To ease tensions which resulted from anti-Indian sentiments, re-indenture and/or repatriation was encouraged in 1895, a £3 head tax was imposed on Indians who remained in South Africa but were not re-indentured (Lloyd, 1991:705). In the same year, Indians faced restrictions aimed at reducing competition in the Transvaal; Asians were prohibited from acquiring property or citizenship. This law was amended; Indians were confined to separate locations and were only allowed to purchase property in these areas (Swan, 1985:39). The Orange Free State prohibited Indian property ownership or trading unless they were registered; none of the Indians had registered and were therefore barred from trading and expelled (Lloyd, 1991:705; Swan, 1985:40). The hostility in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal threatened the merchants’ livelihoods and illustrates a pattern that would extend to Natal. The Durban Indian Committee launched a campaign in 1891; the campaign was aimed at 22
protecting the merchants’ interests’ in Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Swan argues that, “this was the genesis of the politics of the Natal Indian merchants and… it set the pattern for their political activity” and distinguished the merchants from the “indentured coolie” (Swan, 1985:40-41). The Natal Indian Congress (NIC) was established in reaction to the Franchise Amendment Bill which limited Asian franchise. NIC launched a defiance campaign that resulted in concessions to the laws: the immigration acts were altered and the £3 tax was removed (Lloyd, 1991:706). NIC held prejudicial
The Durban Indian Committee consisted of merchant traders (Swan, 1985:40)
beliefs, harbouring racist notions towards Africans and distinguishing themselves from the indentured (Swan, 1985:54). From 1897 onwards stricter regulations targeting Indians were passed; in Natal, the municipal council began controlling trading licenses in order to reduce competition between Whites and Indians and to reduce immigration to the Cape and Transvaal, education (English literacy), health and finance (possession of £25) had to be met by prospective immigrants and permits were required by Indians seeking entry to areas of South Africa. In the Cape, immigration was unrestricted if criteria regarding education, English proficiency, financial standing and desirability were met (Hill,
1980:186-187; Lloyd, 1991:706; Swan, 1985:67).
Of the Apartheid policies evolving from the previous eras of discrimination, the Group Areas Act of 1950 was the most significant. This act, as mentioned earlier, destroyed multiracial areas and relocated non-white populations to the urban periphery. South African Indian politics was primarily focused on combating policies within the confines of the legal realm (Swan, 1985:41). The Natal Indian Congress was composed of conservatives who were driven by their merchant interests. Indian politics was not a unifying force; the merchants’ activity distanced and distinguished themselves from the indentured who they believed were the root of anti-Indian sentiments. The merchant politics,
“far from unifying the Indian population as has been asserted in the past, were directed specifically towards attaining white recognition of fundamental differences between the two major social groups in the community: merchants and workers” (Swan, 1985:44).
In Transvaal, the distinction was made between the Indians and Africans; the association with Africans was thought to be the cause of racial bias. Therefore causing entrenching the belief that Indians were superior to Africans and therefore could not be equated in discriminatory laws aimed at all non-whites. By distinguishing themselves, the Indian merchants believed that they could alter white perceptions and be viewed as desirable citizens, therefore combating these restrictions (Swan, 1985:50). Racial superiority prevented political alignment to African parties until the mid-1940s (Padayachee, 1999:393). Indians were urged even by the Indian Agent-General in South Africa to maintain a uniracial struggle, “by making common cause with them [Africans], our community will only be disabling themselves in the very severe combat that has fallen their cause” (Desai, 1996:6 in
Padayachee, 1999:393). The Indian liberation struggle under the apartheid regime would prove to be futile without the liberation of Africans (Prabhakara, 2003:1840). The evolution to multiracial politics in the NIC emerged as a result of a new politically aware generation of Indians, who were influenced by the trade unions and the Communist Party and adopted an all-encompassing non-white struggle. Thus multiracial alliances and campaigns characterised the new NIC leadership in the late 1940s and 1950s (Padayachee, 1999:393). The NIC’s involvement included the 1947 Doctor’s Pact, the 1952
Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Freedom Charter. The 1960s saw the NP creating the South African Indian Council in order to encourage development within the Indian community; the majority of South African Indians viewed the Council as illegitimate and discredited it (Padayachee, 1999:394). The multiracial alignment additionally saw Indians joining the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and the student protests that arose from the Black Consciousness Movement and “provided the backbone of the progressive, anti-tricameral movement, the United Democratic Front in Natal” (Padayachee, 1999:394).
While many Indians joined the non-racial movements, election results in 1994 from Indian areas in Durban saw support for the National Party. This was paralleled in the Coloured areas in Cape Town (Padayachee, 1999:394). According to Radhakrishnan, the status of Indians was complicated by feelings of not being black enough, therefore not garnering privileges over Africans and feeling unheard as a minority group in the democratic South Africa. The end of apartheid created an ambiguous position for Indians. “South African Indians gained citizenship but lost certain material privileges that reinforced the position of Indians as a buffer group between Africans and whites under apartheid” (Radhakrishnan, 2005: 263). This has not remained true in certain sections of the Indian elite. Indians who have been involved with the ANC, play a significant role in government and are proportionally over represented in leadership positions. In 2003, four cabinet ministers out of twenty- seven were Indian. Indians occupy pivotal administrative positions and are professionally successful (Padayachee, 1999: 395; Prabhakara, 2003:1840). The Indian elite has benefited from their affiliations with the ANC, but this has not been extended to the Indian working class who have felt isolated and maintained their conservative uniracial politics (Padayachee, 1999:395).