There has been a lot written about the Great 1913 Strike. The strike first sparked in the coal mines of Newcastle. The strike then ignited the plantations of the North and South coasts of Natal. There has been though little focus on the strike in Durban, where the city’s workers rose up by laying down their tools of trade. It was noteworthy that the very first strikers joined on November 16. This was, of course, the day on which the very first indentured workers arrived in Natal. In the wake of the commemoration of Workers’ Day we take a look at the strike and its stunning impact on Durban.
AS STORIES of the strike spread from the northern coalfields, there was a palpable sense of something in the air.
In Durban’s Magazine and Railway barracks, messages were convened in the brumous evening of the 14th. On the 15th food was bought, firewood for cooking stored and children put on guard for strangers.
By now it had become apparent that the government was using Indians to infiltrate the strike and identify leaders.
In Newcastle, for example, Deputy- Protector Dunning informed the attorney-general that Budhoo Dasrath, employed at Glencoe Junction, was “an important witness re. Indian strike movement. Police anxious he should be moved immediately as they fear intimidation otherwise. Will you please arrange?”
Dasrath provided the following intelligence: “I was on strike. I went to Railway carriage to speak to Gandhi about food. Gandhi replied: ‘All those who go to Volkrust will be fed.’
“Station master saw me speak to Gandhi, but could not have understood as we spoke in Hindustani.”
Dasrath was moved from Glencoe to Pietermaritzburg on November 10, 1913, to be under the protection of the magistrate.
John Ramsamy, another infiltrator, stated on October 31: “I was at meeting. Saw Mohideen Sahib and Narrainsamy. Then Gandhi said all Indians should go to Newcastle and Volksrust. Promised food. Mohideen Sahib is indentured at Ballengeich.”
On the morning of 16th, the workers of the Magazine Barracks led the strike into the city. The Corporation moved quickly, employing white scabs to drive the water-sprinkling carts. But whites were unused to these tasks. While a white scab was vainly trying to fill his cart in Grey Street, the water kept spraying on to his face, and as he ducked and dived, a large crowd of Indians gathered around him and laughed until the tears rolled down their cheeks.
Suddenly, as the newspaper put it, one Indian, with sinewy, muscled forearms
and legs like tree trunks, stepped forward. The crowd hushed. He loudly “claimed that No. 7 was his cart, and no European loafer should be entitled to drive it. It is my work”, the coolie kept on reiterating, and his feelings would have overcome his wisdom but for the restraint put upon him by those around.
The white man’s departure was greeted with booing and cheering by the Indians, particularly of the ex-driver, Sammy of No. 7 water cart.
Indian employees of the African Boating Company and Chiazzari and Co. at the Point joined in the strike. Percy Binns, chief magistrate of Durban, with WP Curry, managing director of African Boating, addressed workers at their compound.
Binns told them that striking would not lead to a repeal of the hated three pound tax, and that Curry would “overlook” their participation if they returned to work because he knew that they were “faithful servants who had been misled and deluded”.
But the strikers knew that the tax was a burden that was too much to bear for their fellow workers on the plantations. They resolved to continue their action. Binns arrived with the army and African policemen the following day, and arrested 140 men at African Boating and 110 at Chiazzari.
They were charged with illegally absenting themselves and imprisoned for seven days with hard labour. Thirty-five workers at Mary Maples Factory in Prince Edward Street went on
strike “on behalf of the ‘Rajah’, whose name they could not give. The strikers were wearing red rosettes as the emblem of passive resistance”.
Laundrymen, hospital workers and bakery workers joined on November 17. According to the Natal Advertiser, “crowds of Indians” were “prowling the streets with sticks and sjamboks, and it is easy to see that the greatest tact, withal, and determination will be required to keep them under control”.
The Market Master reported that gardeners brought produce, but hawkers boycotted them and “boys and young Indian men swept along the street, tossing what produce remained into the street and gutters, and threatening the farmers if they did not go home”.
They also “rushed” the market several times; a strong police presence maintained order.
White citizens of Durban became very concerned when around 150 Indians on Chick’s Estate in Umgeni joined the strike on November 17. There was anxiety that workers from Coronation Brick Works and Bishop’s Estate would join next. Chick’s men marched to Queens Bridge, where they encountered the army.
They demanded to be allowed to go to the Protector. The officer called the Protector on the phone, who agreed to meet with workers on the estate. White and African policemen were stationed at Chick’s Estate in anticipation of violence.
That afternoon, strikers participated in a mass meeting. A “platform” was hastily erected, and the crowd of 2 500 “huddled together seven or eight deep”: “There they remained, with hardly a sound or a movement, for over an hour. It was a roundly picturesque event. Every class, race and calling of Indian was represented. Their eager swarthy form and
bright intense eyes never turned from the speakers. The atmosphere was one of strained attention. The sharp and spontaneous outbursts of applause seemed to show the mood of the meeting was with the speakers.
“First, Mr Albert Christopher spoke in English. Speaking with a rapid fluent delivery, full of spirit and sometime of emotion, he stirred the audience to considerable enthusiasm. Almost every period was punctuated by clapping, and when he asked if the audience intended to sit down and suffer their grievances there was a vigorous response of ‘No, no!’
“Next, Sheik Emamally addressed the attendance at some length in Hindustan. As he rose, he held up a sheaf of telegrams and cables, these including a cable from the Honourable GR Gokhale, India, as follows: ‘India chilling with indignation, protests pouring upon government for forwarding Imperial Government! Every endeavour being made.’
“He also read messages of support from Mr G Nateson of Madras and Methilal Nehra, chairman of the Allahabad Committee South Africa League, conveying ‘sympathy’, ‘admiration’ and support after the holding of mass meetings.
Next, JM Lazarus addressed the meeting. He emphasised ‘brethren’ and ‘unity’ in the passive resistance movement.”
Workers from Addington Hospital and the Durban Corporation were urged to return to work, so that “humanitarian work would not be disrupted”.
Gandhi had personally sent this message to Christopher. Despite the pleas of Emamally and Christopher, the strikers attacked two Indian employees of the Corporation working on a cart in Grey Street.
About 60 mounted police arrived in Durban to prevent “intimidation”. On November 18, a mass meeting at the Greyville Racecourse was addressed by Lutchman Panday, Thambi Naidoo and two Indian women (names not given).
On the afternoon of November 18, Magistrate Binns went with the police and army reinforcements to the Railway Barracks in Umgeni and arrested 133 workers for “refusal to work” and, in some cases, assault. They appeared in court the next morning. The judge sentenced the strikers to seven days with hard labour.
In Durban, strikers congregated at the “flats” near the racecourse, where a mass meeting was held on November 19.
Strikers made it clear they would not return to work until the tax had been repealed. One striker told the meeting that his parents, brother and sister, who were born in India, looked to him, a colonial-born, “to fight their battles and he saw it as a sacred trust”.
Strikers told a reporter that Gandhi was coming to Durban to tell them what to do. If he could not end the strike, it would be ended by Gokhale “who was on his way to Natal to confer with the Union Government”.
Gokhale had made a stunning visit to South Africa in 1912. It had galvanised Indians as he toured the country with Gandhi by his side. Many began to have a sense that there was a great power on their side.
As the strike took hold, food prices skyrocketed as market gardeners withheld their produce, flower sellers were absent from the streets, and trade was at a standstill at the Indian Market. Employers used the opportunity to replace Indian workers.
The Model Dairy, owned by Mr Wayne, announced that it would retain white scab labour and only reinstate Indians where whites were not available. According to one report, there was
a “general inclination to sift the wheat from the chaff. There is a general tendency, as far as possible, to replace Indians with white labour”.
There was trouble at Bishop’s and Effingham estates where police used sticks to disperse strikers. The magistrate gave permits to Indians “opposed to the strike” to visit these estates to persuade Indians to return to work.
The permits were withdrawn on November 24 when it emerged that some of the appeasers were actually encouraging the strikers. The government decided to work through its own officials or through Indians “actively” opposed to the strike.
The strike lasted 10 days. But it brought the city to a standstill. Never before was City Hall threatened by this show of power.
But the seeds had been sown through the years of indenture as a sense of identity and community was built out of the ruins of the journey across the kala pani.
As Amitav Ghosh put it in The Shadow Lines: “One may watch a tree for months and yet know nothing at all about it if one happens to miss that one week when it bursts into bloom.”
Today, the people of the Magazine and Railway barracks still meet. There is a history that stretches back over a 100 years.
Through their work in the Corporation, they literally helped build the City of Durban.
The city fathers rewarded them by smashing the barracks and forcing them to relocate to Chatsworth. But they would not be broken. They kept in touch.
They rebuilt their lives. The Shree Emperumal Temple is testimony to their religious spirit. And a soccer club appropriately named Railway United attracted the former residents of the barracks to grounds across Chatsworth.
They also carried with them a sense of justice.
This spirit was born all those years ago in their determination to confront the three pound tax despite the fact that it did not directly affect them.
They were the pioneers of the Cosatu slogan: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
The next time you drive down Point (now Mahatma Gandhi) Road, think of those strikers who went to jail in 1913. Marvel at their exploits, take courage from their fortitude.
Feel a twinge of guilt about our own cowardice in these difficult times.
Desai is at the University of Johannesburg. Vahed at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of or Independent Media.
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