Honouring Indian women’s invisible labour in apartheid SA

UNDER-ACKNOWLEDGED SURVIVORS

- DR ARADHANA RAMNUND-MANSINGH

BEHIND every economic revolution lies a story the textbooks forgot.

In South Africa, while apartheid carved visible scars through its legislations and violent removals, it also built invisible prisons, especially for women.

Among the most under-acknowledged survivors and strategists of this era were Indian women, who carved out informal economies not in boardrooms or factory floors, but in kitchens, sewing rooms, and prayer spaces.

These were not just homes.

They were micro-enterprises. Schools. Sanctuaries. Sites of survival.

These spaces were not just adapted, they were reclaimed.

Lounges transformed into offices, dining tables into assembly lines, and courtyards into informal marketplaces.

Every corner of the home became a canvas for ingenuity.

These were acts of transformation, where women turned scarcity into a strategic advantage.

With minimal resources and maximum resilience, they blurred the lines between private and public, domestic and professional, creating hybrid spaces that sustained families and inspired communities.

When the apartheid government pushed Indian families to the peripheries through the Group Areas Act, they didn’t merely steal land; they disrupted livelihoods, dismembered communities, and erased dignity. But Indian women, many descended from indentured labourers brought to Natal in the late 1800s, didn’t vanish into helplessness. Instead, they quietly built something powerful: hidden economies grounded in care, skill and resistance.

Let us be clear. These were not hobbies. These were not side hustles. Sewing saris, catering for weddings, tutoring children; these were not just acts of domestic kindness. They were sophisticated systems of economic survival and cultural resistance. But history rarely honours women who make roti instead of speeches, who organise savings circles instead of strikes. Yet, they too resisted.