Leigh Anne Naicker.
Image: Supplied
A commemorative poem rooted in the legacy of Indian indentured labour was recently launched by Durban-born academic, Dr Leigh Anne Naicker, at a global conference marking anti-colonial solidarity.
Lament for Bent Backs was launched at the international “Spirit of Bandung at 71” conference, hosted by the BRICS Research Institute, at the University of Venda.
Inspired by the historic Bandung Conference, the conference highlighted global South co-operation and anti-colonial thought.
Naicker's work was selected through an open call for a peer-reviewed poetry anthology accompanying the event.
The 45-year-old, formerly from Merebank, moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 2024 after her husband was transferred for work.
She now works as a lecturer at a business school.
Naicker used the global platform to honour the 152,184 indentured labourers who arrived in Natal between 1860 and the early 20th century. She refers to these individuals as the “bent backs” who ultimately “straightened their backs and built a future”.
She described the launch as both deeply personal and representative of a broader community history.
“Years of living with this history, growing up in Merebank, hearing family stories from my parents, who are proud storytellers of our history, and understanding how deeply indenture shaped our community, inspired my poem.
“Merebank taught me that indenture history is not abstract: it is in our parents’ stories, our temples, our community’s resilience. Growing up there, I absorbed both pride in what we built, and awareness of what was endured to build it. That duality shaped the poem. I could not write about indenture as only suffering or only triumph, because Merebank showed me it is both."
She said the poem was a tribute to the legacy of Indian indenture in South Africa, a history that was both collective and deeply personal.
Drawing on historical records and lived experience, Naicker explained that the poem used the metaphor of “bent backs” to represent the harsh realities of labour in sugar cane fields, where workers were treated as “cargo and quota”, rather than human beings.
“The act of ‘straightening their backs’ symbolises the transition from being people ‘brought to serve’ to becoming those who ‘learnt to lead’ and built a future in South Africa.
“It is a story of transformation: people brought to serve on sugar plantations who refused that definition. They built communities, fought for justice, and claimed space in a nation that tried to marginalise them."
The poem traces a historical arc beginning with the arrival of the SS Truro in 1860, widely recognised as the start of Indian indenture in Natal, and connects this past to modern expressions of sovereignty and leadership embodied by the Bandung movement.
Naicker said she sought to bridge “historical record and raw human experience”, using archival data alongside personal and collective memory.
Her research drew on institutions such as the 1860 Heritage Centre, and the work of scholars Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, as well as journalist Joanne Joseph.
“The SS Truro’s arrival in 1860 began a system that brought over 152,000 indentured Indians to Natal over five decades. Their descendants have shaped modern South Africa profoundly."
Naicker highlighted the dual nature of this legacy, one marked by both suffering and resilience.
“They were people brought to serve, but learnt to lead, who straightened their backs and built a future. In the poem, I wanted to honour both realities: the violence of what was done to them and the agency of what they achieved. The ending tries to capture this. They were ‘people who were brought to serve, but learnt to lead, who straightened their backs and built a future’.”
She said the descendants of indentured labourers played significant roles in the anti-apartheid Struggle, and continued to contribute to South Africa as teachers, activists and professionals, while also enriching the country culturally through language, cuisine and religious traditions.
However, she emphasised that the legacy remained complex.
“There is also intergenerational trauma, ongoing questions of belonging, and histories that are still being articulated. The story is not finished, and that ongoing work of articulation and transformation is itself part of the legacy.”
Naicker added that the Bandung framework helped contextualise indenture within a broader system of global exploitation.
“The poem shows how Bandung’s anti-colonial framework helped name what had always been true, that indenture was systematic exploitation, not just individual misfortune. Bandung said ‘this is design, not accident', and that clarity empowered resistance everywhere."
She explained that while the poem took several weeks to complete, it was shaped by years of personal reflection and community storytelling.
“I hope my poem shows others that history lives in us, our great-great-grandparents were not just victims but people who resisted, built and transformed their circumstances. They were brought to serve, but learnt to lead, and that refusal to be defined by oppression is our inheritance. The story is not finished. We are still claiming our history, still shaping South Africa’s future."
She added that having the poem included in the international anthology carried both honour and responsibility.
“It feels humbling because this history belongs to an entire South African Indian community, and it is meaningful because it suggests the poem honours our legacy with integrity. It is a responsibility as much as an achievement."
For Naicker, the recognition is ultimately about remembrance and continuity.
“It is a way of honouring my lineage, my parents and the community I come from. My ancestors’ stories are part of the 152,184. Most importantly, it means those who arrived on the Truro and the ships that followed, are being remembered, not as statistics, but as people whose legacy continues to shape us,” said Naicker.
| Lament for Bent Backs by Leigh Anne Naicker
Durban, 1860. They came by ledger, by cargo and quota, names shaved into numbers before the Truro turned. No speeches marked their arrival. Only sugar. Only heat. Only the routine of bent backs. Empire called it movement. Empire always does. Nearly a century later another gathering happened far from the cane fields. Different men at different tables, speaking a new vocabulary of sovereignty. Bandung, 1955. The same question hiding under new words: Who counts as human when profit needs a spine? Bandung knew Empire's script: extraction, erasure, exploitation dressed as contract. It said this is not accident. This is design. This is how power teaches colour to mean place in the order of things. Suddenly the old contracts looked different. Not paperwork. Evidence. What arrived in Durban as labour had always been injustice, though it took generations to name it. What survived in fragments: lineage, longing, language, found resonance at Bandung. What didn't survive: the ones who died on ships, the ones who broke under cane, the names that were truly erased. The descendants took up the fight against Apartheid, against erasure, against the script Empire left behind. Not migrants. Not guests. Not surplus. People who were brought to serve, but learned to lead, who straightened their backs and built a future. |