Seeds of Resistance: Afro-Asian Spatialities in Natal, South Africa
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Kaskar, Amina
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Abstract
The landscape of KwaZulu-Natal endures the scars of its colonial history, with acres of land along the coast bristling with sugarcane. Over the years, the terrain has been manipulated to control and dispossess indigenous vegetation, along with certain populations. Between 1860 and 1911, laborers were recruited from farms and villages in India by the British Government to serve indentured contracts in Natal, South Africa. Indentured laborers had many skills; most notably, they were fluent in understanding the land. They used inherited knowledge to seize any opportunity for relief and success under the conditions of the colonial power. Through remarkable ingenuity, indentured laborers smuggled their own plants, methi bajee, chorahi, dhania, and more, onto the plantations, disrupting the homogeneity of the capitalist landscape. Indentured Indians in South Africa relied on seeds and plants to gain their agency and value through the land on which they toiled. They resisted the demands of the plantation regime through covert acts, which sought to recompense injustices through various acts of defiance. These small actions catalysed a culture of festivals, market gardening, and trade in Indian fruit and vegetables. This aimed to restore a measure of autonomy, dignity, and respite within the labor institution. Plants were not only part of the logic of extractivism but were also valuable for how networks of diasporic communities transformed them. Even with minimal possessions, laborers imported immaterial epistemologies of spatial tactics that they used to establish themselves in a new place. This work explores the articulation of social narratives, cultural practices, and everyday rituals within diasporic communities ordered around plants. The research uses visual ethnography and mapping to re-script dominant architectural narratives, embracing less visible itineraries and cartographies. It observes de-colonial practices and “soft” spatial imaginaries relating to collective spatial agencies.
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Date
2025-03
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Text
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Proceedings
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