Sita Dhairyabala Dhupelia

Take from Sita’s Story: My Childhood at Phoenix Settlement

I was born on 19th of October 1928 on my grandfather’s farm, which was fifteen miles away from the city, and in those days around us were plantations of sugar cane fields. Over 100 acres of land was called Phoenix Settlement. It was the most beautiful piece of land, untouched by the then racial laws. It was a hard life for my parents. There were no proper roads to go into the city. If it rained there was mud all over and the little bridges would be over-run by the water and it was impossible to go anywhere.

My father had told the midwife to come a few days before I was due to be born. But I decided to make my arrival before then. My father had always wanted to be a doctor, so he had read everything about child-birth and while the driver went to bring the midwife my father did everything for my mother and when the midwife came after two hours, I was born, cleaned and my father cut the cord and made my mother comfortable and everything was clean and tidy. Thus I came into my parent’s life. Their first born.

My father was Manilal, the second son of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he had left in charge of the Phoenix Settlement at the tender age of eighteen. This was the beginning of his and later our lonely life away from family. It was never lonely on the farm because there were the people who worked in the press for “Indian Opinion” founded by my Grandfather in 1903 and then there were the people who worked on the farm. All these people were our family. When my Grandfather left South Africa all the settlers also left to pursue a life of material gain. Most of the Indian printing presses in Durban began from Phoenix. My father was the only one left to run the Settlement as my Grandfather has wished it to be run as a non-money making place, to serve the Indian Community. My father did so and he lived and died a poor man. Had he chosen he could have been a rich farmer or a rich printing press owner, but he chose to live as his father wished.

Read more here: http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/saho%20stuff/saho%20books/sita/ch...