Kuppusamy Chetty
Kuppusamy Chetty, father of Moonsamy Chetty, arrived in South Africa on a ship carrying indentured labourers in 1893, aged 17. Kuppusamy taught drama, Tamil and the six-foot dance (an Indian village dance) to the Baynesfield community and worked on the Baynesfield Estate as a builder, painter and carpenter.
On his arrival, Kuppusamy found that there was a need for buildings of worship.
“He found many devout souls kneeling in prayer under a huge tree and this is when he took the initiative to build two small temples with a hall. The hall still exists, while the temples have been demolished,” said Moonsamy.
He was also involved in the building of the Bethany Church which still stands on the estate, among many other buildings, including houses and pigsties.
On a trip to India in 1932, Kuppusamy built a house in the Katakanur district of Arani. However, after spending a year in India, Moonsamy’s parents and his five siblings returned to Baynesfield after a child became ill.
“[My father] was a strong man full of zeal and enthusiasm. He was a very hard worker and a highly cultured man who was full of authority and was well respected by all,” said Moonsamy.
Moonsamy’s mother died in 1936 and he described Kuppusamy as “both a mother and father to his children, his daughters- and sons-in-law, and grandchildren”.
An independent man, Kuppusamy lived alone but was revered for the way he interacted with his grandchildren.
“[He used to] give my children singing lessons in his language and teach them how to play the banjo.”
Kuppusamy died at Northdale Hospital in December 1981, due to cardiorespiratory failure at the age of 105.
Moonsamy Chetty
Moonsamy was born in 1927 and worked at Baynesfield from the age of 10. He worked until the age of 13 and attended Thornville State-aided School when he was 14.
At Baynesfield, Moonsamy cared for the turkeys, fowls, sheep and calves.
“Baynesfield had three kinds of fowls and two kinds of ducks. One of my tasks was to separate the fowls and ducks in their right colours and put them in their pens,” said Moonsamy.
He was transferred to the milking department to record the names of the cows and the amount of milk taken from each cow.
“There were 350 milking cows. Cows used to be milked three times a day. That meant 1 050 entries a day!”
He was also a drama teacher and actor who sang and played the Bul-Bul-Thara (a musical instrument).
Moonsamy married Puspan Chetty in 1947, at the age of 20.
“My father went to Durban to look for two girls for his two sons. He went to Asherville and after some inquiries, he visited my wife’s parents’ residence.”
Together, Puspan and Moonsamy shared many special moments on Baynesfield.
“On Baynesfield Estate, you inhaled magnificent clean air and walked on fertile soil. All the people lived as one big happy family. Everybody worked in unity and harmony and with respect for all races andages.
“Homes were burglar-guard-free with no high fences, no padlocks and no alarm systems. Children grew as children and interacted with both young and old. At festival times, the small village burst with big hearts as each and every person co-operated in making either Christmas or Diwali a celebration to remember.
“My interaction with all the workers was a very respectful and harmonious one. Working life then was completely different to how it is now. We were at peace with ourselves and it brought about peace with others. There were no arguments or conflicts and, as I remember, there were no squabbles between colleagues. Everyone came to work to earn a living and did what they had to do.
“The word ‘stress’ is something new to me because we did not experience that. Working on the farm was certainly hard work, but we did not stress about the hard work. We worked without being affected. I saw this as my responsibility as the head, the husband and the father of the home.”
Moonsamy worked for Baynesfield for more than 40 years and left in 1974 due to the poor income he received (about R60 a month).
“If I had an option I would have stayed, but I had a huge family to feed and educate and the income earned there was not enough. I had to look for better prospects.”
Intherani Govender and Tony Chetty
Intherani Govender, Moonsamy’s eldest daughter, left Baynesfield at the age of 21. She used to weed, harvest and pocket the mielie fields with her brother, Tony Chetty, who left at about the age of 19.
Both attended Thornville State-aided School and would travel to school on the piggery van and return home on foot.
During school holidays, they worked in the wattle fields.
In 1965, Govender started her first job in the cheese-making factory.
She said about her effort in the cheese-making process: “I am thankful that I lived at Baynesfield. It taught me a lot about living an economical home life.
“Once, my younger brother, Siva, who was extremely fanatical about mechanics, used a hosepipe as an inner tube for his bicycle and rode his bicycle to Wally’s Supermarket.”
Tony, a helpful handyman who builds and paints, still has his paintwork on the walls in their old home at Baynesfield.
He remembers the extreme sense of community he felt at Baynesfield, where everyone knew and helped everyone.
“When we were boys we used to play football all the time. It could be 2 am and we would go into each house to call the other boys.
“Everyone knew everyone. We were free to walk in and out of the homes,” he said.
• These stories are part of a weekly series currently running in The Witness to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of indentured labourers in South Africa from India.
Other Baynesfield Families
IN an article published in 2004 in The Witness, Nalini Naidoo spoke to the Pandaram and Naidoo families who had also worked on theBaynesfield Estate.
The Pandaram family
The section in which the Pandaram family lived on the estate was a replica of an Indian village. They lived in two- and three-bedroom mud houses with thatched roofs.
Sam Pandaram was fascinated that in those early days, the caste system remained intact on the estate.
He said that Indian and African women worked side by side in the fields and if an African woman accidently touched an Indian, nothing would happen. However, if a woman was touched by a person of a lower caste, there was trouble.
“I remember that the girls were scared that a person of a lower caste would touch their billycans of food, so to avoid this they carried their cans at the end of a long stick ... I even witnessed a fight where one of the ladies accused a low caste of touching her ishumbu [billycan]. In the end, the other person had to take the ‘dirty can’ and buy her a new one.
Third-generation Mark Pandaram still lives on the Baynes field Estate and enjoys the country life.
The Naidoo Family
Ramsamy Naidoo left Baynes field when he was four and was the youngest child in his family.
“My father often told me about how he came to South Africa. He ran away from home as a youngster to seek his fortune here. He came in 1902 at the end of the Anglo-Boer war and remembered seeing the soldiers at the harbour leaving for England.
“My father said they were herded like a flock of sheep onto the ship. The journey was difficult, conditions were unhygienic and many people died at sea and their bodies were thrown overboard ...”
Naidoo worked in the boiler room, which generated steam to pasteurise the milk. When the dairy closed, many of the workers in his section went to work in the bacon factory.
In 1970, he moved toPietermaritzburg.
Baynesfield Estate is situated between Pietermaritzburg and Richmond. It was founded by Joseph Baynes in 1863.
Among other things, Baynes pioneered the dairy industry in South Africa and gave Durban its first organised fresh milk and butter.
He died in 1925 and bequeathed his entire estate to be used for the benefit of all South Africans.
For more information, visit http://www.baynesfieldmuseum.co.za
“Baynesfield, to the people who lived there, was and is known for it’s ‘freshness’. The crisp air, the fresh food... ‘organic’ is not a new word to the people from Baynesfield. Going down memory lane, I can recall the thick misty mornings, the sound of squealing piglets at the piggery which was surrounded by strawberry fields and walking amongst a herdful of grazing cattle, chewing their cud with flapping ears and swagging tails.” Moonsamy Chetty, 2nd generation of the Chetty family
“Joseph Baynes was a good but stern man. We were given meal rations weekly and a portion of land. We used this land to grow vegetables and sold the surplus to the markets in Durban and Pietermaritzburg.”
by Mark Pandaram third generation of the Pandaram family
Published in The Witness on 20 September 2010 - Original article can be read here
