Durban — In celebrating the 162nd anniversary of the arrival of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa, the 1860 Heritage Centre has launched a book with new details and photos of the first batch of Indians arriving in what was known as the Port of Natal in 1860.
The 374-page book, titled The Indian Africans, was co-authored by Paul David, Ranjith Choonilall, Kiru Naidoo and Selvan Naidoo. The book was first launched on Wednesday.
Speaking at a second launch in Chatsworth on Sunday, its publisher, Anivesh Singh, said what really set this book apart was that it showed for the first time the actual photographs taken on board indenture ships.
He said indentured workers were no longer just a mass of anonymous data in the archives. Singh said the curator of the 1860 Heritage Centre, Selvan Naidoo, was able to secure the diaries, scrapbooks and photographs of Captain Max de Gruyter who commanded several voyages of the SS Umona between the Indian subcontinent and Port Natal.
He said Naidoo described the find as “mind-blowing”, enabling researchers to work on tying ship records to actual names and perhaps even faces. He paid tribute to De Gruyter's grandson, Stewart Fairbairn, in Australia for generously sharing this priceless material over an extended period of correspondence. Singh also paid tribute to the project’s lead author and originator, Struggle stalwart Paul David, who died in 2020.
Co-author Ranjith Choonilall, the president of the 1860 Pioneers Foundation, saluted David for planting the seed “so that the collective story of the Struggle for a free South Africa is not forgotten or erased from history.
“David prodded the #1860Project to ‘reflect on Indian indenture in South Africa and to tell that story within the richer tapestry of deepening non-racialism and highlighting the collective contribution of our various communities in the building of our country’,” said Choonilall.
He said the authors also took on the challenge from the activist photographer, archivist and artist Omar Badsha to look at this history through African eyes.
Reflecting on the shorter narratives and deep captions accompanying the hundreds of rare photographs, co-author Kiru Naidoo said the idea was to document in light reading and selected images the lived experience – social, political, economic, cultural and spiritual – of a community defined by the vagaries of history yet evolving in diverse directions.
Naidoo said the committee would embark on a national book tour that would start in Durban and extend across the country during November and December. He said a further launch programme had been organised to take place at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday. It would honour the arrivals on the second ship, SS Belvedere, which reached Natal 10 days after the first one, Truro. The book is available online at www.madeindurban.co.za and costs R350. Courier delivery is available countrywide.
The workers from India were brought to the country to grow sugar cane in Natal on annual contracts, but were given the option to remain in the country and obtain citizenship, which many did. The event was also attended by India’s consul-general, Dr Thelma John David.
Daily News