The uncertainty between 1950 – 1965, still remains in the minds of land and property owners as haunted memories even today. For many businessmen in particular, this experience was regarded as a traumatic one. The impact of the prolonged delay related to zoning caused both psychological fear, uncertainty and financial uncertainty in this precinct. Such fear emanated from the apartheid government‟s proclivity to zone the Grey Street Complex as a white Group. Every day that passed without the proclamation of the precinct as a white Group Area was a relief to this community. Mr. Karsandas Manjee, former committee member of the Grey Street Indian LAC and a property developer, still recalls waking up every morning bearing in mind that the possibility of losing his business could become a reality:
We lived in constant fear because of an unknown future. The uncertainty scared everyone because if the government declared the Grey Street Complex a white Group Area, we knew that we would lose everything in this precinct. We stood to lose our fixed properties, our businesses and our homes. It was a very difficult period for our entire community (Interview, 05/03/2016).
Even when this precinct was zoned for Indian occupation and ownership in 1966, the relief was short term. The apartheid government aimed to spatially contain Indian economic development during this period and therefore legally restricted any development under the Group Areas Act No. 36 of 1966. Although this complex was declared for Indian ownership and occupation in 1966, shortly after, the Group Areas Board had other plans in mind.
- 98 - 5.2.1.2 A DIVIDED PRECINCT: GREY STREET NORTH AND SOUTH
In spite of the Group Areas Act proclamation of 1966, the Group Areas Board published a notice the Natal Mercury on 21st February in 1969 indicating plans to divide this precinct into two separate subdivisions – Grey Street North and Grey Street South as illustrated in Figure 5.1. This meant that the homes, businesses and other financial assets of the Grey Street community were still at risk as this precinct, after being declared for Indian occupation and ownership in 1966, could still be proclaimed a white Group Area. The future of each subdivision was not legally determined by this stage – but the community‟s outrage, trauma and untold angst was documented in the Memorandum of the Central Durban Indian Area Protection Committee (1969: 3):
“Our alarm at the implications in the Notice fastens first upon the description of the Grey Street Complex, and, what has never been indicated before, its division for the purposes of the proposed enquiry, into two parts, Grey Street North and Grey Street South;
and the intention inferred by the notice that these two areas are now to be treated as two distinct units, apparently for separate treatment, almost as if they were separated at a distance from each other.
At no stage in the past, has the Grey Street Complex been so described, and indeed this separation of the Grey Street Complex is in itself a contradiction of what in the past has been defined as the Grey Street Complex by Ministers of the Government and the Department of Community Development.
Support for our view that the area known as the Grey Street Complex, that is Grey Street North and Grey Street South together, has in the past been looked upon as a single and indivisible territorial unit is to be found in ministerial and Department of Community Development statement.”
- 99 - Grey Street North
& adjoining areas Grey Street South
(Adapted from Memorandum of the Central Durban Indian Area Protection Committee, 1969) Figure 5.1: Demarcations for Grey Street North with adjoining areas and Grey Street South
- 100 - after paying for their premises. Those were very traumatic times for the community. Can you imagine what it is like for someone to just ask you to leave your home because of your skin colour? We didn’t want a repeat of that. We always approached the Group Areas Board very diplomatically to let them know that the loss of the Grey Street Complex would be detrimental to us (Interview, worship would be lost (Interview with Mr. Karsandas Manjee, 05/03/2016).
Due to the significance and value of this precinct to the community, it was imperative for Indian businessmen to appeal for their socio-cultural interests to be protected. This was documented in the Memorandum of the Central Durban Indian Area Protection Committee (1969: 37):
“In such a situation, it is difficult for us to know what can be said that has not already been said many times in support of our case.
But what is inevitable for us in any proclamations arising out of the enquiry other than proclamations in favour of the Indian Group is a great degree of hardship to thousands from which they will never recover, and the encompassing of the economic ruin of many of them.
- 101 - Nor do the consequences end there. There are intangible effects
no less hurtful to thousands of decent people, in the prospect of being compulsorily uprooted from their businesses and their homes to which they have devoted their life time. There is, too, the psychological effect in the scattering of a well-knit community which has been built up in these areas over a century of time, with all the benefits it has brought to so many.”
The intention to subdivide this precinct remained until 1972 and the legal restrictions to restrict development were lifted in 1973.