The Hate Wave

Ravi Desai, a chartered accountant, is almost certain that he will move out by the end of this year to the UK. In her 80s, Pandita Nanakchand says discussing avenues outside the country for her children and grandchildren is part of dinner conversations nowadays.

There are many other professionals who are crossing the sea to the US and UK to begin life all over again after their ancestors first crossed the Indian Ocean as indentured labourers in 1860. The increasing crime against Indians in the last two months has given concrete shape to their plans.

The animosity between the Blacks and Indians, which was only at a subliminal level since 1994, reached a flashpoint when an African pop artist Mbongeni Ngema composed a song Amandiya which was a call for able-bodied Zulu men to rise to the challenge and face the Indians 8216;8216;oppressing8217;8217; them head on. In his introduction Ngema said, 8216;8216;I am merely articulating the feelings which Africans had for Indians and want to open discussion.8217;8217;

He did more than just that. Indians believe that although the song was banned from all shops and radio stations, it has been instrumental in increasing crimes in which Indians have been clearly targeted.

8216;8216;There have been at least 30 incidents where Indians have been involved, it cannot be a coincidence,8217;8217; said Subry Govender, an editor with SABC, the local TV station. He was one of the two journalists who were banned at the peak of the revolution when he started the Press Trust of Africa.

The most horrific of the crimes occurred in the first week of September, when the bodies of three abducted Indian youths were found with the heads chopped off and multiple stab wounds. 8216;8216;Even if it was a routine car-jacking, the violence and the brutality displayed shows that the offenders wanted more than just the car,8217;8217; said Govender.

A girl, Lovesh Prasad, was found murdered with 100 stab wounds and an Indian woman shopkeeper was shot dead in broad daylight. There were at least three other incidents in which elderly Indian women were killed. Earlier this week, three more Indian women, aged between 18-22 years, were found shot dead in a sugarcane field in the Black rural area of Folweni, in the metropolitan area of Durban.

More than the actual incidents, the crimes have assumed mythical proportions. The story doing the rounds is that the song Amandiya was being played when the three youths were killed. The result: the common Indian in Phoenix does not walk alone on the streets and every well-to-do home in Verulam has a rapid alert system and dogs.

8216;8216;Mbungeni has done a very dangerous thing. A visit to Chatsworth and Phoenix, two Indian settlements, shows that even they are suffering from unemployment and poverty as much as the Blacks. So the question of Indians exploiting Blacks does not arise,8217;8217; said Ashwin Desai, a social activist and a lecturer in the University of Natal.

The relations between the three communities have hit a low. Most feel the situation will get worse. Traditionally, the Whites have used Indians as buffers between them and the Blacks. For every Chatworth an Indian settlement, there is an Amlazi 8212; a poor Black settlement.

8216;8216;The Whites ensured that when a poor Black man looked out of his window he saw an Indian with an opulent house and a big car belonging to the Indian before he saw the Whites,8217;8217; said Rajendra Chetty, a social scientist, pointing out the worse form of racial oppression during the apartheid.

Upsetting this balance is the rising new class of African bourgeois. 8216;8216;There are a few Blacks who grab all the contracts and are even more brutal than the Whites in their exploitation,8217;8217; said Ronnie Govender, a playwright.

They agree that the Indians are better educated, have better jobs, bigger houses and bigger cars than the average Black family. 8216;8216;It is not that all of this was given to us on a platter. We work harder and even when the government did not build us schools, the community got together and ensured that everybody was educated,8217;8217; said Chetty.

The most disillusioned are those who had stood by the side of Blacks in the revolution and had actually led from the front when most of the top ANC leaders were on exile. 8216;8216;This tears my heart out. It is inverse racism of the worse kinds. It is the lumpen bourgeois that is grabbing the fruits of this independence and Indians are being blamed,8217;8217; said Jerry Coovadia, who was a senior member of the Natal Indian Congress which played a significant role in the freedom struggle.

The Indians also bemoan the loss of political leadership in the community. Although there are six members in the Cabinet, people of Indian origin feel nobody is interested in taking up this cause seriously. 8216;8216;I spoke to Ngema across the table and he said things have gone out of hand,8217;8217; said Raj Bansi, an MP from the area.