When I was asked to say a few words after being honoured with a living legend award by then Premier Mkhize, I said: “At times like these my mind goes back to an old man well into his 70s, carrying two heavy metal cans of water up an incline to water his beds of vegetables in his precious market garden.
“Before dawn my grandfather would load his vegetables on a horse cart and take it to the Indian Market. It was the pennies from this honest, hard labour of former slaves such as my grandfather, euphemistically referred to as indentured labourers, that helped to build rudimentary schools for Indians when white authorities to which they paid rates and taxes, refused to do so.”
As a child growing up in Cato Manor, I also watched my father work from Monday to Saturday earning a pittance for his labour as a baker’s vanman. I watched him again, wake up on Sunday morning, which should have been his day of rest, to go out with other members of the Mayville School Building Committees to collect monies to build schools such as the present MES School in Cato Manor. That these schools were meant only for Indians was not of their doing – that was the law.
I also saw him support the formation of the Baking Workers Trade Union, whose meetings were surreptitiously held in our basement.
The building of their own schools, enabled future generations, despite the Job Reservations Act, the Group Areas Act, Inter Provincial Travel Laws restricting Indians, despite being South African citizens, from travelling to other provinces seeking employment, to break out of the bonds of severe disadvantage.
In the 40s and 50s, according to Natal University statistics, more than 80% of Indians lived below the bread line. TB, incurable in those days, was rife, unemployment was endemic and the rate of suicide in this community was high.
Their saving grace in such dire circumstances was the emphasis placed on education and on the joint family system. When one member of a joint family comprising uncles, aunts, grandparents, nephews and nieces, was lucky to find employment such as in the catering trade, the whole family celebrated – there would now be some regular food on the table.
In the play At The Edge, based on my Commonwealth Award winning book on Cato Manor, a character says: “… and when things really got tough there was always the herbs that grew in her garden”.
To a great extent, similar family fortification in the African community was destroyed by the pernicious Land Act of 1913 and migrant labour laws whose generational consequences such as family dysfunction will remain with us for some time.
In places such as Cato Manor, Clairwood, Riverside, Avoca, Verulam, Tongaat where “freed” indentured labourers settled, communities with a strong ethic of self-help emerged, despite the climate of deprivation and disempowerment engendered by a ruthless regime from which the likes of Dawie Roodt emerged.
More generations developed on this foundation, and punching well above their weight, made significant contributions to the nation. They were pioneers of the trade union movement. In Gandhi’s Passive Resistance campaign, with admirable sacrifice and courage, in the face of jack-boot repression, they launched the first mass resistance movement against colour discrimination and colonialism in Africa.
They were able to make significant contributions in almost all walks of life, in education, medicine, politics, economy, sport, campaigns for human rights and in social welfare.
The Aryan Benevolent Home for orphans and destitute was established by the poor Cato Manor community.
Today the home is a national non-racial institution, even catering for places outside KwaZulu-Natal, largely through continuing contributions from Indian philanthropists. Many schools in African areas were built by the Divine Life Society through the agency of Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Of course, this is not to dismiss the racists and opportunists among us. These traits are not exclusive to any one race group. However, it is the distortion of facts that led to the riots of 1949, when unspeakable violence was unleashed on a small, defenceless community.
Would the likes of Roodt and Dumisa be pleased to see a repeat of that carnage? No matter, how cleverly their comments are masked, they perpetuate the fires of race hate.
What Roodt and Dumisa advance in their disingenuous “rationale” is that Indians were “advantaged” by apartheid. While Roodt embodies the residue of apartheid racism, Dumisa’s selective rationale distracts from the actual picture.
Indians are where they are today despite apartheid laws aimed at keeping Indians in their places.
The Group Areas Act grew out of the Pegging Act first promulgated by the all-English Durban City Council to peg Indians in their “traditional” areas, preventing their “encroachment” into white areas such as the Berea.
Instead of being seen in these days of entitlement, as excellent examples of self-help, Indians are being chastised for achieving success, despite crippling obstacles.
South Africa’s laudable efforts to achieve democracy and an egalitarian society are clearly hobbled by the disingenuity of people such as Roodt and the good professor. Given our divided past – the result of years of calculated and most effective social engineering, victims continue to perpetuate their own disempowerment by making Indians scapegoats instead of fighting the fundamental causes of poverty.
Thus we stay where we are – while much of the country’s wealth, prime land and property continue to remain in the hands of our former oppressors.
This does not imply that in the new South Africa, we are bereft of opportunities to tackle these issues. Black economic empowerment stutters along without clear definition and effective strategies. Thus rampant opportunism, cronyism and tenderpreneurship, let alone a culture of impunity rule the roost and remain a huge obstacle in the eradication of poverty with all its tragic consequences.
That’s where our energies must be directed. If we fall into the trap of making some people scapegoats, of xenophobia, and resorting to the old divide and rule tactics of colonialism, we may win emotional, pyrrhic “victories” while the bigger picture eludes us, often with tragic consequences such as the horrendous ethnic cleansing of Rwanda, Bosnia, Nazi Germany, Sri Lanka and our own “1949”.
* Ronnie Govender is a playwright and author, recipient of the Order of Ikhamengha, the nation’s highest award in the arts, as well an honorary doctorate from DUT and two Life Time Achievement Awards for “outstanding contributions in the arts and the fight against apartheid in sport and the arts”.