INDIANS IN AFRICA

South African Tourism's Indian expert Alexis Kriel looks at some interesting facts about India's relationship with South Africa.

• Between 1860 and 1911 some 140 000 Indians arrived in South Africa as indentured laborers. The majority of them were Hindus from Madras, Travancore, Orissa and Bengal. Today, there are almost a million Indians living in South Africa - the largest group outside of India and Pakistan
  
  
• The first ship to arrive in South Africa (with Indians) was the SS TRURO. There were 348 laborers onboard. They were categorised as 2 % Brahmins, 9 % Kshatriyas, 21 % Vaishyas and 31 % Sudras, 27% Scheduled Castes, 3 % Christians and 4 % Muslims.
  
  
• In 1860, of the indentured laborers who arrived in South Africa, 35% were women. The number was later raised to 50%.
  
  
• The first Indians who came to South Africa did not work only on the sugar cane plantations; they also worked on the railways, dockyards, municipal services, the coalmines of Northern Natal and in domestic service.
  
  
• The name of the first immigrant, recorded on the list of the ship Truro, was Davarum.
  
  
• The first major temple erected in South Africa was in 1899. It was a Ganesha Temple at Mount Edgecombe in Durban and was built by an indentured laborer from India known as Kistappa Reddy.
  
  
• Today, 140 years later, after playing an integral role in South Africa's transition to democracy, Indians occupy positions in parliament and are contributing to every facet of life in South Africa.
  
  
• The origin of the word sugar appears to have its root in India, where its earliest form was the word 'sarkara'. And the word 'candy' is derived from the older word for sugar, namely 'khanda'.
  
  
• Mahatma Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1895, to appear in a court case on behalf of an Indian client, and made his home here. He stayed in South Africa for 21 years. He started his passive resistance movement in South Africa.
  
  
• Gandhi's ideas of Satyagraha (Sanskrit for "truth and firmness") evolved in South Africa.
  
  
• During the Boer War, Gandhi organised a corps of Indian stretcher-bearers; and again during an outbreak of plague on the Witwatersrand. After the South African war, Gandhi practised as an attorney in Johannesburg.
  
  
• Gandhi said that the single most creative time of his life (and the time that changed the course of his life) was when he was in South Africa, where he began to teach a policy of passive resistance to the South African authorities.
  
  
• Gandhi only returned to India in 1915, after the government of South Africa made concessions to his demand for recognition of Indian marriages and the abolition of the poll tax. Back in India, he fought for independence from Britain with the strength and ideas that he had developed in South Africa.
  
  
• South African law relating to the 'Admissibility of Confessions' is adapted from section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act of 1872.
  
  
• Algoa Bay, now known as Port Elizabeth, means 'towards Goa'; and Delagoa Bay, now known as Maputo, means 'from Goa'.
  
  
• There are places in South Africa that are named after Portuguese voyagers travelling between Portugal and Goa and stopping over in South Africa.
  
  
• A few places in South Africa are named after Alliwal (walla) - the place where the British defeated the Sikhs in India: Alliwal; Alliwal North - founded in 1849 by Sir Harry Smith (the governor of the Cape) to commemorate his victory in India over the Sikhs; Aliwal Shoal - a dangerous shoal on the Natal South Coast; and the former name of Mossel Bay was Aliwal South.
  
  
• Kippersol is an Indian origin name for a tree widely found in South Africa.
  
  
• The common word for a tangerine (which is called a naartjie in South Africa) is probably derived from the Tamil word nartei for a citron.
  
  
• Bunny Chow - a favourite South African dish - is made from a vegetarian curry of beans, sold as a take-away food in a ½ loaf of bread, and comes from the word bhannia (the vegetarian shopkeeper caste) and chow (from the Chinese language).
  
  
• Mynah birds, which were introduced to Durban from India, are one of the most common birds found in Natal and Gauteng. It appears in leading South African bird books.
  
  
• A bhajiya is known by many South Africans as a 'chili bite'.
  
  
• Did you know that the following Bollywood stars have visited South Africa: Sharukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherjee, Zayed Khan and Saif Ali Khan?
  
  
• Did you know that Bollywood movies are widely available in South Africa and large movie theatre chains like Ster-Kinekor increasingly show Bollywood films?
  
  
• Filmmaker Mira Nair used a South African screenwriter, Helena Kriel, for her script for the movie Karma Sutra and their collaboration on the script and the writing of the script took place in Durban in South Africa.
  
  
• The Bollywood movie "Dil ka Rishta" was filmed in Cape Town. And the movie "Shikari" is shot extensively in the jungles of South Africa.
  
  
• A Durban consortium is planning a multi-million dollar film studio to help visiting film crews from India.
  
  
• Shilpa Shetty is about to shoot a film in South Africa with Mahmud Sipra.
  
  
• All the spices of India are available in South Africa and there are many excellent Indian restaurants.
  
  
• Indians in South Africa celebrate the festivals of their homeland, like Ratha Yatra, Deepavali, Kavadi, Eid and Mohurram.