RECALLING THE RICH HISTORY OF INDENTURED LABOURERS - “INDENTURED LABOURER WHO ARRIVED IN 1887 AT THE AGE OF NINE CELEBRATES HER 100TH BIRTHDAY IN TONGAAT’S RAMSAMY BARRACKS”

 STORY WRITTEN 44 YEARS AGO

 

 

At a time when we are commemorating the 161^st arrival of our ancestors from India to work as indentured labourers in the sugar plantations of the former Natal Colony, I came across an article that I had written 44 years ago about an indentured labourer celebrating her 100 birthday.

At that time in 1977 I was working for the Daily News which was situated at 85 Field Street in central Durban. Field Street has since been re-named Joe Slovo Street.

The story was about Mrs Muniammah Mannan, who had, at the age of nine in 1887, accompanied her parents and a younger sister to work as indentured labourers in the North Coast town of Tongaat.  

According to Mrs Mannan, they had come from a village called Perigaran in the state of Tamil Nadu in south India. The name of the village may have been integrated with other villages or changed since their departure in 1887.

They were indentured to the Tongaat Sugar Company and settled in what was called Tongaat Section. This area was earlier known as Ramsamy’s cotrie or barracks.

Ramsamy was a “sardar” or overlord  who lived at Tongaat Section, the first Indian settlement in Tongaat.

When I spoke to Mrs Mannan at her home, she was slightly blind and was hard at hearing. But despite these handicaps, she still displayed a great deal of zest and enthusiasm about her family and the struggles they went through working in the sugar estates.

Speaking in the Tamil language, she said she also worked as an indentured labourer with her parents and younger sister. She and her sister were paid about three pennies a day at that time.

She married at a very early age and settled in the village permanently. Unlike other indentured labourers, who had either returned to India or settled in other parts of the then Natal Colony, she remained in the Ramsamy barracks.

“My husband and I worked very hard for the company,” she said.

Mrs Mannan raised eight children – six sons and two daughters. Three grown up sons had died at the time she was celebrating her 100^th birthday.

Her sister was also married to an indentured labourer and they settled somewhere north of Ramsamy barracks.

Her parents had died sometime in the early 1920s. ends – Daily News Reporter 23 November 1977