Madam Deputy Speaker, I'm on a weak footing on this subject of celebrating the Indian community in South Africa because of the province from which I come and its history with this community. I'm glad to say, though, that I happily join in with others, knowing that all of us have been part of the struggle that made the Free State also the home of the Indian community, like all others.
Some 150 years ago the first Indian indentured labourers landed on the shores of our country. They were brought to this country because Africans, the original indigenous Africans of this country, were resisting working on the sugar cane fields of Natal as it was known at that time. As a result of this resistance, the subcontinent of India, which had already been subjected to British rule, made it possible for Indians to be imported here as indentured labourers.
It's an interesting bird's-eye view to see that wherever there was resistance to enforced labour, the colonial rulers of our country visited other parts of the world and brought labour here, such as from the East Indies to the Western Cape, or from China to strengthen the working force in the Gauteng gold mines.
We celebrate this particular community - the Indian community - today, and we have to look closely at the contribution they made to our history, and not only to the industrialisation of the country, as elements of labour here. At the same time they immediately joined in the struggle for equality of status - for rights like everybody else. That is particularly important because in 1860, with the founding of the All India Congress - what was then called in India the Indian Congress - the struggle against British imperialism in India started. They brought this to the shores of South Africa, and, in fact, this led directly ... [Interjections.] ... - I'm not as small-minded as that. We are celebrating South Africa and we are celebrating the communities here. It has nothing to do with the little things that there are here; it has to do with the value of what the community has done, and I will address that issue.
We want to say that we own this country, its history over the centuries, and we would be less South African if we thought that there were certain parts of the history of this country which belonged only to some and not to all of us - South Africa is for all of us and it will always be so. If anything, that is the kind of South Africa we want to build, a South Africa that is for all of us, in which everybody is South African. The fact that we may hold different views on this, that or the other does not change that reality. Therefore, I say with pride that the Indian South Africans who arrived at that time made history for all of us. They set a timetable and a programme that has made all of us the product of this country.
So, when they formed the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, they pointed the way to the struggle in the future of a South Africa that was quickly becoming a capitalist society, in which our own great grandparents from the Transkei, the Free State and the North of this country were moving towards Johannesburg to the mines, and to Kimberley. It was Africa's labour force. The working class of South Africa was taking root.
As that was happening, South Africa's urban centres were developing, the townships of Sophiatown and others, which led to the forming of Soweto. The townships of Durban led to uMlazi and with the establishment of those townships South Africa was growing. The township of Chatsworth and others were born as a general movement of the development of the working class in our country. At that time, none of the present political organisations were there, not then. Therefore, we say that if we are to celebrate in full, we must recognise the contributions made by these communities across decades and centuries.
As we began the last century, the 20th century, just after 1910 we saw the Indian community struggling to cross into the Transvaal against a vicious, backward Republic of Afrikaners that did not want them to settle there. A consequence of this was that at Volksrus in 1913 little Valliammai, at the age of 13, was killed as part of that struggle to move into the Transvaal. That explains that it was the success of that struggle that led to the situation that we have today, a settled, very powerful part of the Indian community in the Transvaal.
It's a sad thing that happened in the Free State - there was not sufficient economic development to lure them there in large numbers. It's also a shame that for so long a province like that sustained legislation that denied them the right to make the Free State their home.
We must see both the good things and the backward things that we did to each other in our history, and we must be ashamed that some of the things were done in that way. I say with pride that if the death of little Valliammai inspired the struggle, it was to be reignited much later in 1976 with the death of a little child of 13 years, Hector Pieterson. It was history repeating itself, in different circumstances but at same time generally driving in the same direction.
So, we can take pride in the fact that all of us made equal contributions, and spilled our blood for the same cause. By the way, at the founding of the first liberation organisation in Africa, the African National Congress, an argument arose as to what it was to be called. The delegates who were at that meeting argued from various angles, but they said that the name, whatever it was, had to include the word "congress" because they were so inspired by the performance of the Natal Indian Congress that they wanted an organisation that would be capable of doing what the Natal Indian Congress had already demonstrated, which was positive. That is the history of our country.