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Indian–African Encounters: Polyculturalism and African Therapeutics in Natal, South Africa, 1886–1950s ∗

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070600656382

1465-3893

Karen Flint,

African history and culture studies

Abstract This article explores Indian–African encounters in the province of Natal, South Africa through the lens of African therapeutics. By examining the historical antecedents of African therapeutics in this area, I demonstrate that what is considered ‘African’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge is rather an amalgam of many cultural and political influences. Such polyculturalism resulted from the encounters of working-class Indian and African communities, as well as the rise of Indian healers and shop owners of African medicine, leading to the appropriation of each other's ailments, remedies and healers. These encounters combined with the pressure of biomedical scrutiny to help define and shape what is today considered ‘traditional’ African therapeutics. Notes 1 ‘Valuable Missing after Exorcism’, Sunday Times, 23 April 2000; ‘Tokoloshe Blamed for Mom's Sex Torment’, Sunday Times, 29 July 2001; the 2001 Carte Blanche documentary described at www.tokoloshe.tk (accessed 27 June 2004); ‘Strange Spirit has Put us all Through Hell’, The Post, 17 March 2004 www.thepost.co.za (accessed 27 June 2004). For ufufunyane possession, see J. Parle, ‘Witchcraft or Madness? The Amandiki of Zululand, 1894–1914’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 1 (March 2003), pp. 105–32. 2 While there have been Indian and white inyangas since the nineteenth century, Indian and white sangomas seem to be a more recent and rare phenomenon. 3 A.G. Desai, ‘A Context for Violence: Social and Historical Underpinnings of Indo-African Violence in a South African Community’ (PhD thesis, Michigan State University, 1993); P. Jain, Indians in South Africa (Delhi, Manihar, 1993); A. Sookdeo,’The Transformation of Ethnic Identities: The Case of “Coloured” and Indian Africans’, The Journal of Ethnic Studies, 15, 4 (1988), pp. 69–83. 4 During the riots 142 people died; 1,087 people were injured; one factory, 58 shops and 247 dwellings were destroyed; with hundreds of shops and thousands of dwellings damaged. B. Pachai and S. Bhana, A Documentary History of Indian South Africans (Cape Town, Hoover Institution Press, 1984), p. 208. For an analysis, see Jain, Indians in South Africa, pp. 47–51. 5 The Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre in Durban houses a limited collection of documents related to KwaZulu-Natal history and also displays small exhibits that emphasise Indian and African unity. More recently, attempts have been made to create the Institute for Inter-ethnic Studies, a centre to foster better community relations between Indians and Africans. The re-established Phoenix Settlement published a pamphlet in English and Zulu that highlighted the work of Gandhi and aimed to ‘help heal these fractures’ between the Indian and African communities. See The Opinion, 15 October 2000. 6 See L. Vail, The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989); R. Morrell (ed.), Political Economy and Identities in KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, Indicator Press, 1996); and B. Carton, J. Laband and J. Sitole (eds), Refractions of Zuluness: Interpretations of Zulu Past and Present. (University of Natal, forthcoming). 7 For a discussion on of the heterogeneity of this group see R. Ebr.-Vally, Kala Pani (Cape Town, Kwela, 2001). ‘Zanzibaris’ were descendants of Muslim Africans from Northern Mozambique and Zanzibar whose ancestors had been seized by Arab slavers, captured by the British anti-slaving patrol and ‘released’ to indenture in the Durban area. Because they were Muslim, they were treated as a distinct African community and later categorised as ‘other Asians’ during the apartheid era. While Zanzibaris live/d in Indian townships and went to Indian schools, they have retained an identity distinct from many of their Indian neighbours and intermarriage has been limited. For an excellent overview of this community, see: Z. Seedat, ‘The Zanzibaris in Durban: A Social Anthropological Study of the Muslim Descendants of African Freed Slaves Living in the Indian Area of Chatsworth’ (MA thesis in African Studies, University of Natal, Durban, 1973). 8 For a good summary of this approach, see S. Cornell and D. Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (Thousand Oaks, CA, Pine Forge Press, 1998); R. Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 1997). 9 This may not seem like a particularly new or innovative notion, and in fact anthropologists have been exploring and challenging the notion of culture as a bounded entity since the mid-1980s. Their efforts, however, have primarily focused on the encounters of dominant and dominated peoples and the process of globalisation rather than the encounters of subaltern groups themselves. For example: H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, Routledge, 1994); G. Baumann, The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic, and Religious Identities (NewYork, Routledge, 1999); T. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women (Durham, NC, Duke Press, 1996); M. Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998); J. Hutnyk, Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics and the Culture Industry (London, Pluto Press, 2000); D. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, Yale Unversity Press, 1988); A. McClintock, Imperial Leather (New York, Routledge, 1995); R. Radhakrishna, Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996); R. Takaki, A Different Mirror (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1993); J. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1991) 10 R.D.G. Kelley, ‘People in Me’, Colorlines, 1, 3 (1999), pp. 5–7; ‘Author Criticizes Multiculturalism’, Georgetown Voice, 26 April 2001; V. Prashad, ‘Afro-Dalits of the Earth, Unite!’, African Studies Review, 43, 1 (2000), pp. 189–201; V. Prashad, Everybody was KungFu Fighting (Boston, Beacon Hill Press, 2001). 11 For more detailed explanation of the decision to criminalise healers, see K. Flint and J. Parle, ‘Healers, Witchcraft, and Madness’, in Carton, Laband and Sitole (eds), Refractions of Zuluness. Prosecution prior to 1891 tended to focus mainly on sangomas rather than inyangas. After 1891 both sangomas and unlicensed inyangas were prosecuted. 12 The term biomedicine refers to what has otherwise been termed allopathy, western medicine, or cosmopolitan medicine. Given that this medical system has developed and is practised throughout the world, I prefer the term biomedicine to highlight its attachment to the body. 13 UCLA Special Collections Department, Collection 1343 (Hilda Kuper Papers), Box 1, Budget Folder. 14 M.D. North-Coombes, ‘Indentured Labour in the Sugar Industries of Natal and Mauritius, 1834–1910’, in S. Bhana (ed.), Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal (Yorkshire, Peepal Tree Press, 1990), p. 62. 15 M.D. North-Coombes, ‘Indentured Labour in the Sugar Industries of Natal and Mauritius, 1834–1910’, in S. Bhana (ed.), Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal (Yorkshire, Peepal Tree Press, 1990), pp. 62–3. 16 M.D. North-Coombes, ‘Indentured Labour in the Sugar Industries of Natal and Mauritius, 1834–1910’, in S. Bhana (ed.), Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal (Yorkshire, Peepal Tree Press, 1990), pp. 67–71. 17 Quote by L. Govender, ‘We learned it [African therapeutics] when we were working together on the sugar plantations.’ (L. Govender, interview, December 1998). S. Nesvag, ‘D'Urbanised Tradition: The Restructuring and Development of the Muthi Trade in Durban’ (MA thesis, University of Natal, Durban, 1999), p. 95; Oral testimony about African and Indian women working side by side, ‘Indentured Service’, Natal Witness, 23 June 2004. 18 While the literature on this skewed gender ratio has emphasised the pressures on a few Indian women to service many men domestically and sexually, it does not even consider miscegenation as a possibility. J. Beall, ‘Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860s–1911’, in C. Clark, C. Peach and S. Vertoure (eds), South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 65–9; H. Kuper, ‘“Strangers” in Plural Societies’, in L. Kuper and M.G. Smith (eds), Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969), pp. 256–8. Kuper insists that cultural differences between Indians and African were too great for miscegenation to even be an option. While this view seems much influenced by the time-period in which she was soliciting Indian opinion, research on miscegenation in the early Cape might lead one to consider the possibility quite reasonable in Natal. See R. Elphick and R. Shell, ‘Intergroup Relations: Khoikhoi, Settlers, Slaves and Free Blacks, 1652–1795’, in R. Elphick and H. Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1820 (Cape Town, Longman, 1979), pp. 194–204. 19 Kuper, ‘“Strangers” in Plural Societies’, p. 256. 20 Beall, ‘Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal’, p. 65. 21 Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository (PAR), SNA, I/1/141, 1891/513; PAR, SNA, I/1/49, 1561/1881; PAR, CNC, 112, 1913/390. To my knowledge, no one has looked at the phenomenon of Indians living under African chiefs or how these relationships worked. Did Indians live as subjects of a chief as Africans did or were they seen as ‘renters’ with different social and political obligations? 22 PAR, DPH, 36, miscellaneous, ‘Report on matters and matters of interest that occurred in the above period’, 19 May – 16 June 1910. 23 See discussion of Togt labour recorded by James Stuart in 1902 with respondant Sisekelo, in J. Wright (ed.), The James Stuart Archives, Vol. 5 (Pietermartizburg, University of Natal Press, 2001), pp. 360–64. For a later period see 3/DBN, 4/1/2/1220, pp. 11–12, ‘Durban Submission to Native Economic Commission 1930’. 24 By 1900 they dominated the bulk of African trade. J. Brain, ‘Natal's Indians, 1860–1910’, in A.H. Duminy and B. Guest (eds), Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910 (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1989), p. 259. 25 H. Kuper, ‘“Strangers” in Plural Societies’, p. 258. 26 Report of the Natal Native Commission,1881–2 (Pietermaritzburg, Vause, Slatter, 1882), p. 109. 27 Report of the Natal Native Commission,1881–2 (Pietermaritzburg, Vause, Slatter, 1882), p. 384. 28 R. Mesthrie, ‘New Lights from Old Languages: Indian Languages and the Experience of Indentureship in South Africa’, in Bhana (ed.), Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal, pp. 194–6. 29 Prashad, Everybody was Kungfu Fighting, p. 94. 30 Dr Xuma, who later became president of the ANC stated in 1930 that ‘The Indian cannot make common cause with the African without alienating the right of intervention on their behalf on the part of the Government of India’. This sentiment reflected those of white South Africans who viewed Indians as temporary rather than permanent residents of South Africa. As quoted in Sookdeo, ‘The Transformation of Ethnic Identities’, p. 72. 31 The Opinion, 15 October 2000. 32 All this information comes from Sookdeo, ‘The Transformation of Ethnic Identities’, pp. 75–7. 33 Prashad, Everybody was Kungfu Fighting, p. 71. 34 Prashad, Everybody was Kungfu Fighting, pp. 70–96. 35 Jain, Indian Communities Abroad, pp. 12–13. 36 Ebr.-Vally, Kala Pani, pp. 132–8; Jain, Indian Communities Abroad, p. 4. 37 Ebr.-Vally, Kala Pani, pp. 133–4. 38 The loss of caste in certain diasporic communities may be similar to the process that led lower or unscheduled caste groups to convert from Hinduism to Islam and Christianity (within India itself). 39 Prashad, Everybody was Kungfu Fighting, p. 94. 40 For instance, upper-class Indians exchanged trade favours such as the 1925 Class Areas Bill that promoted segregation, while the Natal branch of the South African Indian Congress agreed to ‘repatriate’ Indians of the poorer classes. Likewise the African community felt betrayed by its elite leaders, like D.D.T. Jabavu, for agreeing to the Natives Land Tenure and Representation Bill which would retain a qualified franchise for elite Christian Africans. See Sookdeo, ‘The Transformation of Ethnic Identities’, pp. 72–3, 75. 41 Kuper, ‘“Strangers” in Plural Societies’, pp. 257–8; P. van den Berghe, ‘Asians in East and South Africa’, in P.B van den Berghe (ed.), Race and Ethnicity (New York, Basic Books, 1970); R. Morrell, J. Wright and S. Meintjes, ‘Colonialism and the Establishment of White Domination 1840–1890’, in Morrell (ed.), Political Economy and Identities in KwaZulu-Natal, p. 41. 42 PAR, CSO, 1785, 1905/2373, ‘To Colonial Secretary from Parasoo Ramoodo’, 18 March 1905 and 25 May 1905. 43 This comes from an economic survey of the Indian community conducted in the 1950s, as reported in H. Kuper and F. Meer, ‘Indian Elites in Natal, South Africa’, in University of Natal Institute for Social Research Proceedings (July 1956), p. 136. 44 1881 Natal Native Commission, pp. 88, 384. One mentions ‘curry’, the other ‘medicine’. Quote from ‘Report by Medical Officer, Durban September 3, 1881’, 1881 Blue Book on Native Affairs, p. 72. 45 PAR, SNA, 1/1/64, Insinga, 1892; PAR, SNA, I/1/168, 354/93, Umgeni, 1893. 46 PAR, NMC, T1, ‘Minutes of the Natal Medical Council’, 11 February 1898. 47 PAR, 1/KRK, 3/1/9, ‘Translation of Report of Krantzkrop’, No. 1, 26 November 1908. 48 L. Govender, interview, 17 December 1998, Durban. 49 L. Naidoo, interview, 1 April 1998, Pietermaritzburg. 50 Ayurveda is a form of medicine which has developed over thousands of years on the Indian subcontinent, it includes not only herbal and mineral remedies, but massage and bleeding, and using food to bring the body back into balance. 51 T. Pillay, interview, 20 June 2002, Ladysmith. 52 A. Ngwanye, informal interview, 24 June 2002. Dr V. Naiker, informal interview, 24 June 2002. 53 A. Smith, A Contribution to South African Materia Medica Chiefly from Plants (3rd edition) (Cape Town, Juta 1895), p. 227. 54 PAR, 1/KRK, 3/1/9. He charged ten shillings for treatment which seemed to be the going rate for this area. 55 ‘Remarkable Quackery’, The Probe, 4, 8 (1 June 1914), p. 153. 56 L. Naidoo, interview, 20 August 1998, Howick Falls. 57 L. Govender, interview, 17 December 1998, Durban. 58 This changed in 1928 with the passage of the Medical, Dental, Pharmaceutical Act which transferred the right of licensing to the Department of Public Health. 59 PAR, CNC, 112, 1913/390, ‘Application by Free Indian Seetal’. 60 PAR, CNC, 284, 1917/1992/93 for Chinnavadu; PAR, CNC, 324, 1918/1451 for Sevuthean. 61 Archival sources point to muthi markets from 1906 to 1920, oral sources, however, claim that muthi, amongst other items, had been sold at the Mona market since the time of the Zulu kingdom. Nesvag, ‘D'Urbanised Tradition’, p. 61. 1906–07 Native Commission, Migidhlana of Eshowe, p. 895. 62 NAB, CNC, 193, 1915/149, ‘Native Medicine Men’, 11 February 1915. 63 G. Chittenden, ‘Durban Delhi’, South African Railways and Harbours Magazine (October 1915), p. 928. 64 For a historical account of street trading, see G. Vahed, ‘Control and Repression: The Plight of Indian Hawkers and Flower Sellers in the Durban CBD, 1910–1948’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 32, 1 (1999), pp. 19–48; S. Nesvag, ‘Street Trading from Apartheid to Post-Apartheid: More Birds in the Cornfield?’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 21, 3/4 (2000), pp. 34–63. 65 Braby's Durban Directory 1930, under Queen Street. 66 F.G. Cawston, ‘Native Medicines in Natal’, South African Medical Journal, VII, 11 (1933), p. 371. 67 L. Naidoo, interview, 1 April 1998, Pietermaritzburg. 68 For a discussion of ‘pollution’, particularly amongst female traders, see Nesvag, ‘D'Urbanised Tradition’, pp. 170–72. 69 L. Govender, interview, 17 December 1998, Durban, and Braby's Durban Directory 1936, 1937. C.V. Pillay is actually listed in 1937 and for several years after as the proprietor of the Victoria property perhaps indicating that he had signed and was responsible for the lease. 70 ‘Mr. Chester [Durban administrator] explained that no one must display their herbs outdoors; they must practise indoors’. P. Cele, interview, 9 December 1998, Durban. 71 Central Archive Depository (CAD), GES, 1785, ‘To Minister of Health from T.J. D'Alton’, 29 August 1936. 72 P. Cele, interview, 9 December 1998, Durban. 73 As quoted in Nesvag, ‘D'Urbanised Tradition’, p. 95. 74 P. Cele, interview, 9 December 1998, Durban. 75 Nesvag, ‘D'Urbanised Tradition’, p. 96. 76 Nesvag, ‘D'Urbanised Tradition’, p. 96 77 1881 Natal Native Commission, p. 88. 78 SAB, GES, 1788, 25/30M: ‘Mafavuke Ngcobo versus Rex’. 79 C. de B. Webb and J.B. Wright (eds.), The James Stuart Archive, III (Durban, University of Natal Press, 1982), Mkando, p. 182. 80 J. Colenso, Zulu–English Dictionary (Natal, Vause, Slatter, and Co., 1905), p. 254. 81 L. Naidoo, interview, 28 August 1998, Pietermaritzburg; T. Pillay, interview, 20 June 2002, Ladysmith. 82 T. Pillay, interview, 20 June 2002, Ladysmith; S. Pillay, interview, 20 June 2002, Newcastle. 83 Holy basil grows wild throughout Natal and is not sold in muthi shops. In Naidoo's shop he sold Indian herbs for facial creams and love potions. L. Naidoo, interview, 28 August 1998, Pietermaritzburg. 84 Literally ‘Indian aloe’. L. Naidoo, interview, 28 August 1998, Pietermaritzburg. 85 J. Mbuyazi, interview, 29 November 1998, Mthubathuba. Indian female inyangas are in fact a more recent phenomenon and obviously did not factor into this man's thinking. 86 Hilda Kuper Papers, Box 9; R.V. Pillay Interview 19 August 1953. Interestingly, this transcript is somewhat different from what ends up in Kuper's, Indian People in Natal (Pietermaritzburg, Natal University Press, 1960), where the child is nine years old while the first doctor is a biomedical doctor rather than an Indian diviner, and fewer African healers are mentioned. 87 Kuper, Indian People in Natal, pp. 258–9. 88 H. Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine: An Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice (London, Academic Press, 1977), pp. 144–6. 89 In the early 1970s, Zanzibaris were reputed to be the richest members of their communities, and were said to serve both African and Indian communities. Seedat. ‘The Zanzibaris in Durban’, p. 99. Surveys were conducted in 1971. 90 Applications for General Dealers’ Licences increased with the restriction of inyanga licences as prescribed in the 1928 Medical, Dental, and Pharmacy Act. CAD, GES, 1785, ‘To Minister of Health from T.J. D'Alton’, 29 August 1936. 91 PAR, CNC, 43/25, ‘Note’ from CNC discusses the need to ‘preserve the genuine native nyanga’; CAD, NTS, 9301, 1/376, Dube to CNC presents resolutions of 1938 Natal Native Congress which includes rights of Africans to sell to each other without ‘foreign races standing in the way’, 7 October 1938. 92 PAR, NTS, 2/376, Part 2, September 1948. 93 This argument is laid out in great detail in K. Flint, ‘Competition, Race, and Professionalization: African Healers and White Medical Practitioners in Natal, South Africa in the Early Twentieth Century’, Social History of Medicine, 14, 2 (2001), pp. 199–221. 94 Indian herbal remedies such as honey, caster oil, cloves, ginger, garlic, mother's milk, betel leaf, areca nut, turmeric, and syringa leaves were used in numerous therapies as well as health rituals surrounding birth, menstruation, and marriage. Examples too numerous to note here are found throughout the UCLA Kuper Papers. Also Ravi Govender, informal interview, 11 June 2002, Durban. 95 Hazrath Soofie Saheb (Rahmatullah Alai) and his Khanqahs (Durban, n.d. circa 1998), p. 70. Dawakhana clinic, p. 83. This book was printed by and for the Soofie Sahib community. 96 Cawston, ‘Native Medicines in Natal’, p. 370. These herbs included chavica betle and areca oberacea, and areca catechu linn. ‘For sweetening the breath and for preserving the gums, Indians sometimes use a resin prepared from the bark of pistachia lintiscus, or the order of anacardiacea, which grows in Natal’. 97 Natal Pharmaceutical Society, Durban, Minute Book of the Business Section, ‘Minutes of the Natal Pharmaceutical Society, 6 April 1937’. 98 Hilda Kuper Papers, Box 9, Book 2aa, p. 77, and Box 11, ‘Survey of Traders in the Township of Tongaat’. 99 Flint, ‘Competition, Race, and Professionalization’. 100 Interviews with L. Govender, 17 December 1998; A. Naiker, June 2002; L. Naidoo, July 1998. 101 This is my informal observation after interviewing over 30 healers in the area of KZN in 1997–1998. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKaren Flint This research was supported in part by a grant from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.