Life of former sugar cane labourer (96) celebrated

Working as a labourer on the sugar plantations, rice fields and vegetable gardens on farms near Port Shepstone was recalled at a birthday function for a local 96-year-old great-grandmother recently.

The event was held in honour of Papathy Govender at the home of her 73-year-old daughter, Ruby Naicker, in Marburg.

Family members from far afield as Johannesburg and Durban joined a large number of their local Port Shepstone relatives to celebrate the legacy of Papathy, who toiled on two farms near Port Shepstone all her early and adult life.

She was born on September 30 in 1926 at Batania Farm, which was leased by her father, Kanan Govender, after he had completed his five year indenture on a neighbouring sugar estate.

He had come to the former Natal Colony from a village in Tamil Nadu in India as a teenager in the 1880s. He was recruited to work as an indentured labourer by a sugar farmer in Port Shepstone.
Kanan, famously known as KanKan, used his influence to lease a 20-acre farm in the Batania area. Here he planted sugarcane, vegetables and rice.

The young eligible bachelor was soon introduced to a young woman who was a local girl. He married her, Alyamma, and after a few years he married his wife’s sister, Mariamma, as his second wife.
He lived with both his wives at Batania Farm and fathered 17 children.

Papathy, who was the eldest from his first wife, toiled in the fields with her two mothers. Life was tough. “We worked very hard every day from very early until our tasks were completed,” she told me in the Tamil language.

When she was 15 years-old, her father made arrangements for her to marry Narainsamy Govender, the son of a neighbouring farmer, Jitla Govender.

The wedding took place at her father-in-law’s Izotsha farm. They stayed in Izotsha where their first four children were born. After some discussions with Papathy’s parents they moved to Batania where they continued to work in the fields as ordinary labourers.

“Both my husband and I worked in the fields here at Batania and had to bear the hardships. But after a while my father-in-law insisted that we should move back to Izotsha. Here too we worked in the fields again, looking after the sugar cane and rice crops and vegetables. Life was very difficult and I recall that many a time I used to carry cabbages on my head when I was fully pregnant.”

Her husband, in addition to working in the fields, was also a laundry man. Papathy and her husband were parents to seven children – four daughters and three sons.

Except for two children, Radha and Baby, the rest of the children – Pushpa, Ruby, Sadha, Krish and Jaya – are all settled in and around Port Shepstone.

All the children also worked in the fields before completing their schooling and entering other professions.
Papathy continued to live on her father-in- law’s farm even after her husband died at the age of 45, when the youngest son was six years old.

She was 35-years old at the time of her husband’s death. Of her siblings of 11 children, only she and a sister, Thanga (82), are still alive today.

And from her second mother’s six children, two daughters, Ambie 71, and Goindu 85, are still around.
Papathy has 16 grand-children (one late Delon), and 21 great-grand-children. One great-great-grand-child will be born soon in Cape Town.

She currently lives with her son, Sadha, and his wife, Reena, in Marburg.
According to family members, 96-year-old Papathy Govender is still very strong and helps with the house-hold chores of washing dishes and folding washed clothes.

“She is enjoying her advanced age and I suppose this is due largely to all the hard work she had done during her early life and after marriage,” said her third daughter, Ruby Naicker.

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