Opinion - I remember the day I first met Winnie Mpungose three decades ago as if it were yesterday.
From September 28-30, 1987, central and southern KwaZulu-Natal was ravaged by the most devastating floods in South Africa.
Almost 400 people died and about 50 000 left homeless.
About a fortnight after the deluge, this diminutive woman came into the Sunday Tribune newsroom and asked for my assistance.
She related her story as I took down notes.
She said for almost a week, she had had nightmares.
She said her mother, who had died a month before the floods, appeared nightly in her dream.
“I am drowning Winnie, I am drowning. Please save me,” Mpungose recounted her mother had pleaded with her.
Mpungose said after working out what message her mother was trying to relay, she realised she had been buried in a grave in a swamp and it must have filled with flood water.
“My mother was not resting in peace. It was my duty as her daughter to rescue her.”
She wanted to have her mother’s body exhumed from the water-logged grave in rural Folweni, south of Durban, and reburied in a suitable cemetery.
However, she did not know how to go about doing this.
I discussed the matter with Vadivel Maistry, the owner of Isipingo Funeral Services, who I knew and who conducted funerals in African settlements throughout the South Coast.
He asked to meet Mpungose.
Maistry subsequently applied on behalf of Mpungose to the authorities in Pietermaritzburg for an exhumation order.
When this was granted, he arranged for the body in Folweni to be exhumed.
The woman had been buried in a grave that was sodden.
Maistry refused payment for a new coffin and all the services associated with the exhumation and reburial.
I recalled he told me then that if he had helped to give Mpungose peace of mind and had pacified her mother’s troubled spirit, this was compensation enough for him.
I have not seen or heard from Mpungose since.
I relate the above tale because it came to mind when the National Funeral Practitioners Association of SA (Nafupa-SA) recently issued a ban on all white and Indian funeral companies from doing business within black communities, specifically those in the KZN area, from tomorrow.
Threats of violence were issued against the parlours and those who supported them.
Nafupa-SA secretary-general Nkosentsha Shezi said black businesses were not given custom by Indian or white families.
“We took a decision to stop these companies operating in our areas so that we can begin to build the township economy. We want to create job opportunities for our unemployed youth and create a legacy for our future generations,” Shezi said.
At a time when social inclusion is the mantra to get all people to feel valued, their differences respected, and their basic needs met so they can live in dignity, there is no place for war talk such as that from Nafupa-SA.
But it is easy to fathom that in the racial structures of Durban’s trade relations, the most immediate obstacles to African economic advancement were commonly seen to be Indians.
Indian traders continually “extracted” money from African consumers.
Indian workers appeared to keep Africans out of better jobs, restricting the income African men brought into households.
Never mind that most urban Africans relied on Indian-owned buses for transport, these buses became a target of violent attacks by African commuters during and after the 1949 conflict.
Indian bus owners were regarded as stumbling blocks for African transport entrepreneurship.
But time is a great healer. Many of those who were caught up in the 1949 insurgence have passed on.
The younger generation has seen fit to place the blame in the correct place - on the whole fabric of South African existence which reduced the meaning of life and living to nothing for Africans.
There is no gainsaying that the 157-year passage of Indians in South Africa has not been without its fair share of trials, tribulations and tears.
Many Indians contributed in no small measure to the struggle for a democratic new order.
They went to prison and some even lost their lives so that their children could enjoy a brighter future.
Throughout the exceptional journey from servitude to passive resistance to democracy undertaken by Indians, they regarded themselves as part of the struggling masses.
They made common cause with Africans and fought a united fight for a non-racial society.
While there is a need for Indians to forge even stronger social, economic and political links with their African brethren, the race card must not be allowed to stifle free enterprise.
The ubuntu legacy of the likes of Vadivel Maistry who display honesty, integrity, simplicity and humility, must not be trampled upon.
Let’s strengthen the trust chain.