By Kiru Naidoo From Fiji to Natal to the Caribbean, the British colonial authorities corralled their workers in dormitories of very similar architecture. The Magazine Barracks, housing Indian workers of the Durban Corporation, arose from an old army munitions store a few hundred metres from the shoreline of the Indian Ocean. The block is now dominated by the Durban Magistrate’s Court and central police station. The first residents were there in the 1870s, arguably among the earliest of the Indian working class in colonial Natal. That was barely a decade after being freed from the bonded labour of indenture, which began in 1860. By the 1880s, the barracks was a settled community of several hundred growing to almost 100 000 by the time of its complete destruction by the forced removals of the 1960s. The memory of Magazine Barracks tugs at the heartstrings. It was a community of working women and men. Battered, bruised and brutalised by colonialism, indenture, racism, unfettered capitalism and apartheid, but it was a lotus that bloomed on that Eastern Vlei (to borrow the defiant botanical imagery of Pushpam Murugan’s seminal people’s history of the community that was her home). Out of the muck, daily struggles for survival and the condemned living quarters, Indian municipal workers of the Durban Corporation carved a close-knit community steeped in the arts, culture, faith, sports, politics and education. Beyond the old residents and their descendants, “the barracks” hardly warrant a mention in the kaleidoscope of South African communities affected and infected by the country’s tortured past. Brian Kearney notes with special reference to Durban that, “… the urban poor and their condition has not been a specially popular theme in local history.” Magazine Barracks does not warrant a mention alongside Sophiatown, District Six or Marabastad. But for those who know of the existence of Magazine Barracks much less is known about its pulsating heartbeat over the span of almost a century and its eventual destruction in 1965 by the Group Areas Act. There is a phenomenal appetite in contemporary South Africa for stories from the ground up, of people’s stories about themselves and the emotions that make them whole. This is eloquently captured in the African proverb, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt will be told by the hunter.” The risk, however, is to romanticise. The old residents invariably look back with blinkered nostalgia, seeing the barracks as a time capsule. The close bonds of community are recalled with great affection. The indignity of the living conditions and the breadline wages is quaintly erased in the selective memory. One revolting picture is of the communal toilets. People went about their business sitting in rows facing each other. Its construction had scant regard for dignity or privacy. The ugly design was similar to the mine compounds on the Witwatersrand. Recalling the sanitation arrangements, the abiding memory of the older folk is that the ablutions were a lovely place for local chatter. Writing the stories of communities like Magazine Barracks therefore requires a wide-angle lens. Limited references exist in the published literature. In 1904, Assistant Town Clerk, WPM Henderson, compiled an almost 400-page municipal history of Durban to mark the borough’s golden jubilee. Although, illuminating, it was an elite history of the town’s grandees and their accomplishments. African and Indian workers get passing reference, often in the context of detailing nuisances rather than respect for their labour or contribution to the economy of the borough. GALLERY | The Magazine Barracks Remembrance Race presents another dilemma. Well before the apartheid Group Areas Act was passed by the Nationalists in 1950, the municipal authorities enforced a rigid race-based residential segregation. From early colonial times, divide-and-rule pioneered by the colonial administrator Lord Lugard was a rule imbibed by the oppressor and oppressed alike. Interaction between Indian and African municipal workers was very limited even though they lived in neighbouring barracks. Even a pioneering trade union like the Durban Indian Municipal Employees Society (DIMES), which had its roots in the communist movement showed flashes of protectionism. Sport, more especially soccer presented an opportunity to break out of the rigidity of racial segregation. A charming barracks legend is the Indian soccerite, Matambo, whose name arises from the IsiZulu word for bone, ithambo. He regularly played on what was called the “African Ground”. While there are different interpretations of the name given to him by fellow players, one describes his physical strength on the field and the other about his tackles being so fierce that it could break an opponent’s leg. The champion boxer, Billy Nagiah, whose sport brought him into contact with all communities recalls the exchange of rations with African workers in the adjacent barracks. Items like rice and cooking oil were for instance exchanged for maize and lard. The overarching shadow of racial oppression and forced relocation aside, there is palpable pride among the old residents and their descendants that there was once a community called Magazine Barracks. Sixty years on, there has been no occasion for healing, with neither a mayor nor a minister coming forward to apologize for the sins of the past, or to erect a little plaque to say “people were living there”. The people, however, have never forgotten their roots. In Human Rights Month 2025, the Magazine Barracks Remembrance Association will host a reunion gathering in Chatsworth, Durban, with rock bands and heritage foods. The community will honour and celebrate each other with special mention of stalwarts like Dr. Sam Ramsamy who rose to international prominence in the anti-apartheid sports struggle and served on the executive of the International Olympic Committee. Magazine Barracks remains a cherished place of memory. Kiru Naidoo is an Author, academic, a member of the Magazine Barracks Remembrance Association and founder of the Indian Diaspora Research Academy (INDRA)