HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: ARRIVAL OF CHINESE IN SOUTH AFRICA
Indians (from India) were not the only indentured labourers to come to South Africa. Chinese labourers, referred to as "Celestials" (probably because China was called “All Under Heaven”, and the title of Accone's book), were brought to South Africa in large numbers in 1904 to help boost the flagging gold mines (the request for Ugandans was turned down by themselves). A comparison between Indian and Chinese indentured labour as well as the writings between the two groups would make an interesting study but is beyond the scope of this paper.
When the Chinese arrived South Africa was consolidating itself and moving towards Union. The South African War ended at the Treaty of Vereeniging. There was a compromise between Boer and Briton, with Blacks being excluded from the franchise (to appease the Transvaal, Free State and Natal). This led to the forming of the South African Native National Congress, the forerunner of the African National Congress [ANC], in 1912.
The discovery of gold in Johannesburg in 1886 made it the centre of a developing South Africa. The British High Commissioner Lord Milner began post-war revitalisation in earnest and turned his attention to the mining industry. There was a falling away of African labour as their wages were reduced, and the mines were short of around 129,000 unskilled workers, with estimates indicating that a further 196,000 were needed in the next five years. To kick-start the mining sector Lord Milner turned to recruiting Chinese workers in an indentured scheme, seeing this as a means of obtaining cheap labour and supplementing (or even ousting) local Black labour.
The Chinese arrived mainly through the port of Durban, and then travelled to Johannesburg, while some travelled via Port Elizabeth. Indentured Indians were already in South Africa in large numbers since 1860. By July 1905 there were 11,352 registered Asians (10,237 Indians and 1,115 Chinese)1, with Indians and Chinese referred to collectively as "Asian".
What is worth noting is that the arrival of the Chinese affected both British and South African politics at this time; there was opposition to the scheme from conservatives in the United Kingdom who saw this as an onslaught. The indentured scheme shows the existence of human trafficking for purely economic reasons and the creation and exploitation of labour diasporas in the global world at the turn of the 20th century. We also need to understand how the global flows of labour in the 19th century (and before and after) for mainly economic reasons influenced the cultural politics of the world, and how its complex implications continue to be played out in the present time. Edward Said points out that what we begin "to realise is the universality…not of stabilities… but of migrations: these massive transversals of one realm into another…There's a total reconfiguration of the cultural scene that can only be understood… historically"2. Such "interdependence and overlapping" in our histories must surely influence the way we define and engage in literary studies.
The Chinese who decided to come, however, nurtured many alluring tales about Namfeechow, (the Chinese, or Cantonese, name for South Africa) and of Johannesburg, whose Chinese name was Kum Saan. Most immigrants longed to come to this "city of the gold mountain", to seek their fortune, a place seen as The Promised Land. To other groups as well, Johannesburg is iGoli (its Nguni name), the city of gold.
How do the new immigrants envisage and anticipate life in the new country? Predictably, before they leave home the new immigrants construct images of South Africa on the basis of their experiences back in China:
What colour rivers would this strange-sounding country have? Were they wide and deep for swimming? Did the mist cover the mountains in the early morning and then rise off the water to reveal towering tops, resembling the serrated teeth of dragons or the elongated forehead of Shouxing, the god of long life? What sort of T'ong yan boys and girls were there in Kum Saan - would they look just like those at home in Sha Kiu and its neighbouring rival Ma Kiu?3
TREATMENT OF CHINESE IN SOUTH AFRICA
These images are in sharp contrast to the actual experiences that Chinese labourers encountered. Even before the turn of the century, when pockets of Chinese were arriving in South Africa, a great deal of anti-Asian feeling was directed against them (as well as against Indians). Bhana and Brain write that Port Elizabeth was seen as an easy entry point and attempts were made to tighten regulations there. They record that "instructions were issued to the immigration officer at the port to the effect that the master of every ship was to hand in a 'correct list' of every crew member and every passenger, with details of nationality, place of disembarkation and occupation"4. They add that “a proclamation to this effect was issued in all the ports of the Cape Colony". Indians and Chinese had been considered 'indesirable immigrants' after 1898 when it was pointed out that a 'regular influx of Asiatics' was arriving in Port Elizabeth.
In 1893 the official count of these inhabitants was as follows: 449 "Arabs", 295 Coolies, 237 Chinese, 605 Malays, 562 "Kaapsche Jongens."5 The list drawn up in 1898 shows precisely where Indians and Chinese stores were to be located because the intention was to relocate them in separate areas such as Fordsburg, Braamfontein and Jeppestown 6, with these areas being sited close to the Main Reef diggings7.
There were restrictions on Asian immigration at the turn of the century8. Pressure against immigration especially in Natal mounted and in 1901 a conference was held to discuss the whole question of immigration and the prohibition of 'undesirable' immigrants. The petitions drawn up at this time were strongly opposed to the bringing of Chinese labour to the gold mines. This agitation resulted in the introduction of regulations, under the Immigration Act of 1902, which would force new immigrants to pass a test in one of the European languages; this was to apply to European as well as Asian immigrants9.
So when the new wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in 1904 there was already much prejudice against them (an "influx" of 50,000 Chinese is recorded for this time)10. There were accusations of banditry and savagery against the new immigrants. These rumours and fear spread across the Reef. In The Rand Daily Mail of 25 September 1905, a correspondent wrote: "The Transvaal is fighting its own peculiar yellow peril. For the moment it is a land under the shadow of the Chinese danger…in the country districts men manufacture weapons of defence and barricade their houses by night, and women dread to be left alone..."11.
In All Under Heaven Ah Kwok, Accone's grand-father, gives another impression, recalling the stories he had been told of the earlier wave of Chinese immigrants - that indentured workers tunnelled and shovelled underground by day, slept in overcrowded rooms by night and, when off duty, were penned in compounds like beasts and denied even basic recreational facilities.
The flogging of Chinese labourers must have been severe for it was received with reprehension in the United Kingdom and caused much criticism against Milner in England. The government was toppled on this issue and the flow of Chinese labourers was halted; and efforts were made to repatriate those who had arrived. While officially by 1909 and early 1910 the bulk of the labourers sailed back to China some remained in South Africa to make it their permanent home.
A similar case obtained in the US in the 1870's after the end of slavery, when Black labourers were not as readily available as previously and White southern planters resorted to the importation of Chinese labourers.
The treatment endured by Chinese workers (also referred to as "coolies") in South Africa is similar to that experienced by Chinese migrants to the United States, and is recounted by Maxine Hong Kingston in China Men12. This was the time of the gold rush in California and in Australia and there are many references in Accone's text to migration to these places. In fact there was confusion among some of the travellers as to where they were actually going. Some believed they were going to the Gold Mountain in the California, which was referred to as the "old Gold Mountain"13. Other "Promised Lands." (Jim Wong-Chu has written On Gold Mountain, which is set in Canada.) The constant reference in All Under Heaven to these migrations shows that the family history is part of the "genealogies of dispersion" and “cartographies of displacement” (to use Brah's words) at a wider global scale. Accordingly, though these stories are scripted as narratives governed by individual choice, we are constrained to ask “what socio-economic, political and cultural conditions marked the trajectories of these journeys"14?
The histories of the two countries [South Africa and China] must thus be seen in relation to the global economics of the time. Apart from the export of labour from China for the development of the South African mining industry, the practice of the transportation of human indentured labour across the seas was a widespread global phenomenon, with the flow, of course, going in one direction - from the Third World to the Western nations. Indentured labour was seen as an exportable commodity, following the official abolition of slavery. And in reading literature we do well to remember that "the notion of a global setting in literature comes from the imperial experience"15.
We also need to remember that the imperialist practice of colonialism and apartheid was buttressed by the ideology of Orientalism. Edward Said has drawn our attention to the way "Orientalists structured a historico-geographical Orient of the mind … a discursive tableau vivant on which ‘Orientals’ could be manufactured, observed, manipulated, preserved, dissected, judged – an intentionally structured place that serves as museum, laboratory, storehouse, and theatre in equal measure”16. These impressions are arguably the subtext of Accone's book, where the systematic othering of Chinese was a direct part of the policy of indentured labour and of the oppression and discrimination that they experienced in South Africa.
Rey Chow has rightly drawn attention to the ongoing currency of Orientalism:
the most crucial issue …remains Orientalism’s general and continuing ideological role. Critics of Said in the East Asian field sometimes justify their criticism by saying that Said’s theory does not apply to East Asia because many East Asian countries were not, territorially, colonial possessions. This kind of positivistic thinking, derived from a literal understanding of the significance of geographical captivity, is not only an instance of the ongoing anthropological tendency to de-emphasise the ‘colonial situation’… it also leaves intact the most important aspect of Orientalism – its legacy as everyday culture and value.17
1 Bhana, Surendra and Joy Brain. 1990. Setting Down Roots - Indian Immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg. p149
2 Viswanathan, Gauri. [ed]. 2001. Power, Politics and Culture - interviews with Edward W Said. Bloomsbury: London. p114
3 All Under Heaven. p9
4 Setting Down Roots - Indian Immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. pp114-115
5 Setting Down Roots - Indian Immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. p84
6 Setting Down Roots - Indian Immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. Same page.
7 Frescura, Franco. 2001. "The spatial geography of urban apartheid." In Zegeye, A [ed], p101
8 Setting Down Roots - Indian Immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. p115
9 Setting Down Roots - Indian Immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. p139
10 "The spatial geography of urban apartheid." p104
11 Reader's Digest - South Africa's Yesterdays. 1981. Reader's Digest: Cape Town. p23
12 See Hassan, Maha. 2005. "Sharing America: Counter-Narrative and Historical Revision in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men." Paper presented at the EACLALS Conference, 2005, Malta.
13 All Under Heaven. p40
14 Brah, Avter. 2003. "Diaspora, Border and Transnational Identities." In: Reina Lewis and Sara Mills (editors). Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. p616
15 Power, Politics and Culture - interviews with Edward W Said. p247
16 Hussein, Abdirahman A. 2002. Edward Said - Criticism and Society. Verso: London/New York. pp259-260
17 Chow, Rey. 1993. Writing Diaspora – Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indiana. p7
