‘Wash Me Black Again’: African Nationalism, the Indian Diaspora, and Kwa-Zulu Natal, 1944-1960 by Jon Soske A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of History University of Toronto © Copyright by Jon Soske 2009 ‘Wash Me Black Again’: African Nationalism, the Indian Diaspora, and Kwa-Zulu Natal, 1944-1960 Jon Soske Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of History University of Toronto 2009 ABSTRACT My dissertation combines a critical history of the Indian diaspora’s political and intellectual impact on the development of African nationalism in South Africa with an analysis of African/Indian racial dynamics in Natal. Beginning in the 1940s, tumultuous debates among black intellectuals over the place of the Indian diaspora in Africa played a central role in the emergence of new and antagonistic conceptualizations of a South African nation. The writings of Indian political figures (particularly Gandhi and Nehru) and the Indian independence struggle had enormous influence on a generation of African nationalists, but this impact was mediated in complex ways by the race and class dynamics of Natal. During the 1930s and 40s, rapid and large-scale urbanization generated a series of racially-mixed shantytowns surrounding Durban in which a largely Gujarati and Hindi merchant and landlord class provided the ersatz urban infrastructure utilized by both Tamil-speaking workers and Zulu migrants. In Indian-owned buses, stores, and movie theatres, a racial hierarchy of Indian over African developed based on the social grammars of property, relationship with land, family structure, and different gender roles. In such circumstances, practices integral to maintaining diasporic ii identities—such as religious festivals, marriage, caste (jati), language, and even dress and food—became signifiers of ranked status and perceived exclusion. Despite the destruction of this urban landscape by forced removals beginning in the late 1950s, these social relationships powerfully shaped African and Indian identities in Natal, the popular memory of different communities, and the later politics of the anti-apartheid struggle. Although a few recent publications have attempted to break down the bifurcation that characterizes Natal’s historiography, the majority of academic writing on the province employs a race-based framework that focuses on either Indians or Zulu- speaking Africans. As a result, Natal’s African/Indian racial dynamic plays, at most, a secondary role in most scholarship on the region. In turn, Natal itself generally appears in histories of the anti-apartheid struggle as either an exception or a momentary interruption to a “national” narrative overwhelmingly centered on events, organizations, and individuals in the Transvaal. Rejecting a “race relations” approach that hypostatizes coherent racial groups, my dissertation examines how segregationist policies, African and Indian political organizations, and everyday social practices continuously reproduced an “African/Indian divide” despite both the enormous heterogeneity of each group and the quotidian intimacies of urban life. At the same time, it explores the ways in which this division shaped the development of the anti-apartheid struggle in Natal and the consequences of Natal’s politics for South Africa as a whole. iii Acknowledgments First and foremost, my thesis committee: Sean Hawkins, Rick Halpern, Bill Freund, and Alissa Trotz—each one an exemplary mentor, collaborator, and friend. My gratitude is inexpressible. I was also fortunate enough to have two generous and encouraging external readers, Aisha Khan and Doris Bergen, both of whom contributed their tremendous erudition to reading my work and, just as importantly, helped make the final stages of finishing this dissertation enjoyable and lively. I would also like to thank Ted Chamberlin for his limitless support, dependable council, and sagacious good humor. While grounded in Kwa-Zulu Natal, this dissertation follows a number of historical and methodological paths and I have benefited from the advice of many friends and colleagues. Omar Badsha and Mark Hunter read most of the chapters and greatly enhanced my knowledge of Natal’s history, while rescuing me from a number of small errors. Many other people read draft chapters or offered their support at crucial points. In particular, I would like to thank Marcus Rediker, Ritu Birla, Michelle Murphy, Melissa Levin, Brian Beaton, Shivrang Setlur, Allison Schachter, Ken Kawashima, Thomas Blom Hansen, Joseph Lelyveld, Sharad Chari, Luis Jacob, and Phiroze Vasunia. My mother, Jo L. Soske, also read my dissertation with great insight and perspicacity. Kate Elizabeth Creasey, my incredible and dedicated partner, was an endless source of resilience, critical feedback, and practical assistance. I would like to express my gratitude to the staffs at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center; the William Cullen Library at University of the Witwatersrand; and the Killie Campbell Africana Library, Durban. One of the greatest pleasures of this project was the generous welcome, encouragement, and assistance that I received from academic colleagues and former activists in South Africa, including Isabel Hofmeyr, Sarah Nuttall, Jeff Guy, Elizabeth Gunner, Phillip Bonner, Vishnu Padayachee, David Hemson, Pamila Gupta, Ronit Frenkel, Rehana Ebr.-Valley, Phyllis Naidoo, and Ismail Nagdee. As I was completing this thesis, the incomparable Billy Nair—trade union organizer, Umkhonto weSizwe operative, and Robben Island prisoner—passed away. After meeting together on one occasion near Tongaat, Billy called me at six the next morning to expound on the importance of the Freedom Charter, which he clearly believed that I had not yet grasped. Billy would not have agreed with much that I argue in these pages, but his insights and guidance were crucial. While finishing this dissertation, I had the immense pleasure of working on a collective intellectual and curatorial project that greatly enriched my thinking and writing, the South-South series and art exhibition at New College and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto. I wish to dedicate this thesis to my closest collaborators of this past year: Hillina Seife, Tejpal S. Ajji, and Haema Sivanesan. Thank you, once more, for your inspiring friendship and peerless intellectual companionship. iv Table of Contents Introduction Racial Consciousness and the Boundaries of Diaspora 2 Organization and Chapter Summaries 6 Sources, Language, and Racial Terminology 12 Chapter I Political Economy, Stereotype, and Urban Space Introduction 20 The Intersection of Space and Stereotype 25 Stages of Urbanization 33 Grey Street and the “Indian” Store 39 Landlords and Housing 44 Sites Moving through Space: Buses 48 Other Sites: Bioscopes and Employers 52 Relationships and the Complexities of the Everyday 58 Chapter II African Nationalism and the Indian Diaspora, 1945-1949 Introduction 62 Post-War Changes in the ANC and Indian Congresses 67 The NEUM, Xuma, and the Communist Party 74 The Passive Resistance Campaign and the United Nations 79 The Xuma-Dadoo-Naicker Pact 85 Backlash in the Natal ANC: The Ambiguities of Dependence 89 Backlash in the ANC: African Nationalism 94 Conclusion: An Irresolute Culmination 102 Chapter III The 1949 Anti-Indian Pogrom and the Crisis in the Natal ANC Introduction 106 India on the World’s Stage 111 The 1949 Anti-Indian Pogrom 116 Initial Responses 123 The Debate between Ilanga Lase Natal and Indian Opinion 128 The Crisis in the Natal ANC 135 The Vicissitudes of A.W.G. Champion 141 Conclusion 144 v Chapter IV Miscegenation, Feminine Virtue, and the Boundaries of Domestic Space Introduction 149 African Nationalism, Gender, and Urbanization 151 Africanist Christianity and Subaltern Patriarchy 159 Neighborhood, Family, Caste 164 Progress, Tradition, and the “Indian Woman” 170 The Problem of Miscegenation 176 Indian Domestic Space 185 Conclusion 192 Chapter V Remaking African Politics in the 1950s: The “Indian Question” and the Origins of Non-Racial Nationalism Introduction 195 A Partial Transformation: “The Fabulous Decade” of the 1950s 200 A New Nationalist Vision: the Beginnings of the Congress Alliance 210 Natal African Politics During the 1950s 224 The Africanist Faction, the Congress of the People, and the Freedom Charter 239 Conclusion 259 Bibliography 263 vi 1 oh what lack of love has caught me lingering here in a land where night must come to wash me black again —Shabbir Banoobhai, Echoes of My Other Self, 1979 2 Introduction: Racial Consciousness and the Boundaries of Diaspora Arabs from Zanzibar and Bombay are also finding South Africa a fine field for enterprise, and there is scarcely a town or village in which their stores are not seen. Indeed the retail trade in native goods is almost wholly in their hands, to the chagrin and grief of European merchants. Both Arabs and Indians are regarded by many as a curse, but how to get rid of them is a question. Thus there will be an Asiatic as well as African problem to be settled some day in this part of the world.1 —Rev. Josiah Tyler, Forty Years Among the Zulu, 1891. If I were to tell you about things I know, it would take a very long time. Things concerning us blacks and the Indians would take a long time to tell, as it is a long story…2 —Josephine Hadebe, Domestic Worker, Durban, 1981. The origins of Natal’s distinct racial politics lie, ultimately, in its 19th century history as a British