'Sisters in the Struggle': Women of Indian Origin in South Africa's Liberation Struggle, Volume 1: 1900–1994

286 Pages·2023·9.772 MB·English

by  Kalpana Hiralal

‘SISTERS

IN THE
STRUGGLE’

KALPANA HIRALAL

‘SISTERS
IN THE

STRUGGLE’
Women of Indian Origin
in South Africa's
Liberation Struggle
1900–1994
VOLUME 1: 1900–1940s
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 University of South Africa
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Print edition not for sale in Africa
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032433875 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032433882 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003367062 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003367062
Typeset in Times New Roman
by UNISA Press, South Africa
CONTENTS

Foreword vii

‘I am Woman’: Poem on “The South African Indian Woman” ix

Acknowledgements xiii

Table xiv

Figures xiv

Abbreviations xx

Introduction 1

PART 1:

Early Resistance 1907–1920s: The Satyagraha Campaigns 35

1. Kasturba Gandhi 61

2. Jagrani Devi Bhawani Dayal 68

3. Bai Fatima Sheikh Mehtab 77

4. Valliamma Munuswami Mudliar 81

5. Veerammal Naidoo 86

PART 2:

The 1930s and 1940s: The Passive Resistance Campaign 1946–1948 95

6. Kistmah Latchmi Chetty 151

7. Suryakala Patel 156

8. Leila Pather 163

9. Thayanayagie (Thailema) Pillay 167
TABLE OF CONTENTS
10. Amina Pahad 174

11. Rajambal ‘Thanga’ Padiachy Kollapen 178

12. Bhanumathee (Banu) Ghela 183

13. Gadija Christopher 186

14. Zainab Asvat 194

15. Dr Kesaveloo Goonruthnum 204

16. Halima Ahmed Nagdee Gool 219

17. Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool 224

18. Muniammah Naidoo 238

Bibliography 243

Index 258

vi
FOREWORD

“The worst experiences had sent me spiralling. Yet it had also deepened the journey within
and awakened love from which courage flowed. Life, as it waxes and wanes, also provides
opportunities for our humanity to emerge.” [Pregs Govender]
Sisters in the Struggle – Women of Indian Origin in South Africa’s Liberation Struggle
is a living monument to the women of South Africa. In this far-reaching and impressive
exploration, we are reminded that the long walk to freedom is, indeed, long and circuitous,
with many roots and routes. Although South Africa’s liberation story has been told from
different vantage points – to the extent that we are described as a “recited society” – there
are still many gaps. This book goes a considerable way towards rectifying this anomaly.
The book covers over a century of engaging narratives of valiant women, who worked
both formally and informally in a variety of political formations and through multiple
resistance strategies – women who remained undaunted in spite of political intimidation
and surveillance, house arrest, detention, incarceration and exile. Confronted with the
unspeakable violence, brutality and repressiveness of the apartheid regime, the women
adamantly refused their imposed servitude. What is particularly instructive is the way the
narratives demonstrate unimaginable tenacity and a spirit of largesse against the rampant
dehumanisation intended by the apartheid system. In a world that othered and objectified
black women, in general, through a pernicious racialised and patriarchal society, the
women stood, undaunted, for truth and justice. As Angela Davis observes: “Human beings
cannot be willed and moulded into non-existence”.
Although apartheid tried to straight-jacket and fix identity, the narratives of the valiant
women selected for this book show how the women found broad affinities and a deep sense
of community and camaraderie beyond apartheid fences. While the study deals with profiles
of Indian women in various spaces, it shows the women transcending apartheid ontologies,
working in collectives of different kinds, and many standing shoulder to shoulder with their
sisters-in-arms in other social and political spaces.
Most importantly, this well-researched exploration contributes in no small way to the
further flattening of the grand narrative of liberation history in South Africa. Kalpana
Hiralal is an intrepid traveller into hidden places and spaces.
Against the plethora of writings of living against apartheid, Sisters in the Struggle brings
to the fore many new and marginalised strands in the warp and weft of the tapestry of
resistance histories in South Africa. In going beyond the conventional, formal archive,
Hiralal’s endeavours to modulate an ‘official narrative’ of the past, and re-draw the
cartography of apartheid resistance, is most compelling. While it celebrates those in
the vanguard and frontline of the struggle against apartheid, it also pays homage to the
numerous sisters who were working behind the scenes, often located at various interstices
between the ‘home and the world’. Indeed, Sisters in the Struggle boldly redefines the
‘political’ in its re-imaging of domestic spaces, as it ferrets out the heroic in the every day,
the hidden. We also have intimations in Sisters in the Struggle of the suppressed struggles
vii
FOREWORD
of women – narratives that complicate triumphal renderings of family solidarity in political
spaces.
An important question that might well be asked – and justifiably so, given the ‘fading of
the rainbow’ at present and the many betrayals of the hard-won democracy in South Africa
– Why another book on the liberation struggle? In saluting the transgressive resilience
of women in a time of untold repressiveness, the study also celebrates those among
them, and many more, who continue to fight for a truly post-apartheid South Africa in a
relentless quest for restorative and restitutive justice in the post-colony. Indeed, the critical
retrospection that Sisters in the Struggle induces is fundamentally vital at the present time,
as we realise that in South Africa, it is “not yet uhuru”…
“How long does it take

For a voice

To reach another

In this country held bleeding between us...”

[Antjie Krog]

Betty Govinden, Durban, 2021
viii
‘I AM WOMAN’

POEM ON “THE SOUTH AFRICAN INDIAN WOMAN”

I am woman
Brought in with the capricious tide
by my girmit ancestors
I am woman
Taking the plunge to leave kith and kin
to live in a strange country
I am woman
Deflowered and abused
on the treacherous sea voyage
I am woman
Working with deft fingers for a shilling a week
on the rolling tea hills of Kearsney
I am woman
Learning the language and lore
of a new land
I am woman
Preserving the ancient hearth
with ladoos and rasgoolas
I am woman
Lighting the family god-lamp
in a foreign land
I am woman
Raped in my sacred bridal bed
by white overlords
I am woman
Commanded to marry
within the tribe
I am woman
Serving in the temple

adorning the Goddess with holy garlands

I am woman
Performing the family puja

teaching my daughters to carry the torch

ix