death
ON October 4, 1860, 163 years ago, a ship called the Belvedere disembarked from the port city of Calcutta (now Kolkata), carrying 342 labourers destined for the port city of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal).
The Belvedere warrants a deeper gaze in highlighting human commodification, abuse and violence in the machinations that administered the colonial system of indenture.
Records show that 29 of the 342 passengers perished in the Indian Ocean before the ship reached South Africa on November 26, 1860.
Further misery followed when the passengers arrived in Natal with 10 dying even before being assigned to a plantation.
The exhausted passengers, having spent 84 days at sea, arrived 10 days after the
