Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Repression, Revelation and Resurrection: The Revival of the NIC
- 2 Black Consciousness and the Challenge to the ‘I’ in the NIC
- 3 Between Principle and Pragmatism: Debates over the SAIC, 1971−1978
- 4 Changing Geographies and New Terrains of Struggle
- 5 Class(rooms) of Dissent: Education Boycotts and Democratic Trade Unions, 1976−1985
- 6 Lenin and the Duma Come to Durban: Reigniting the Participation Debate
- 7 The Anti-SAIC Campaign of 1981: Prefigurative Politics?
- 8 Botha’s 1984 and the Rise of the UDF
- 9 Letters from Near and Afar: The Consulate Six
- 10 Inanda, Inkatha and Insurrection: 1985
- 11 Building Up Steam: Operation Vula and Local Networks
- 12 Between Fact and Factions: The 1987 Conference
- 13 ‘Caught With Our Pants Down’: The NIC and the Crumbling of Apartheid 1988−1990
- 14 Snapping the Strings of the UDF
- 15 Digging Their Own Grave: Debating the Future of the NIC
- 16 The Ballot Box, 1994: A Punch in the Gut?
- 17 Between Rajbansi’s ‘Ethnic Guitar’ and the String of the ANC Party List
- Conclusion: A Spoke in the Wheel
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Changing Geographies and New Terrains of Struggle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Repression, Revelation and Resurrection: The Revival of the NIC
- 2 Black Consciousness and the Challenge to the ‘I’ in the NIC
- 3 Between Principle and Pragmatism: Debates over the SAIC, 1971−1978
- 4 Changing Geographies and New Terrains of Struggle
- 5 Class(rooms) of Dissent: Education Boycotts and Democratic Trade Unions, 1976−1985
- 6 Lenin and the Duma Come to Durban: Reigniting the Participation Debate
- 7 The Anti-SAIC Campaign of 1981: Prefigurative Politics?
- 8 Botha’s 1984 and the Rise of the UDF
- 9 Letters from Near and Afar: The Consulate Six
- 10 Inanda, Inkatha and Insurrection: 1985
- 11 Building Up Steam: Operation Vula and Local Networks
- 12 Between Fact and Factions: The 1987 Conference
- 13 ‘Caught With Our Pants Down’: The NIC and the Crumbling of Apartheid 1988−1990
- 14 Snapping the Strings of the UDF
- 15 Digging Their Own Grave: Debating the Future of the NIC
- 16 The Ballot Box, 1994: A Punch in the Gut?
- 17 Between Rajbansi’s ‘Ethnic Guitar’ and the String of the ANC Party List
- Conclusion: A Spoke in the Wheel
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Important changes in terms of class and geographical location took place within the Indian community in Durban in the 1970s. Increased access to secondary and tertiary education facilitated the emergence of a significant middle class as the UDW churned out graduates in accountancy, engineering, pharmacy, teaching and law. Many of the new professionals came from the working class and were often the very first in their family to go to university.
The city's map was also redrawn, as bulldozers uprooted homes and dumped Indians on the outer edges of the city. The NIC's political base in its old stamping grounds of the Durban CBD, Clairwood and Cato Manor was increasingly eroded as the working and lower-middle classes took up residence in Chatsworth and Phoenix, while the middle and upper classes populated areas as far afield as Reservoir Hills and Isipingo Beach. Faced with these dramatic changes in places of residence, younger members of the NIC, in seeking to move beyond workshops and peace camps, turned their focus to these new areas to the north and south of the city. In these areas thousands of people were adjusting to new conditions and struggling to rebuild their cultural and sporting organisations.
It was the long trek to work, which dominated the lives of newly minted Chatsworthians, that presented the NIC with an initial entry point.
Chatsworth bus ban of 1972
Many of the new residents of Chatsworth, 25 kilometres south of Durban, were forcibly relocated from areas close to the city. Overnight they faced the daily prospect of travelling long distances to their places of work. Chatsworth had just one arterial road, private cars were a luxury and single-lane roads were congested. For commuters to the CBD, transport times and costs doubled.
Indian bus owners moved their operations into Chatsworth as Group Areas enforcement began to erode the old Indian areas. However, in a typical apartheid-era diktat, in 1972 the Durban City Council decided to ban buses from operating between Durban and Chatsworth. The aim was to force residents to use the newly developed rail system, which they had resisted because it was difficult to access and more expensive.
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- Colour, Class and CommunityThe Natal Indian Congress, 1971-1994, pp. 63 - 82Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2021