Sugar and Durban: The Growth of the Indian Community

Sugar and South Africa: The Growth of the Indian South African Community


On July 13, 2007, having been in Durban City (Kwazulu-Natal Province), I visited with both Satyagraha, an organization dedicated to promoting the values of Mohatma Gandhi and his principles of non-violence, and the Indian Cultural and Documentation Center.

While South Africans of Indian descent can be found throughout South Africa, many in this community can be found in the Durban area and in the nearby former Indian townships of Chatsworth and Phoenix. Those of South Asian descent were also segregated during the Apartheid era.

During Dutch colonial times, there is some record of Bengal slaves being traded between Batavia (Indonesia) and the Cape Colony (South Africa). However, in the 1800s, the Indian community really began to take hold. Local Zulu inhabitants refused to work on sugar plantations in the area; the key commercial product produced in this sub-tropical region of South Africa. As a result, on November 16, 1860, the first Indian indentured servants, who were expected to serve a five year term on local sugar plantations to pay off transport, arrived from India on the SS Truro. This landing was followed by many others, and, at the end of their service, Indian indentured servants could be transported home to India or could opt to stay in South Africa. Given the poverty in India, many chose to remain in-country - a country that recruiters in India portrayed as “a land of milk and honey”. Indeed, while many Indian South Africans are now prospering in the post Apartheid environment, the history of this community was far from easy or unified.

Indentured servants were treated poorly on plantations often only being given one day to build their first makeshift homes before being expected to work from sunup to sunrise thereafter. Sanitary conditions were also poor. In the1870s, Indian indentured servants were joined by the first passenger Indian immigrants – those able to afford their own passage and who often started their own businesses. While many indentured were of Tamil ancestry, with the arrival of passenger immigrants, the South African Indian community would soon consist of all castes, Hindus and Muslims, and those from the northern regions of India. One of the most famous immigrants to come to South Africa was Mohatma Gandhi.

Having arrived, unknown to the world, in 1893, lawyer Mohatma Gandhi came to represent a legal client in a local dispute. He stayed for over twenty years, and, following an eviction from the train in Pietermaritzburg for being in a “white” train car, Gandhi became politically active in the struggle for racial equality and peaceful resistance in a movement that he called “Satyagraha”. In 1904, Gandhi started his first ashram, or community based on his values and religious contemplation, in Phoenix. This community consisted of a publishing house, a school, and his house. It was from here that Gandhi published the journal “Indian Opinion”, an initial action of protest that would see Gandhi in/out of prison on political charges for many years. It was after this that Gandhi returned to India to lead it towards independence from British rule.

Having visited the remains of the Phoenix settlement, yesterday, I did feel a certain sense of peace as strange as this may seem. While visitors can tour the small reconstructed house, as the first was burned down during Apartheid violence in the 1980s, and the Printing House, there are plans to upgrade the site further to renovate the original school site and to include a museum. A few objects from Gandhi’s time in South Africa, however, can be seen at the Indian Documentation and Cultural Centre in Durban. The staff at the Centre was very helpful in providing the information for this posting and hopes that the Centre will eventually be funded by the national historical commission.

The Satyagraha organization, with whom I also met, was founded by Gandhi’s granddaughter Ela Gandhi, her father having remained in South Africa upon Mohatma Gandhi’s return to India. While the organization remains committed to promoting principles of non-violence, it is finding itself increasingly involved in assisting the Indian community to come to terms with their new democratic freedoms since the fall of Apartheid. It has also become engaged in tolerance education in schools having sponsored essay/writing contests on the importance of democratic principles today. Tomorrow, I am scheduled to meet with a principal of a mostly Indian public school in Phoenix and, following this, I will be meeting with Satyagraha representative Clive Pillay for a tour of the Chatsworth community.