Research Articles (History)

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Betwixt the oceans: The Chief Immigration Officer in Cape Town, Clarence Wilfred Cousins (1905�1915)
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
Drawing on the personal and official papers of an immigration officer, this article highlights his personality, social life, and the quotidian aspects of his work at the port. By placing the officer at the centre, instead of the usual tendency in South African historiography to focus on ethnic immigration histories, one secures broader insights into the administration of policy, such as the writing test (an exclusionary mechanism) and repatriation, which are often associated with state policies against Indians. While the article draws on examples of arrivals at the port from both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, arguing against a focus on only Indian Ocean traffic, it emphasises how arrivals from India played a role in shaping the immigration bureaucracy. While scholars have recently begun to see Cape Town as an important Indian Ocean port, this article points to settler society�s unease with what sea traffic from Bombay and Durban might bring and how Cape Town sought to establish a disconnect with the East.
Cape Indians, Apartheid and Higher Education
(University of the Western Cape, 2013) Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
On a Sunday afternoon, 15 November 2009, the Luxurama Theatre in Wynberg was filled to capacity as Indians in Cape Town gathered to launch the Cape Town 1860 Legacy Foundation in preparation for the 2010 events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Indians in Natal. The Foundation had been constituted after meetings in Cape Town had been addressed by Satish Dhupelia and AV Mohammed who were members of the 1860 Legacy Foundation of Durban, tasked with co-ordinating a national movement. They and Ashwin Trikamjee, a religious leader who chaired the Durban committee were present. The gathering brought Gujarati Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Tamil Hindus of the city together. While the ancestors of many of those present had come as immigrants to the Cape directly from India and had little direct connection to indenture, the Tamils present did have their roots in the indenture system. The movement from Natal to the Cape Colony by the ex-indentured had, in fact, begun from the 1870s in response to the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley.1 Many Tamil Indians would continue to come to the Cape in the post-Union period often breaking inter-provincial restrictions on movement and settling in the Cape illegally.
Durban and Cape Town as port cities: Reconsidering Southern African studies from the Indian Ocean
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Hofmeyr, Isabel; Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma; Kaarsholm, Preben
This special issue arose out of a workshop titled �Durban and Cape Town as Indian Ocean Port Cities: Reconsidering Southern African Studies from the Indian Ocean�, held at the University of the Western Cape in September 2014. The volume is located at the intersection of southern African studies and Indian Ocean studies, and explores this exchange as a site for enriching southern African transnational historiographies.
False fathers and false sons: Immigration officials in Cape Town, documents and verifying minor sons from India in the first half of the twentieth century
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
This article examines the rituals of admission to Cape Town, developed by the immigration bureaucracy at the port, for minor sons from India. It provides a context for why the entry of sons of established Indian residents became an issue. Drawing on local knowledge as well as the official archives, the article takes one into the heart of immigration encounters. Its primary focus is on systems of identification and verification of relationships and ages, the role that documents played, and what this says about state power. It points to a progression from fairly primitive methods employed in the early years to demands for certificates to be completed in India, inter-governmental cooperation, village enquiries in India, and the use of technology such as fingerprinting, photographs and x-rays. Over time the bureaucracy seemingly became more powerful. Yet individuals coming from India, where the documentation of individual identity was not a significant state priority, responded creatively. Paying attention to the documents themselves, this article argues that, despite elaborate paperwork and systems, truths about fathers and sons remained elusive. The article points to how, despite demanding documents from India, officials in Cape Town, with some justification, distrusted these papers. The very documentary systems developed to ensure state control over who would be admitted into the country undermined the state's ability to do precisely that.
Paper regimes
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
In 1915 Baba Bapoo, a store assistant in Cape Town, was thrown into a state of great mental and emotional stress when he lost his permit en route to India. This was the only document that could guarantee his re-admission to South Africa. He wrote to a friend to apply for a replacement indicating, 'Since I have made the lost [sic] my heart has turned into madness'. He managed to secure a fresh permit as his application was on record in the Cape Town Immigration Department. Osman Vazir was less fortunate he left for India rather suddenly, in the process omitting to secure a permit. Later, he wrote an impassioned plea from India to the Immigration Department in Cape Town citing all the documents in his possession which proved he had been in South Africa: 'I have got a register of Transvaal, a pass of Free State, a certificate from Gas Co., a receipt for a pass which was received by me in 1907, a card from Somerset Hospital...' He, however, did not have the right paper needed to re-enter Cape Town. His plea to be allowed in 'with both hands joined, as one to the Almighty and a father' was in vain. In the late 1930s, Walter Sisulu was arrested and taken to the Hillbrow police station in Johannesburg because there was 'something wrong with my pass book'. After paying a fine he was released. The position of African males in South Africa's urban spaces was aptly summed up by a migrant labourer in Peter Abrahams' novel: 'Man's life is controlled by pieces of paper'.
Re-locating memories: transnational and local narratives of Indian South Africans in Cape Town
(SAGE Publications, 2017) Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
This article plays on the word re-location to examine the memories of Indians in South Africa through oral histories about relocation as a result of the Group Areas Act, to memories of parents and grandparents relocating to South Africa from India as told to interviewees and to their own memories of journeys to India and back. The narratives of mobilities traverse time and national boundaries and are counter-posed by narratives of local mobilities as well as stasis. The article identifies ways of narrating, themes of narration and the meaning of memories while noting the re-location of memory construction against the backdrop of South Africa�s democratic transition and the 150th commemoration of the arrival of indentured Indians to South Africa. It argues that the local and the national are important in narrations of transnational journeys, thus advancing a particular approach to transnational memory studies.
Speaking about building Rylands (1960s to 1980s): a Cape Flats history
(Taylor and Francis, 2014) Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
This article draws on oral histories of Rylands, a former Indian group area on the Cape Flats. It shifts focus from narratives of dispossession to narratives of the making of a relocation site. The Cape Flats has generally been represented as a place of poverty, crime and hopelessness and existing on the 'fringe' of the city. This article seeks to complicate our understandings and imaginings of the Cape Flats by focusing on Rylands. In its focus on the middle class, it argues that they transformed their physical surroundings. Spaces in Rylands, built by Indian capital, also offered the Cape Flats useful resources. As an apartheid-designated space, Rylands had a significant role in the entrenching of Indianness leading to energised cultural and religious activity with temples and mosques becoming the centre for residents. There were competing visions for Rylands; some dallied with apartheid governance structures but, by the 1980s, the nonracial ethos dominated and for youth this place became their centre.

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