The Future of Indian-Owned Agricultural Land in KwaZulu ...

The Future of Indian-Owned Agricultural Land

in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Anand Singh

This paper is an ethnographic account of Indian farmers who live

along the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Fieldwork for

it began in April 2003 when media reports were extensively covering

issues pertaining to violence and abandonment of farms and homes in

this area by Indian farmers, and it continued into 2004. The paper

retraces the history of Indians in KwaZulu-Natal and uses case

studies of Indian farmers¡¯ personal experiences at the hands of

African vagrants. The use of case studies is intended to demonstrate

the farmers¡¯racially based understanding of political transformation

¨C which many allege is biased towards Africans. After the discussion

that surrounds the case studies, the paper concludes by providing a

critique of the White Paper on South African Land Policy, and

recommends that the Institutional Arrangements outlined in the Land

Policy be reviewed to incorporate practical mechanisms to build

racial harmony in the rural areas.

Introduction

This paper is based on fieldwork that was done during 2003-04 among

Indian farmers whose main activity is sugar cane farming along the north

coast of the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It addresses the

allegedly increasing levels of violence by indigent Africans against

farmers of Indian origin, who have either abandoned or are

contemplating abandoning their properties fearing violent attacks. It

views these alleged attacks against the Institutional Arrangements of the

Land Policy of South Africa, introduced in 1997. Media reports and

recent accounts, such as Jonny Steinberg¡¯s book on the KwaZulu-Natal

Midlands land crisis (see Steinberg 2002), point towards simmering

racial tension over access to land. To illustrate the tension, this paper

highlights the issue of access to land, retraces the history of Indian

farmers in KwaZulu-Natal, explains the methods of gathering data, and

discusses the situation of Indian farmers as they see themselves in this

period of political and economic transformation. Extensive use is made

of the anthropological case-study method to exemplify their personal

experiences, perceptions and intentions in future agricultural activities.

SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 55 (3), September-December 2006, Pp. 348-366

The Future of Indian-Owned Agricultural Land in KwaZulu-Natal

349

For most of the twentieth century, access to and ownership of land in

South Africa has been a source of discontent. Only in its last decade,

beginning in 1990, when the ban on African National Congress (ANC)

and other political movements and leaders was revoked, were policy

measures designed to diverge from race as a determining factor to access

and ownership of land. In the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where Whites

were the biggest commercial farmers, followed by people of Indian origin,

the politics of landownership produced a unique set of racial problems

that differed from the country¡¯s eight other provinces.

Before delving into the issue of Indian farmers, it would be helpful

first to acquire a glimpse of an important reference that covers a contemporary struggle over land between Whites and Africans. Steinberg¡¯s

journalistically written book about the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands crisis

(Steinberg 2002) is an extensive and intensive investigative account of

the conflict over land between a White farm estate owner and a neighbouring African clan. While the investigation began as an attempt to

ascertain the reasons behind the murder of a young White farmer, it more

accurately ended as a depiction of a protracted war for occupation by

Africans of White-owned land. Commentators regard the book as a

significant account of the post-apartheid era that takes the form of a

frontier battle between Whites and Africans. The basis of the conflict is

set in an area called Kranskop, and is about land and a fight for its

ownership by an African clan whose claim lies in a primordial justification of who allegedly first settled in the area ¨C possibly predating the

seventeenth century when Europeans first came to South Africa. While

the racial overtones are obvious, the book implicitly reveals the

inadequacy of state policy to deal with festering problems of land

acquisition by Africans, and the explicit failure of apparatuses such as the

police services and legal institutions to effectively handle an emergent and

potentially dangerous racial problem. While Africans may be prohibited

by law from invading and occupying the land belonging to the main

characters in the book, the landowners are stifled from continuing with

agricultural activities. While the book is a focus on a particular White

family¡¯s feud with a particular African clan, it epitomises the nature of

struggles that are to characterise post-apartheid battles between the landless people and landowners. The following account captures a part of this

problem as experienced by Indian commercial farmers ¨C who first came to

South Africa as contracted indentured labourers, and who later inherited

land from the British who wanted them to remain and contribute further

to the colonial economy in Natal.

350

Anand Singh

A Brief History of Indian Farmers in South Africa

Since the arrival of the first shipload of indentured labour from India on

16 November 1860, the politics of land and resource rights in the Natal

colony were dominated by British colonial hegemony. Indian indentured

labour was brought to Natal to work for the colonists and sugar cane

estate-owners. Having initially signed three-year contracts from 1860 to

1863, subsequent indentured labour contracts, from 1864, were increased

by another two years ¨C bringing such contracts up to five-year terms. The

value of Indian indentured labour to agricultural development, particularly in the growing of sugar cane, rose to a level almost indispensable

to the colonists. In lieu of their transport fare back to India, they were

encouraged to remain in the colony by being given freehold land by the

colonists. While many preferred to return to India, others accepted the

offer ¨C particularly in Inanda and Verulam ¨C north of the city of Durban.

From this point onwards, towards the late 1860s, a new factor in landownership began in the Natal colony.

Most Indians who chose to remain in Natal continued their

livelihoods through small-scale market gardening and collectively helped

to build a substantial agricultural infrastructure in the region. In the

effective absence of alternatives of employment in the nineteenth century,

most of the successive generations of Indians continued with the agricultural efforts of their forebears. Their success was partly due to the value

and status that the different racial groups attached to the notion of

manual work. Mabel Palmer observed that ¡®In Natal, Whites considered

it below their dignity to do manual work. Consequently, the White

Natalian did not expect to do farm work but to make a living and

sometimes a fortune while Indians did the hard manual work under his

direction¡¯ (quoted in Bagwandeen 1989:3). Through contentment within

the African polity with their own economic system and resultant absence

of their labour in agriculture at the time, Indian indentured labour met the

needs of colonial expansionism. Their employment led to a phenomenal

rise within a short space of time in the export of sugar. The Natal colony

witnessed an almost fourfold rise between 1860 and 1864 ¨C when the

export of sugar rose to 26,000 pounds in 1863 and to 100,000 pounds by

1864 (Meer 1969: 24). In their need to diversify agricultural production,

the ex-indentured labourers¡¯ agreement to remain and work on land that

was dispensed to them was first welcomed. However, the competition to

which this eventually gave rise threatened the existence of the small

White enterprises. Two extracts from magisterial reports illustrate the

point:

The Future of Indian-Owned Agricultural Land in KwaZulu-Natal

351

Complaints continue to be made of Indian traders and hawkers¡­ . These

people render it impossible for small European storekeepers to make a

living.

A few more Indian stores have been opened in the town of Verulam during

the year, and two European stores have been closed for want of support,

the Indians having entirely absorbed the petty trade with Indians and

Natives (Pahad 1972: 16).

Such successes over the next thirty years led to increased agitation

by Whites for the repatriation of Indians back to India. The dire need to

attract Indians to Natal as indentured labourers in the 1860s was radically

transformed to a desperate need to expel them (Singh 1992: 349). As

G.H. Calpin argued ¡®The problem had passed in sixty years from how to

attract Indians to Natal to the dilemma of how to get rid of them¡¯ (see

Bagwandeen 1989: 8). By 1901, the level of anti-Indian agitation led the

colonial Protector of Indian Immigrants to declare that if Indians were

repatriated en-masse back to India, ¡®The country would at once be simply

paralysed¡¯ (Pahad 1972: 13). In fearing that there would be no end to the

anti-Indian hostility, sugar baron Sir Leigh Hullett felt compelled to

support the more tolerant approach to racial diversity in Natal by stating

that the city of Durban was built by the Indian people and that they

should be allowed to remain and continue to make their contribution to

economic upliftment in whichever part of the colony they were (ibid.).

While the interventions by more accommodating and liberal figures, such

as the Protector of Indian Immigrants and the likes of Sir Hullett, helped

in neutralising the mobilisation campaign against Indians, by 1913, they

succumbed to the pressures that eventually led to the banning of further

hiring of indentured labour from India. By this time, at least 100,000

Indian indentured labourers were brought to work in Natal.

Most Indian agriculturalists that were successful in farming expanded

their ventures by leasing more land from local authorities and other White

farmers. C.G. Henning has extensively referenced this point in his

discussion on the availability of land and of state support for Indian

agriculturalists at the turn of the twentieth century:

Land and Agricultural Banks and other financial corporations were hesitant

to grant any loans to Indian farmers¡­ Anti-Indian legislation also cast its

dark shadow on the wealthier Indian planters with the implementation of

the Act of 1921 (the Lange Commission or the Asiatic Inquiry Commission) which decreed that Indians could only purchase land within a 30mile radius of the Natal Coast¡¯(1996: 12).

After years of protestation, a small group of Indian farmers met on 15

September 1936 to form the Natal Indian Cane-Growers Association

Anand Singh

352

(1936) and issued a Memorandum of Association which stated that: ¡®The

income and property of the association whensoever derived shall be

applied towards the promoting of ¡­ the progress and interest of the

Natal Indian Cane-Growers Association as a whole¡¯ (ibid.: 14). Most

land that was owned by Indians was either given to them by the colonists

between 1863 and 1900, after completion of their first contracts, or was

bought by them within the 48 km coastal radius during the nineteenth

century. Most of the twentieth century was marked by hostilities that

precluded open participation of the various classified race groups in the

agricultural sector.

During the course of my research in 2003-04, at least two land restitution claims were made ¨C one by the Ntwashini clan in the HolmboschNonoti farming area, and the other by the Chille clan in a neighbouring

area. In the claim by the Ntwashini group, the land that is under review

ranges from 2 to 2,000 hectares, and belongs to various owners who are

White, Indian and African. Farm owners claimed not to have met them,

nor experienced any act of violent intimidation by them, nor were told

what is being claimed ¨C land or monetary compensation. Several respondents produced title deeds that went back to the nineteenth century ¨C

showing proof of ownership that predated the notorious 1913 Land Act

that restricted Africans, who were 70 per cent of South Africa¡¯s population, to 13 per cent of the land. In the claim by the Chille group, only

Indian market gardeners are affected. Several farmers claimed to have

title deeds that confirm purchase of property from the Chille group prior

to the 1913 Land Act, though none of them produced them at the time of

interviews.1

However, until South Africa¡¯s first democratic election in 1994,

Indian access to land was continuously determined by White hegemony

and was subjected to ongoing constrictions that frustrated their advancement in agriculture and in their quest for more land. While the post-1994

scenario has positively altered the situation through legislative means, it

has not been able to control the subtle pressures brought about by the

internecine violence ¨C perceived to be perpetrated by poor Africans.

Information on this situation had to be gathered by personally visiting the

farming areas and interviewing the farmers about their experiences and

about their shorter and longer-term intentions.

Fieldwork

Fieldwork for this paper began in April 2003 in a town called Verulam,

and was extended further north to other neighbouring agricultural

localities up to the Darnall Mill Group, about 100 km further north. Fifty

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