The Arrival of The Indentured Was Only The Beginning Of Their Ordeal

Selvan and Kiru Naidoo’s harrowing account of the transportation of indentured labourers from India to Durban (POST, 27 November- 1 December) should be regarded as only the beginning of the ordeal of privation and hardship they would experience once assigned to their work destinations. Foremost in that respect was the condition of their lodgings.

One of the major complaints of white settlers who immigrated to Natal under the Byrne immigration scheme was the lack of housing and accommodation. Many languished in tents during their initial months in the colony. Wattle and daub huts were common as temporary shelters.

The severe lack of amenities – no infrastructure, sparse housing, relying on the arrival of ships from England for all items associated with civilisation as they knew it – marked the daily grind of those Natal pioneers. Exacerbating conditions was the lack of employment within the fledgling economy. Those circumstances caused about 1,000 Byrne immigrants to relocate to Australia.

So poor were circumstances for white settlers that in October 1857, John Moreland, then a member of the colonial legislature, warned that until Natal’s economy was more established, it would be “unwise” to seek large scale white immigration.

Against that Spartan background, Natal was in no condition to cater for the welfare of large-scale indentured immigration. Moreover, no thought had gone into the physical accommodation and cultural needs of the Indian labour recruits. Instead, the sole focus of the sugar planters who had clamoured for indentured labour was that it was the solution to their labour woes. As such, archival records are virtually silent about the needs the new labour dispensation would herald.

An inquiry by sugar planter Sidney Platt of Isipingo in January 1860 addressed to the Colonial Secretary stands out as a solitary example of conscientiousness regarding the residential wellbeing of the indentured. In a postscript to his application for 15 indentured labourers, he wrote: “I presume you will intimate to me what kind of preparation to make for their accommodation.” Unfortunately, no response from the Colonial Secretary appears on the document.

Some white settlers began their Natal residence in wattle and daub shelters before upgrading their accommodation. For the indentured, however, wattle and daub huts were often preferable to what Medical Officer Dr HW Jones described in 1900 as the “wretched hovels” made out of tin packing cases or thatch which were draughty and provided little shelter from the rain. “I would be ashamed to put a pig in them,” he wrote.

Throughout the period of indenture, the conditions in which labourers were housed were invariably worse than poor. They were inhuman. Even the Report of the Wragg Commission (1887), which found the condition of the indentured to be generally satisfactory, conceded that “too little regard is paid to this very essential requisite.”

A deplorable aspect of the “essential requisite” was that their shelters saw a general huddling together of the sexes of all ages. They also served as premises to cook food during inclement weather which meant the occupants were subjected to the hazards of smoke and fire. Maintenance of this Spartan accommodation was left to the indentured to attend to in their “spare time.” Few employers were bothered with the provision of proper residential housing.

Sanitary conditions and ablutions were another shameful aspect of the conditions under which the indentured had to live during their contracts. The absence of latrines meant they had to relieve themselves out in the open or on the banks of streams which resulted in health problems and faecal pollution of water sources.

As late as 1911, the year the last batch of indentured arrived, the Protector of Indian Immigrants was urging employers to provide wash-houses or bathrooms so that women could at least have some privacy in their ablutions.

In the interests of objective truth, there were exceptions to the conditions in which the indentured lived. When the Wragg Commissioners visited Nil Desperandum estate of John Bazley in Alexandra County in 1885, they found contentment amongst his 126 labourers which they ascribed to proper lodgings, decent ablution facilities and food supplies. Joseph Baynes of Nel’s Rust near Richmond and William Pearce of Illovo estate were employers whose humane treatment of indentured labour was also exceptional.

The experiences of the indentured were harrowing because the closed nature of colonial society discouraged intervention and interference. Although magistrates were supposed to pay regular visits to estates to check on conditions, such oversight did not take place. As the late Leonard Thompson stated, “magistrates dared not flout the interests of the prosperous sugar planters, the social lions of their districts.”