido, L. Veeran, Baby
Batter, Harry Appal, and Seaman Chetty, to name
a few. He married Patty, daughter of Sam China.

Seaman Chetty was a ishmonger, bus

owner, boxer and boxing promoter. He was the
South African Flyweight champion and was the
irst South African to be ranked internationally
when Ring Magazine ranked him sixth. He lost on
points to second ranked Tiny Bostock in England
in 1938. He signed up for the Second World War,
served for three years, and was made sergeant-
major. When Chetty returned to South Africa,
he opened a gymnasium and was a successful
businessman, known for his limousines as much
© Rama Thumbadoo as his skills in the ring.

154
Chin Govender was a popular figure in boxing circles during the 1970s and 1980s as manager of ‘Tap
Tap’ Makatini (left). With them is boxing promoter Maurice Toweel.

155
 The Sam
China
Cup
Sam China is fondly
remembered for sponsoring
the “Sam China Cup”, a
trophy especially designed
and manufactured in
London from 1903 until the
inal whistle was blown in © Boysie Moodley

Chatsworth in 1973. Sam

China died in Kimberley
on 9 September 1930,
appropriately on a day when
footballers from all over
South Africa had gathered
Sam China with his daughters daughter Patty (left) who married
in the city to participate in boxing promoter Nat Moodley, and Valliamah who was the irst
the Sam China Cup. Indian woman councillor in the Cape.

© Boysie Moodley

Excitement at the Sam China tournament, Curries Fountain, early 1960s

156
 © Pearl Harris

Boysie Moodley, Sam China's

grandson, with the Sam China
Cup, 2010.

© Miriam Motala

The Cape had a small Indian population and their team, made of up waiters from local
hotels and a few indian students studying at the University of Cape Town, usually sufered a
frustrating performance. Yusuf Motala, third from the left middle row, a student of medicine
was voted goalkeeper of the tournament in 1943.

157
 ‘Bioscope and Achaar’
By Muthal Naidoo *
Today we have television, which brings packaged entertainment right into the comfort
and intimacy of our homes. This culture of private casual comfort that has developed
around the box has moved into movie theatres as well. In fact, the word ‘theatre’ which
implies an audience, a social gathering and a social occasion, seems inappropriate. The
cinema has become much smaller and more private and more and more people treat it
as an extension of home. Some throw their legs over the seats in the row in front and
stretch out as if on their sitting room sofas. Viewers enter dimly lit cinemas, sit in the dark in
secluded seats, watch in silence, ile out in darkness as soon as the credits begin to roll and
return as individuals to a crowd of individuals.
It was diferent in the location. Going to the bioscope was a social occasion. Families,
friends and neighbours, all dressed up, walked together to the bioscope for an afternoon’s
or an evening’s entertainment. Outside the bio, there was the buzz of people in close
interaction: vendors of stamvrugte, peanuts, achaar and kerriballs, impatient children
stretching out their pennies for these goodies and gangs playing dice on the corners. Inside
the bioscope, there was as much of a hubbub as outside. It was cheerfully noisy, especially
as the theatres, each with a capacity of six hundred seats, were always full and the large
brightly lit open halls with lat loors encouraged interaction among people who knew
each other well. They moved about freely and there were always children running up and
down the aisles.
During intervals, everyone headed for the café. There was always an interval before the
main feature. As cinemas usually had a single projector, there were breaks when reels were
changed. The programme began with newsreels, followed by cartoons, serials like Zorro
and Fu Man Chu, and trailers. The interval before the main feature was long, at least ifteen
minutes – time to get drinks and snacks. During the main feature people laughed loudly at
the antics of comedians like The Three Stooges, Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, cheered
and clapped for heroes like Roy Rogers and Tarzan, and shivered when Frankenstein, The
Undying Monster, or Dracula appeared. The Empire Theatre, the Royal Theatre and the Orient
Picture Palace, as their names suggest, looked far beyond their settings in the tiny Pretoria
location and the escape they provided was to very distant lands, real and imaginary.
But the bioscopes were more than places for ilms; they also provided venues for social,
cultural, educational and political events. In the early years, before schools were built, they
accommodated school classes. On Sundays, when there were no screenings because of the
Christian Sabbath, the bioscope halls were used for social functions and local entertainment
– meetings, weddings, physical culture exhibitions, drama productions and dances. Miriam
Makeba, Dolly Rathebe, the Manhattan Brothers, the African Inkspots and Hugh Masekela
were some of the entertainers, who performed at the bioscopes and celebrities, such as
Canada Lee and Sarojini Naidu, addressed audiences from their stages

* From http://www.muthalnaidoo.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=126&Itemid=96

158
 © UKZNDC

Organisations often hired cinemas and

showed ilms to raise funds.

The Moosa and AI Kajee

families built the Avalon
cinema in Durban.
© M. Kesharjee

© UKZNDC

The Empire Theatre in

Pretoria was built by Habib
Keshavjee.

159
 Lifesavers Club

© UKZNDC

A well-muscled, tanned, it body was a central feature of Indian masculinity and, contrary
to perceptions of passive, meek and weak Indians which dominated discourse, gymnasiums,
weightlifting, and boxing were all popular from the earliest decades of settlement. Lifesavers
were iconic igures. In response to the growing popularity of bathing and increased danger
of drownings, Balkumar Singh banded local men together to form a lifesaving club in 1933.
For lifesavers, according to Singh, ‘the sea gets into your blood. There is a certain challenge
in trying to determine what the sea will do next.’ Lifesavers’ motto was ‘Vigilance and Service.’
G.R, Naidoo wrote in Drum (August 1952) that Battery Beach was as ‘safe as a children’s pool’
thanks to the ‘untiring eforts of the lifesavers who are unpaid. With the highest altruism,
they give up their leisure hours to keep watch over the foolhardy who venture beyond their
depth … These men, who are often harassed beyond the point of endurance by recalcitrant
bathers, are subjected to grave risks in their work. Talk to any lifesaver and they will tell you:
“There would be very few tragedies if there were fewer knowalls.” A swimming pool opened
in Asherville in 1958 was named Balkumar Singh Swimming Baths to honour BB Singh.

160
 Cultures of Devotion
‘Kavadi’, By G. R. Naidoo (Drum, April 1964)
There is the incessant throbbing of drums … the screaming of weird bugles, the historic
chant of prayers in many languages, and the rhythmic swaying of entranced people.
Suddenly the whole scene is shattered by a thin piercing scream, penetrating deep into
one’s soul. This is not part of a mystery thriller. This is a religious ceremony. It is the ‘ire-
walking’ ceremony, fast becoming a leading tourist attraction. Most of the ancient Indian
customs and beliefs were brought to South Africa more than a century ago. Many of these
have been forsaken or greatly modiied by the present generation of Indians. But ire-
walking is one of the few which carries on unchanged year after year.

© LHM

© LHM

161
 © Marthi Sooboo

The Mariamman Temple in Pretoria, dedicated to the Supreme Being in the form of
the Divine Mother, Mariamman, the Rain Goddess, was built by Tamil-speaking migrants
from Mauritius and South India who formally constituted into the Pretoria Tamil League in
1905. They initially built a little tin shanty temple and began construction of the permanent
temple in the late 1920s.

162
Congella Temple, Durban. As communities accumulated wealth the simple structures that served as
places of worship evolved into a more elaborate architecture.

163
 Bâdshâh Pîr
Until the advent of reformist
Islamic movements in the
1960s, practices such as the
visitation of the tombs of saints,
faith in their intercessionary
roles, the public celebration
of the birthday of saints (urs),
Muharram, and qasidahs
(songs) to commemorate
‘mawlid’ were central to
Muslim tradition. Many of
these practices were carried
out in the public sphere. The
tomb of Bâdshâh Pîr, a revered
saintly man who lies buried
in the Brook Street cemetery,
near the Market in Warwick
Street, Durban. Sheik Allie
Vulle Ahmed, passenger 282
on the Truro, the irst ship to A street procession on the saints birthday.
bring indentured workers
to South Africa, has been
identiied as Bâdshâh Pîr by his
followers. Karâmât (miracles—
healing the sick, assisting the
weak, foreseeing accidents
and protecting others) are
important for establishing
sainthood and accounts of
Bâdshâh Pîr emphasise his
ability to know things that
are concealed and which he
could not have known through
normal means. Thousands of
people of all denominations
visit his tomb to solve marital
problems, ind work, seek cure
from diseases, and even to
obtain a house from the City
Council. A celebration of his
birthday (urs) is held annually.

164
 © Omar Badsha © LHM

Mr Banu of Pitermaritzburg sing at the Badsha Phir Shrine to celebrate

Prophet Mohameds birthday.tif

© Omar Badsha

165
 Bethesda Temple
Indian religious life in South
Africa was transformed through
large scale conversion to Christianity,
mainly among Hindus, through
the evangelism of Pentecostal
churches. Two individuals who
were instrumental in spreading
Pentecostal Christianity in the
1930s and 1940s were Ebenezer
Theophilius, an Indian Methodist
and businessman, and J.F. Rowlands,
who founded the Bethesda
Temple and made major inroads
in the Magazine Barracks. Bethesda
provides an example of the co-optive manipulation of traditional cultural practices. Rowlands
named the church a ‘Temple’ which resonated with Hindu religious nomenclature. The
medium of evangelisation were ‘Singspiration’ and ‘Musical Drama Sermons’ which drew on
the bhakthi tradition of Hindu revivalism. Lantern shows, recitations, chorus singing to the
pastor’s banjo, and slide shows of historic and geographic scenes of India were interspersed.

166