Ashwin Desai

Goolam Vahed

Positions the history and inner workings of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) against the canvas of the major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s up to the first democratic elections in 1994 Following a hiatus in the 1960s, the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in South Africa was revived in 1971. In fascinating detail, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed bring the inner workings of the NIC to life against the canvas of major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, and up to the first democratic elections in 1994. The NIC was relaunched during the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement, which attracted a following among Indian university students, and whose invocation of Indians as Black led to a major debate about ethnic organisations such as the NIC. This debate persisted in the 1980s with the rise of the United Democratic Front and its commitment to non-racialism. The NIC was central to other major debates of the period, most significantly the lines drawn between boycotting and participating in government-created structures such as the Tri-Cameral Parliament. Despite threats of banning and incarceration, the NIC kept attracting recruits who encouraged the development of community organisations, such as students radicalised by the 1980s education boycotts and civic protests. Colour, Class and Community, The Natal Indian Congress, 1971—1994 details how some members of the NIC played dual roles, as members of a legal organisation and as allies of the African National Congress’ underground armed struggle. Drawing on varied sources, including oral interviews, newspaper reports, and minutes of organisational meetings, this in-depth study tells a largely untold history, challenging existing narratives around Indian ‘cabalism’, and bringing the African and Indian political story into present debates about race, class and nation.

Colour, Class and Community - The Natal Indian Congress, 1971-1994

An important study of the revival of the Natal Indian Congress in 1971 to the first democratic elections in 1994. In fascinating detail, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed bring the inner workings of the NIC to life against the canvas of major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s.

Arianna Lissoni

Nnamdi Elleh

Ali Khangela Hlongwane

Hilton Judin

Faeeza Ballim

Sally Gaule

Kelly Gillespie

Tara Weber

Eric Itzkin

Roshan Dadoo

Yasmin Mayat

Brendan Hart

Temba Middelmann

Barbara Morovich

Pauline Guinard

Muchaparara Musemwa

This edited collection looks at ruins and vacant buildings as part of South Africa’s oppressive history of colonialism and apartheid and ways in which the past persists into the present

The persistence of the past in the architecture of apartheid

Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins

Thembisa Waetjen

The history of Muslim education in the east coast region of South Africa is the story of ongoing struggles by an immigrant religious minority under successive exclusionary forms of state. This book traces the labors and fortunes of a set of progressive idealists who established - via mobilizing merchant capital, transoceanic networks, and informal political influence - the Orient Islamic Educational Institute in 1943 to found schools and promote a secular curriculum that could be integrated with Islamic teaching. Through the story of the Durban flagship project - the Orient Islamic School - the book provides a fascinating account of the changing politics of religious identity, education, and citizenship in South Africa. Across a century of changing political expectations, as the region transformed from a colony to a nation-state to a multi-racial democracy, concerns for social mobility, civic inclusion, and the survival of Islamic identity on the periphery of the Indian Ocean world were invested in the education of the young. From the late 19th century, Gujarati Muslim merchants who settled in Natal built mosques and madressas, while their progeny carried on the strong traditions of community patronage and civic leadership. Aligned to Gandhi's Congress initiatives for Indian civic recognition, they worked across differences of political strategy, economic class, ethnicity, and religious identity to champion modern education for a continually ghettoized diaspora. In common was the threat of a state that, long before the legal formation of apartheid, managed diversity in deference to white racial hysteria over 'Indian penetration' and an 'Asiatic menace.' This is the story of confrontation, cooperation, and compromise by an officially marginalized but still powerful set of 'founding fathers, ' along with their centrality in the histories of education, urban space, and Muslim identity in this region of Africa. [Subject: Social History, African Studies, Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, Diaspora Studies, Migration Studies, Education, Politics]

Identity, State and the Orient Islamic Educational Institute

Schooling Muslims in Natal

Lomarsh Roopnarine

Maurits S. Hassankhan

This is the fourth publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, Present and Future, which was organised in June 2013 by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname. The core of the book is based on a conference panel which focused specifically on the experience of Muslim with indentured migrants and their descendants. This is a significant contribution since the focus of most studies on Indian indenture has been almost exclusively on Hindu religion and culture, even though an estimated seventeen percent of migrants were Muslims. This book thus fills an important gap in the indentured historiography, both to understand that past as well as to make sense of the present, when Muslim identities are undergoing rapid changes in response to both local and global realities. The book includes a chapter on the experiences of Muslim indentured immigrants of Indonesian descent who settled in Suriname. The core questions in the study are as follows: What role did Islam play in the lives of (Indian) Muslim migrants in their new settings during indenture and in the post-indenture period? How did Islam help migrants adapt and acculturate to their new environment? What have been the similarities and differences in practices, traditions and beliefs between Muslim communities in the different countries and between them and the country of origin? How have Islamic practices and Muslim identities transformed over time? What role does Islam play in the Muslims’ lives in these countries in the contemporary period? In order to respond to these questions, this book examines the historic place of Islam in migrants’ place of origin and provides a series of case studies that focus on the various countries to which the indentured Indians migrated, such as Mauritius, South Africa, Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname and Fiji, to understand the institutionalisation of Islam in these settings and the actual lived experience of Muslims which is culturally and historically specific, bound by the circumstances of individuals’ location in time and space. The chapters in this volume also provide a snapshot of the diversity and similarity of lived Muslim experiences.

Identity and Belonging of Minority Groups in Plural Societies

Indentured Muslims in the Diaspora

Goolam Vahed

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