When sugar was first produced from cane in Natal in 1851, the colony seemed set for a major economic boom. But there was just one snag: the plantation owners lacked a source of cheap labour. At first they hoped that the indigenous people would be able to supply their needs.

 

But once it became obvious that toiling in the fields for the white capitalist held no attraction for most Zulu`s, planters began to turn their attentions elsewhere.

And they looked – as planters throughout the empire had looked – to India.
Davarum was 30 years old when he put his thumb-print to a document he could not even read: ‘We the adult male emigrants,’ it said, ‘do hereby agree to serve the employer to whom we may respectively be allotted by the Natal Government under the Natal Act No. 14 of 1859 and we all understand the terms under which we are engaged …’

Davarum – or Coolie No.1, as the recruiting officer named him, had no idea where Natal was, let alone the implications of Act No. 14 – but for 10 shillings a month he, and hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, were pre-pared to travel anywhere to escape the poverty and starvation of India.

On 12 October 1860, he and his wife (Coolie No. 2), and their two children (Coolies 3 and 4), joined 338 others aboard the Truro at Madras harbour. A few hours later, the dangerously overloaded vessel began its long journey to south-east Africa.

The fight for “coolie” labour
The go-ahead for Natal to recruit ‘coolies’ in Madras (and Calcutta ) followed protracted and often bitter negotiation between the governments of the colony, Britain and a far from-keen India. As far back as 1851, plantation owners had been demanding the importation of workers from India.

In 1855, Cape Governor Sir George Grey, acting on behalf of a group of Natal farmers, tried to ‘requisition’ 300 ‘coolies’ from Calcutta. Although the Indian Government turned down this request, it promised to reconsider once the colony had stipulated the terms of indenture.

In 1856 the Natal legislature passed an ordinance em-powering the Lieutenant-Governor ‘to make rules and regulations for Coolies introduced into this District from the East Indies’. But in the next year, much of India erupted in rebellion against the rule of the English East India Company that, for decades, had systematically plundered, taxed and exploited the country and its people. By the time the last mutineer had been blown from the muzzle of a cannon, rule in India had passed to the British Crown and, as memory of the horrors of war faded, Indians were given a greater say in the new system of government which developed. Mindful of the racist attitudes of white colonists in southern Africa, and therefore unconvinced that workers would be properly treated, the new Indian administration again turned down a Natal request for ‘coolie’ labour.

By 1859 the labour shortage in Natal had reached crisis proportions – and the ‘Natal Mercury’ proclaimed that ‘the fate of the Colony hangs on a thread, and that thread is labour’. Legislation was rushed through to enable colonists to bring in labour from India at their own expense, and also to allow the colonial government to introduce Indian labourers ‘at the public expense’. Although the government bore the major share of the expenses, planters to whom the labourers were assigned had to pay three-fifths of their passage money of some £8 per head, as well as certain other costs.
The contract, or indenture, provided that a labourer would be assigned to a particular planter for a period of three years (later amended to five years) and then be re-indentured, perhaps to the same planter, for another two years. After a residence in Natal of a further five years as a ‘free’ worker, the labourer had the choice of accepting a free return passage to India or of remaining in Natal on a small grant of Crown land. While they were indentured, their welfare was the responsibility of a ‘Coolie Immigration Agent’, who also assigned them to plantations.

Once on the plantation, treatment of the indentured labourer was not subject to the ordinary master and servant ordinance. Special regulations demanded that the employer provide food and lodging, clothing and any necessary medical attention. He was also obliged to pay wages of 10 shillings a month for the first year, followed by an annual increase of a shilling a month thereafter in each successive year. His workers’ welfare would be guarded by the Coolie Immigration Agent, who would visit each plantation at least twice a year. On the other hand, if a labourer missed work for what his employer regarded as an inadequate reason, a portion of his already meagre wages could be deducted as a fine. If he left his employer’s plantation without a signed Pass, he was liable to imprisonment. Once his five years of indentured service were over, the immigrant Indian was subject to the ordinary law of the colony. It was scarcely an attractive package, but ever-increasing pressure on the land in India led to growing impoverishment of a rural class that owned no land and was scarcely able to survive. Emigration, whether to Natal or any other part of the empire, was an act of desperation in an attempt to secure survival.

The pioneers
On 16 November 1860 the Truro dropped anchor in Natal Bay under the curious gaze of a crowd of white spectators who had come to see the arrival of the Indians. The Coolie Immigration Agent was not at the dockside because, to save money, the Natal Government had not yet formalised his appointment (they did not do so until two days later). Once ashore, the immigrants were herded by armed police into an uncompleted barracks with no toilet, washing or cooking facilities, set amid pools of stagnant water. Here they remained under guard for eight days (during which time four of them died), waiting for their new masters to collect them. The planters wanted only strong, healthy young men – and as rumours began circulating that families would be split up, some of the workers tried to abscond in a bid for freedom. The reaction of the authorities was to build high walls around the barracks.

Although the terms of the agreement between the governments of India and Natal stipulated that families were not to be separated, this did, in fact, occur: a 34-year old woman, Choureamah Arokuim (Coolie No. 99), arrived with her daughters, eight-year-old Megaleamah (Coolie No. 100) and three-year-old Susanah (Coolie No. 101). Although the family was originally assigned to Grey’s Hospital, just over six months later Magaleamah was apprenticed to A Brewer, and Susanah – perhaps aged four by this time – to Isabella O’Hara. Once assigned, the immigrants walked to their plantations, clutching a few pathetic possessions and their rations for the road.

At first, the plantation workers erected their own shacks and were able to cultivate small patches of the surrounding ground for their own account – if they were not exhausted by the day’s work. Later, however, planters were obliged to provide accommodation, building barracks, known as ‘coolie lines’, of corrugated iron, mud, or stone, in which the workers led a cramped and uncomfortable existence devoid of any privacy. A lean-to shed, generally without a chimney, was used for cooking the rations of rice, mealie-meal and ghee, a clarified form of butter.

About 250 grams of dried fish each week was their only luxury. Few barracks were provided with toilets, and analysis of samples of water used for drinking revealed them to be ‘quite unsafe for use’.
Before dawn every day, the sirdar (foreman) rang a bell or, more commonly, struck a bar of iron suspended from a tree, to wake the workers who, after an unappetising breakfast of cold ‘porridge’, marched to the fields so as to begin work as the sun rose. And they worked, planting, digging, breaking new soil, cutting, harvesting, carrying, building, until the sun set. There was a brief break for lunch, which was a repeat of breakfast. It was dark by the time they reached their homes, where they managed another brief meal before falling into exhausted sleep. Sundays were supposed to be free, but few planters observed this.

Also unobserved was the condition that employers of more than 20 Indians should provide elementary hospitals. The ‘hospital’ at the receiving depot lumped all patients` together – men, women and children – regardless of whether or not any were suffering from infectious diseases. Latrines were four holes in the ground, and there were neither water basins nor baths. Corpses were laid out in the open. By 1885 only three plantations had set up sick rooms, and these were worse than that at the depot.

Despite the appalling conditions, few complaints reached the courts. Principally, this was because the worker could not leave the estate without his employer’s per-mission, and because the over-worked Coolie Immigration Agent was unable to visit the estates as he was supposed to. When he did, he was rarely able to speak to the workers in private and, in the presence of employers and sirdars, the workers were afraid to complain, knowing that they could expect even worse treatment if they were found out.

If some part of the worker found peace in death, it was not his body. Cremation, customary in India, was not permitted. In Durban, some ground near a butchery was allocated as an Indian and African cemetery. Workers, anxious to return to work to forestall pay stoppages, sometimes did not bury the corpses deep enough, and they were rooted out and eaten by pigs that had acquired a taste for flesh from offal thrown out by the butchery. Not even in death was there dignity.

Tales of horror
The fact that ‘coolies’ were regarded as units of labour rather than people left them open to widespread abuse. In an editorial which aptly summed up the attitude of white colonists, the ‘Natal Witness’ commented: ‘The ordinary Coolie … and his family cannot be admitted into close fellowship and union with us and our families. He is introduced for the same reason as mules might be introduced from Montevideo, oxen from Madagascar or sugar machinery from Glasgow. The object for which he is brought is to supply labour and that alone. He is not one of us, he is in every respect an alien; he only comes to perform a certain amount of work, and return to India …’

Many did, in fact, return to India, carrying with them horrific tales of life on the sugar plantations of Natal. 

Illegal punishments meted out by employers included flogging. A 10-year-old Indian shepherd, afraid to return to his employer because a sheep had strayed from the flock, was suspended from a rafter for two hours and thrashed with a hunting crop. When released, he ran away and was not seen again. His parents, who worked for the same planter, were beaten on suspicion of taking food to the boy at night. This was an extreme case, but the prevailing callousness is summed up in the case of a man called Narayanan, who returned to his hut one evening to find that his ill wife and child had gone. He walked the plantations for months, vainly searching for his family – until he eventually discovered that the authorities had decided, because of his wife’s illness, to return her and the child to India.

In 1871, confronted by reports and filed statements of abuses, India halted emigration to southern Africa – and the Governor-General of India explained: ‘We cannot permit emigration (to Natal) to be resumed until we are satisfied that the colonial authorities are aware of their duties towards Indian emigrants and that effectual measures have been taken to ensure that class of Her Majesty’s subjects full protection in Natal.’ A commission hastily set up in Natal recommended that flogging be abolished, medical services be improved, and that the Coolie Immigration Agent be given wider powers and the new title of Protector of Indian Immigrants. Once these recommendations had passed into Natal law, together with another that safeguarded the immigrants’ wages, the Indian Government allowed recruiting to resume, and the next group arrived in 1874.

Improvements, however, turned out to be mainly cosmetic and, although the Protector claimed that their fair treatment of immigrants ‘was a credit to the Natal Planters’, the Indian Government raised further objections, claiming that wages were far too low, and that unfairly large deductions were made when a labourer was unable to work because of illness. Living conditions were unsatisfactory, and many labourers were obliged to use water supplies that were dangerously contaminated.

By that time bigotry and discrimination were being increasingly written into the law. In Pietermaritzburg and Durban local legislation provided for the arrest of ‘all per-sons of Colour, if found in the streets after 9 o’clock (at night) without a Pass’. A law of the Natal Parliament restricted Indian rights by classifying them as ‘an uncivilised race’. Natal then unsuccessfully approached the Indian Government with its proposal that labourers should be indentured for the full 10-year period, which provoked indignant reaction. A Bengali newspaper declared: ‘The only difference between Negro slavery and coolie emigration is that the former was open slavery and the latter is slavery in disguise.’ Natal’s reaction was to cease issuing grants of land in lieu of passage money to Indians who had been resident for 10 years and who wished to remain.

Despite their many hardships, Indians, after serving their period of indenture, filled many positions in the colony, some of them to the great indignation and resentment of whites. They were active in agriculture, and by 1885 were virtually the sole producers of fruit and vegetables for Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Others established a fishing and fish-curing industry based on Salisbury Island, while yet others were occupied in coal mining and on the Natal Government Railways. Some went into domestic service or practised a variety of trades. In reply to demands that time-expired workers be repatriated, the Protector was able to say that ‘with but very few exceptions every industry in existence at the present time (1894) would collapse … if the Indian population should be withdrawn’. Their numbers were considerable, sometimes exceeding the total white population, and between 1860 and 1911, when the practice of indentured immigration ceased, some 152 000 Indians had entered Natal.

Not all Indians came to Natal to sell their labour: there were others who came at their own expense, most of them as traders.

Known as Arabs or ‘Passengers’, and most of them Muslims from the state of Gujarat, they began to arrive in the 1870s and constituted the upper stratum of Indians in southern Africa. They associated with the indentured or ex-indentured Indians only so far as trade and labour required it. Yet, racial discrimination did not distinguish one from the other.
The ‘Passenger’ merchants arrived in Natal with considerable capital, and soon set themselves up as storekeepers selling not only to Africans and Indians but, increasingly, to whites. With their shops staffed by members of their families, ‘Passenger’ merchants were able to keep prices below the level the white trader regarded as the minimum on which he could make a profit.

When the first ‘Passenger’ merchants arrived, there were already 10 stores owned by ex-indentured labourers, whose customers were their still-indentured compatriots. By 1880, ex-labourers held 30 of the 37 retail trading licences issued to Indians in Durban – but, from then on, the assertion of the ‘Passengers’ was rapid: within five years, they owned 60 of the 66 Indian stores in Natal.

Wealthier, more confident and ambitious, they formed an elite group, members of which submitted the first petition of grievances to the Colonial Secretary in London. They complained, among other things, of the 9 o’clock curfew, of the lack of interpreters in many courts, of the absence of Indians from juries, and of police brutality and harassment. They also requested permission to open their shops on Sundays, the only time when indentured Indians could do their shopping.

Faced by white hostility and rejection, groups of ‘Passengers’ who in India would never have associated with one another, were drawn together in the fight for political and civil rights. Their situation grew more serious from 1893 when Natal was granted responsible government. It meant that appeals to England or to India were much less likely to succeed.
But in the same year of 1893 a young, London-trained lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi left India to act in a matter concerning two Indian merchants in southern Africa. In Durban, he bought a first-class railway ticket and took his seat in a coach where, during the journey, a white traveller objected to sharing with an Indian. Ejected after refusing to move to a third-class compartment, Gandhi spent a thoughtful night on Pietermaritzburg station, pondering over what he was to call the ‘most important factor’ in directing his future political life.

Article Source: Illustrated History of South Africa
Images: Acknowledgment – Natal Archives
Image Captions (From top to bottom):
Indian Immigrants
Indian Pass
Cane Workers
Natal Immigrants – Port Natal
p Registers: Elliott Collection

Tags: agriculture, Cape, emigrants, Fishing, freedom, George, Governor, History of South Africa, India, Parliament, Passengers, PIONEERS, Sir George Grey, Slavery, Trade, Weekly Topics