Tamil South Africans are Indian South Africans of Tamil descent. Tamil people construct the majority of Indian immigrants who came from India to Natal, South Africa, from 1860 onwards. After a expiry of their indentures nearly of these Indians moved to a cities, becoming established as a thoroughly urban population.
During the Dutch colonial period, people from parts of Dutch India together with Ceylon present - day Sri Lanka were sent to the Cape as slaves. In the early 18th ceuntry, about half of the slaves in the Cape were from India & Ceylon. In 1677, 93 Tuticorin slaves from southern India arrived in the Cape while in 1712, 36 slaves from Ceylon arrived with 80 in 1719. There was another shipment from Ceylon in 1754 with an intermediate number of slaves.
In 1833, the British Parliament passed the Act of Abolition, which banned slavery throughout the British Empire. The consequence of this was that many African slaves in the Colony of Natal decided to desert their former masters. The former masters, lacking sufficient labour force, persuaded the skeptical British authorities in India to implement the system of indentured labour in Natal. On November 16, 1860, 342 men, women and children arrived aboard the S.S. Truro in Port Natal Durban.