Introduction
Conspiracies I’ve known - Part I, Part II, and Part III addressed the complicated relationship between the two white population groups in South Africa, the Afrikaans and the English.
Conspiracies I’ve known - Part IV compared the local South African conspiracy, the Broederbond, with the international conspiracy of covid. It also brought up similarities and differences between the Broederbond and Q.
Conspiracies I’ve known - Part V introduced some of the
Non-white population groups in South Africa
We’re going to pick up where we left off this topic in the previous post.
Indians
Indentured laborers from India were brought to the Natal Colony from 1860 to 1911, to work in the sugar cane fields.
With the passing decades, however, South Africans of Indian ancestry became successful traders and businesspeople. Many of them became highly educated.
You may recall that Mahatma Gandhi spent two decades in South Africa, starting in 1893. However, he didn’t go there to work in the sugar cane fields. Rather, he was offered a job as a barrister.
Though apartheid had not yet been formalized into law during Gandhi’s years in South Africa, there still was more than enough racism to go around. His work to institute change in South Africa was a warm up exercise for what he subsequently would do in India.
Today, South Africans of Indian ancestry still are concentrated in the Durban area, where their forebears landed.
Apart from their business acumen, a contribution they’ve made to South Africa is the introduction of curry into its cuisine. The Indian version of curry is hotter than the version that Malays brought to the Cape Town area. To my taste, both versions are delicious.
Just as Cape Town has colorful hints of Malay culture, Durban has vibrant evidence of Indian influence.
Chinese
Early in the 20th century, there was a shortage of blacks available to do lowly paid, unskilled work in the Witwatersrand gold mines (in the vicinity of Johannesburg). Apparently, they had dispersed owing to the hostilities of the Boer War.
White workers wouldn’t accept the low wages being offered for those jobs.
The solution that the Chamber of Mines came up with was to import Chinese laborers. They arrived between 1904 and 1910. At the height of their numbers, in 1910, there were 64,000 of them.
I don’t know a lot about South Africans of Chinese ancestry. From what I can deduce, Chinese immigrants did not come to South Africa in sufficient numbers to make the impact on local culture that people of Malay and Indian ancestry did.
However, I did have a classmate of Chinese ancestry when I was in high school. That gave me some insight into what life was like for Chinese South Africans. I will return to that later, when I describe how apartheid affected the members of different racial groups in Part VII.
Bantu
Now we’ll return to the members of the Bantu (black) tribes whom we last saw at the end of the nineteenth century.
Bantu sub-groups and languages
The major sub-groups among the South African Bantu are:
Nguni
Sotho-Tswana
Shangaan-Tsonga
Venda
The Nguni sub-group is the largest and makes up two-thirds of South Africa’s Bantu population.
The Nguni sub-group, in turn, consists of four tribes:
Ndebele
Swazi
Zulu
Xhosa
Each tribe has its own language. Within a sub-group, such as the Nguni, the languages are mutually intelligible.
Having grown up as a speaker of siSwati, I could understand siZulu. However, I couldn’t understand Setsawana, which belonged to the Sotho-Tswana sub-group.
Using a European example, the Spanish and the Portuguese can understand each other, because they both speak Romance languages, but neither of them can understand Russian, which is a Slavic language.
My experience of my Swazi neighbors
My parents were pioneers in the wild, virgin bush of Swaziland. During my pre-school years, we were the only white family within tens of miles.
Our neighbours were members of the so called “primitive” black Swazi tribe. They lived in mud huts, slept on grass mats, had no running water, no electricity, no vehicles, walked barefooted, and were semi-clothed.
Their main assets were their cattle. In addition to herding cattle, they grew a few vegetables. They supplemented those foods with hunting and foraging.
Though whites thought of them as heathens, they believed in one God and had a deep connection to nature. I look back on them as profoundly spiritual.
Whites thought of them as ignorant, because they were illiterate. I look back on them as being full of wisdom.
White adults thought of them as savages, because they ate with their hands instead of knives and forks. I look back on them as respectful and courteous.
It was funny that the white adults of my childhood regarded black people as ignorant, savage, and heathen. Though they were too polite to say it out loud, black people thought white people were uncouth. White people had any number of habits that transgressed black people’s etiquette. The culture shock went both ways.
We see you
The Swazi people’s greeting encapsulated what they were about. It was Sagubona. It meant, “We see you.”
When one person met another, they really did see each other. Their pace of life was slow enough that they had the time to stop and … well … really see each other.
They lived in extended family groups whose members were close to each other. They had great respect for elders. In the evenings, they used to gather around a fire, play drums, sing, dance, and tell stories. The elders’ stories were their way of transmitting their history to younger generations.
What stands out
Having lived away from Southern Africa for more than four decades, something that I notice on return visits is how musical black people’s voices are when they speak. I notice it as soon as I land at the airport.
I’ve always found black people friendly1. But, since my hair has grown white, their friendliness has only increased. As is their custom when conversing with older people, they now address me as “Granny.”
And, when I visit my home country of Swaziland, I find the people friendlier still. The Swazi people really do get the prize for cordiality.
We hear you
When the community was grappling with a conundrum during my childhood, the local chief would call an ndaba. People from all over the district would gather under a big tree. They would take turns to speak. Each person took however much time they needed to get their thoughts out. As long as one person was speaking, everyone else would listen. The ndaba lasted as long as was needed for each person to have a chance to speak. An ndaba could easily last three days.
At the end of the ndaba, the chief would make his pronouncement. Throughout the ndaba, he would have been listening to the opinions that were being expressed. He would have been taking the community’s pulse. His decision would be a distillation of what he had heard from the people.
Next …….
Apartheid
Post-apartheid
Part IX
Books about South Africa
Part X
Movies about South Africa
Though my experience of black people in South Africa is that they are friendly, I should clarify that my family lives in more laid back and therefore relatively safer parts of the country.
The big cities, such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, are incredibly dangerous.
Cape Town, for example, is beautiful and worth the visit. But, if you go to these places, you should get advice from a tour guide or from friends who have local knowledge.