Indian and African marriages during the system of indenture and beyond: 1860 to 1954

INTERRACIAL UNIONS

- SELVAN NAIDOO

MARRIAGE between Indian indentured migrants and indigenous women in colonial South Africa has never been the subject of a historical study.

Equally understudied are the children born of these mixed unions that challenge racial categorisation and identity in South Africa.

In the colonial archive exist understudied examples of intercaste, interracial and interreligious unions. An intriguing case of such a union, mined from the Natal Native Court Archives files, found Nomgcibelo Hlengwa guilty of murder.

Nora Zwane, the daughter of Hlengwa, resided in the Sawoti Police District of Umkomaas.

Nora was estranged from her husband, living apart for more than six months.

In her testimony, Nora related that she gave birth to a female child in March 1953, revealing that this was an illegitimate child and that the father was an Indian male.

Hlengwa was present at the birth of the child and over the following few days had questioned her daughter, Nora, about the ethnicity of the child's father, commenting that the child's hair was not that of a "native".

Two weeks later, Nora was questioned by her estranged mother-in-law and the Induna's wife about the nationality of the child, which she explained was Indian.

Nora's mother, Hlengwa, asked her what she was going to do with the child, seeing that its father was Indian. Nora exclaimed that "the child was mine (Nora's), whether it was an Indian or anything else".

The accused, Hlengwa, then asked how she (Nora) could say that the child was Indian and that she was going to kill the child.

Later that night in the hut, Nora related how Hlengwa (her mother) placed her right hand at the top of my baby's chest and pressed her thumb and index finger on each side of the windpipe.

"I turned my back on what she was doing and started to cry."

The baby died that morning and was buried in a shallow grave.