The Indian community

Although the Whites in South Africa viewed the Black population as a passive threat, they saw the Indians as both a sophisticated and an active menace to their own position in society.

The Indians were competition to the Whites in terms of trade, living space in the town and even political influence with the Imperial authorities. The Whites therefore tended to emphasize the dissimilarities between the two cultures, especially the Indians' alien social traditions and practices which the Victorian colonials found repugnant.

By the mid-1890s, Indians were beginning to settle in the Cape Colony in increasing numbers, which many Whites at East London believed would lead to new slum communities. Indeed, in May 1897 the Town Council drew up a petition to Parliament which called for a prohibition on the "influx" of Asians which had grown, the councillors said, "to an alarming extent" but which did not benefit the towns "in any way".

On the contrary, the Council stated, the Asians were the source of "continual and increasing danger" to the health and prosperity of the town because of their "filthy habits" and their "miserable manner of living" by which they were able to undersell even the cheapest White-owned store.

When East London's Member of Parliament — Edward Brabant — piloted the East London Municipal Bill through the House in July 1894, he managed to lump the Indians with the Africans as objects of legal discrimination. This was something new in terms of the Cape's so-called colour-blind liberal constitution, which supposedly did not allow for discrimination on the grounds of colour.

While it had become customary for there to be some form of law aimed specifically at the Black community, the Indians who entered the Cape Colony did so as members of the British Empire, with all the rights that accompanied that privilege.

Brabant, however, was careful to argue that, although East London was indeed introducing a "new principle" into the legislation of the country, it was one which was needed to be brought in "sooner or later".

The Town Council, he said, believed that the time was ripe for this to happen, as it was aware of the "nuisance" caused by Asians "flooding" some American and Australian towns. It was opportune, therefore, to introduce legislation which would prevent the same thing happening in the Cape Colony. East London was merely setting an example which all the other towns could follow, he said.

Parliament conceded the point. East London's Municipal Act of 1895 allowed the municipality the right to force Asians into locations, and to banish them from the side-walks of the town and into the streets.

The paranoia of the White townspeople, however, proved to be unfounded because the port did not become a major attraction to the Asian community. Initially, there was an influx as refugees during the Boer War, mostly accompanying the Uitlander exodus from the Transvaal. Some also immigrated from German East Africa in 1902. By 1904, however, estimates put the total population at less than 600.

Nevertheless, the Council positively discouraged them from settling in the town by invoking the prohibition on their using the pavements and by creating an Asian location as an appendage to the East Bank Location. The latter, however, proved a white elephant because no Indians applied for plots.

This was probably because the municipality provided only sites, leaving the building of dwellings to the residents themselves. Although the Black community was accustomed to constructing its own homes, the Indians were not.

There were also very few women among the early Asian settlers. Since the men had their time cut out earning a living, they preferred to rent accommodation in town rather than build at the location on plots which they could not own. If they could afford the rents, there was no law which forbade them living in the town.

See also: More on the East London Indian community Knowledge4Africa.com Encyclopaedia East London The Really Useful East London Page

Why would the White community have seen the Indians as a greater threat than the Black people?

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The Black people were regarded only as a passive threat. There had be many frontier wars but these conflicts took place far from the towns. Within the towns, the Black people were purely labourers and therefore did not constitute any direct threat to the White community. The Indians, on the other hand, were an economic force. They tended to be a race of entrepreneurs, especially the creators of small businesses. They hawked goods, they opened small general dealers' stores. Such a business class was seen as a direct threat to White businesses. The Indians also tended to charge less, while their tendency to involve their entire family within their businesses meant that they had lower wage bills which once again enabled them to charge less for their products. As a result of all this, they were a very real threat to the financial position of the White businesses. The Whites therefore felt that they just could not compete and so they turned to Government to enact racist legislation so as to keep the Indians at bay.

What, do you think, would have been the purpose of the East London Municipality Act of 1895?

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You might think that this Municipality Act was purely racist in its purpose but this was not so. The Act was multifaceted, aiming at allowing the Town Council to go ahead with a number of projects — like the construction of a tramway system, the installation of electricity, the enlarging of the municipal electoral system, the creation of a better water supply. Into all of this, however, the Municipality threw in permission for it to pass segregationist regulations against its Black and Indian population. Because the constitution of the Cape Colony actually forbade this, the entire Bill was therefore very nearly thrown out. There were, however, enough Members of Parliament who believed that segregation was a good thing that the municipality was able to garner up enough votes to see the Bill become an Act. As a result, East London became the first municipality in the Cape Colony to legislate for segregation.