A significant historical event will be remembered on Sunday April 20, 2008. The fourth annual Gandhi Salt March will start at the Phoenix Settlement in Inanda and finish at the Army Support Base at Battery Beach. Participants will either walk 5km, 10km and 15km in distance.

The Salt March originally took place in India on 6 April 1930 and was known as the “Dandi March’. Mahatma Gandhi had organized the march, managing to gather thousands of people from all over India. The march lasted 24 days over a distance of 241 miles, from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to the village of Dandi.

The main objective of the march was to protest the tax imposed on salt by the British Government. Gandhi was arrested and other marchers were harassed by the police, with two people killed, three hundred hospitalized and over 60 000 arrested.

For more information on the history of the Salt March: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha

Date: 20 April
Time: 8am

Buses available from Battery Beach to Phoenix. Contact Nereshnee Govender 031 373 5486 or Ela Gandhi 031 201 2067.

If religion is the greatest international divider, Indian cinema is the most unifying force.’ - Ebrahim Essa

Today the Shiraz cinema in Victoria Street stands as an ailing monument, the last remaining outpost (closing in April) of the former hey day of Indian cinema in Durban’s city centre. It’s not to say Indian Cinema in the province is dead – far from it - still the illustrious boom era of motion pictures in Durban’s CBD (the 1940’s through to the 80’s) goes mostly untold which is why local film makers Colwyn Thomas, Karen Logan and Neil Coppen have launched an exciting new documentary project that aims to distill the essence and history of this golden age.

Aspects the film makers intend to cover throughout the film are…

• The competition between rival cinemas (ranging from the Victoria Picture Palace, Shah Jehan, Isfahan, Avalon and the Naaz Dynasties)
• The trials and tribulations regarding distribution and couriering of Indian films
• The industrious black market.
• Indian cinema within the Apartheid context.
• What influences on the development of Indian identity as well as ideas and imaginings of India itself did the films of the time provide?
• What was it that brought the golden age of motion pictures to a close? Dallas or the pirated DVD?

With the central focus of our narrative being the Shiraz Cinema closure, the documentary hopes to branch out to explore the arrival and impact of cinema in the province (more particularly the rise and fall of complexes in the Grey Street region) and its subsequent relocation to outlying suburbs and malls.

In pursuit of answers the filmmakers hope to combine personal narratives and recollections (accompanied by archive photography and film) from various prolific local Playwrights, Historians, novelists, film makers, cinema owners, projectionists, Durban (past and present) cinema owners and audience members. The film makers aim to compile a moving and enlightening retrospective of cinema’s expansive roots and its far reaching effects on the coastal African city.

If you have any information, contacts, Archive materials, personal recollections or anecdotes you would like to contribute toward the project please get hold of Neil Coppen at kwacinema@gmail.com or call 0837811459.

Grey Street is tied to the history of the Indian population in Durban. Indentured Indian labourers were first brought out by the British in the 1860s to work the newly established sugarcane plantations in Natal. Indian traders, mainly from the Gujarat area, migrated to South Africa at the same time. Today, Durban has the largest Asian population in sub-Saharan Africa and trade with India has become a large part of the local economy. Grey Street exists today as the old Indian business and residential area of Durban and the cultural heart of KwaZulu-Natal Indian community.

Grey Street is given a particular Indian architectural character by the “colonnades over pavements, narrow lanes leading to courtyards behind and the fondness shown for the flamboyant and curvilinear architecture of the 1920s and 1930s” (www.sahistory.org.za). The boundaries of ‘Grey Street’ are Commercial Road in the south, Derby Street in the north, Field Street in the east, and Brook and Cross Street in the west. In Lotus People, Aziz Hassim explains how the different streets in the 1950s and 60s performed different functions. The eastern part of Victoria Street held the theatre, with the west being reserved for the markets and grocery stores. Grey Street itself was a clothing Mecca, with the latest fashions from London skilfully recreated by local craftsmen. Queen Street had the barbers on one side with the hardware and timber shops on the other, while Pine Street was the territory of the tailors. Prince Edward Street housed the sari shops and jewellers with tea-rooms selling sweetmeats scattered throughout the area. The area is still, to a degree, divided up into these specific segments though the old shops now compete with an influx of cheap Chinese imports.

The Grey Street writers all, unsurprisingly, produced works with political overtones. Nicol Street Square, or ‘Red Square’, became an important site for political rallies and speakers. In 1946, the Apartheid government instituted the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act whereby Indians were to be segregated forcefully into ‘Group Areas’. Dr Goonam’s family home was expropriated by the government and bulldozed to make way for white housing. After being arrested for her political activity, Goonam made the following speech:

“I plead guilty and ask the court to impose the maximum sentence permitted by law. … I was protesting against that oppressive and pernicious law recently enacted against my people who had no part in framing it. The Act spells disaster, ruin and a state of semi-serfdom to our people who contributed greatly to the prosperity of this country. South Africa we are reminded frequently, is a democratic country…. I am here to vindicate this interpretation of democracy.”

Today many of the main ‘Grey Street’ figures have moved away or died; and it no longer has the feel of the close-knit community described in the texts. In Lotus People, Hassim writes:

“The street’s changing…Look around you. There was a time you could spot half a dozen scotens with one sweep of your eyes. Not anymore. And the cinemas - the Vic, the Royal, the Avalon - all no more than a memory. What happened to Dhanjees Fruiterers, Victoria Furniture Mart, Kapitans, that noisy Royal Tinsmith Company… hell buddy, I could go on forever.”

As a historic literary region, Grey Street is comparable to Sophiatown in Gauteng and District Six in Cape Town – all three were vibrant multicultural areas existing in defiance of the apartheid policies. Sophiatown and District Six were destroyed by the state and so exist purely in the national consciousness as symbols of the struggle. Grey Street, luckily, can still be visited.

Aziz Hassim, Phyllis Naidoo, Dr Goonam and Fatima Meer are all writers who lived in Grey Street during the apartheid era. Recent additions to the Grey Street literary scene are Mariam Akabor, author of Flat 9, Ravi Govender, whose collection Down Memory Lane features stories of ‘old’ Durban, and Imraan Coovadia who wrote The Wedding. Not known as a writer primarily but an important local and international figure is Mahatma Ghandi who had links to Grey Street. Another famous resident is Archbishop Dennis Hurley who was based at the Emmanuel Cathedral located in the middle of the Casbah. Hurley was linked to the anti-apartheid struggle as was the Cathedral as a place of refuge.

Phyllis Naidoo (1928 - ) was a member of the Natal Indian Congress and the South African Communist Party. She writes mainly political non-fiction concerned with recording the history of the struggle. Her publication most relevant to Grey Street is Footprints in Grey Street, a series of vignettes of the people she knew from her time in Grey Street.

Dr Goonam (1906 – 1999) worked as a doctor in Grey Street but is remembered for her political activity. Together with Doctors Dadoo and Naicker, she led the 1946 Indian Passive Resistance Campaign against the anti-Indian Land Act, which would forcibly remove Indians from their homes and place them in ghettos. In 1990 she published her autobiography, Coolie Doctor. Her stories vividly capture life in the Indian community in Durban. During one of her house-visits a white child remarked “oh mummy, the coolie doctor is here”, a name she then used for the title of her book.

Fatima Meer (1928 - ) was born in Grey Street and was an anti-apartheid campaigner and founding member of the Federation of South African Women that spearheaded the historic women’s march to the Union Buildings in 1956. Meer has published more than forty books, mostly non-fiction dealing with socio-economic issues, history and autobiography, (see Mandela: Higher Than Hope).

Aziz Hassim (1935 - ) spent his formative years fraternising on the streets of the Casbah. In an interview he states that “the area had a kind of romance and bittersweet lifestyle during the fifties and sixties, which lives on only in the minds of those that inhabited it at the time”. Hassim’s debut novel, The Lotus People, won the 2001 Sanlam Literary Award and spans the events of this era.

Mariam Akabor (1984 - ) is a graduate of the UKZN creative writing program. She wrote Flat 9 from her own experiences of living in Grey Street in a dilapidated block of flats. The sense of community amongst the inhabitants of this block echoes the sense of community that Hassim evokes in his novel showing that the ‘old’ Grey Street still exists in small pockets in the area.

Ravi Govender hosts a talk show on the radio station Lotus FM. Down Memory Lane is a collection of 35 stories from his column of the same name in the Post newspaper, spanning life in Durban from the late 1800s to the 1960s and focused largely on Durban’s Indian history.

Imraan Coovadia (1970 - ) was born in Durban and currently resides in New York, where he is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Adelphi University. His debut novel, The Wedding, was shortlisted for the 2002 Sunday Times Fiction Award, Ama-Boeke Prize (2003), and Dublin International Literary Award (2005). He is also the author of Green-eyed Thieves.

For more, visit www.literarytourism.co.za

Second River Temple, Cato Manor

Guru welcomed us to his temple, deserted on a weekday afternoon. Inside, a quiet stillness mingled with the sweet smell of holy ash.

“You know, I had a Chinese that came here and he said to me ‘can I pray my way’ and I said, ‘not a problem, you’re most welcome’. And he laughed and he prayed, and he prayed just how we pray.

Sometimes people of different faiths come here and my idea is not to try to convert them. Whether they believe in Christ or the prophet Mohamed or the ancestors, I try to make their faith stronger. I have helped Christians and Moslems, black, white and Indian. This is a place of worship and you can come here and still pray to Christ, I believe in that, you can stand here and still pray to the prophet Buddha.

There is only one god for all races. Even though there are different practices, all lead to the same place. When you walk in the temple, everyone is equal. There is no difference between male or female, black or white, or anything else.

I have traveled around the world and experienced the different faiths.

I went to the Holy Land. The journey there was miserable. They wanted to know why an Indian was going to Israel. They thought I was a terrorist. Once I was inside it was fine, the people were very friendly to me. I was never stopped or questioned by anyone.

I did the whole of Israel, went to all the important things - where Christ actually fed the bread, where he was crucified, where he fell, where he was put in the tomb - and I went there with an open mind. That was a unique thing.

But you know, the experience made me a better a person.”

Taken from Along the Way (www.alongtheway.co.za).