SOUTH AFRICA: Five Daughters

Old customs die hard in a back country. Nowhere in Natal are the traditions of ancient India observed more strictly than on the backwoods Moonsammy banana farm near Sea Cow Lake. In nearby Durban, where many of South Africa's 365,000 Indians rub shoulders with the West, young Indian girls are often permitted to dance and date but Farmer Moonsammy kept his wife and five daughters always in the bondage of purdah, the second-rate status of women in the land of his ancestors. The five girls, ranging in age from 26 to 14, worked hard all day in their father's fields, and at the end of each long day they were forced to wait patiently while the menfolk finished their evening meal at the family dinner table. Then, along with their mother, the girls were permitted to squat on the floor and eat what was left.

One day last week the Moonsammy girls asked their father for permission to visit a married brother who lives only a few miles away. The answer, inevitable and as uncontestable as the grave, was no. The girls went to their beds. Eight hours later, when their mother looked in on the room which they shared together, all five were gone. Calling on his neighbors for help, Father Moonsammy frantically searched the darkness for the missing girls. At dawn he found them. Silhouetted by the eerie morning light, their five young bodies hung lifeless from branches of two wild fig trees just 100 yards from their father's house. Amid the wailing of friends and neighbors, the police announced the cause of death: suicide.