The Durban City Council has budgeted almost 5 million rand ($310,000 US) to build a statue honoring the arrival in 1860 of the first indentured Indian laborers to South Africa, according to a report in BusinessStandard.

In the past year, South Africa became accustomed to making international headlines for tearing down statues and removing symbols of the apartheid era.

With the slogan #RhodesMustFall University of Cape Town students demanded that a statue of Cecil Rhodes be removed where he sat, head in hand, looking out over the rugby field, NewStatesman reported. Removing the statue would decolonize education and bring racial transformation to the university, students said. The statue was removed on April 9, 2015.

A British imperialist, Rhodes is considered to be the founding father of apartheid, TheGuardian reported. Nearly 200 international students at Oxford University, who are there thanks, in part, to the prestigious Rhodes scholarships they share, signed a statement saying that this “does not buy (their) silence.” Rhodes endowed the fund, raising questions of hypocricy when students campaigned to remove a statue of him from Oxford’s Oriel College in the U.K.

The Rhodes statue was just the first to be targeted. Other statues across South Africa were vandalized, set alight, and painted including Queen Victoria, Paul Kruger, and even Gandhi, according to NewStatesman.

A monument in memory of Indians who arrived on the steamship Truro from India will be erected soon at the popular uShaka Beach beach in Durban, according to BusinessStandard.

This site is close to where a ship landed from Madras carrying the first 342 indentured Indian laborers to arrive in South Africa in 1860.

South Africa today is home to 1.4 million people of Indian origin, mostly descended from those who arrived in boats to work in the sugar cane fields for white landowners. The indigenous Zulu community didn’t want to work in the sugar cane fields, according to BusinessStandard.

In addition to the Indian heritage statue, there are plans to erect another of Nelson Mandela, according to Logie Naidoo, speaker of the eThekwini council for the City of Durban. The two statues are a fitting legacy for the role that South African Indians played in fighting for Mandela’s release from the prison after serving 27 years as a political prisoner, Naidoo said.

Indian leaders proposed a statue around 2000, with a launch date of 2010, but it was delayed due to lack of funding.

Most of Indian laborers came to South Africa from poor villages across India, lured with promises of good jobs and money they could send home to their families.

In reality, working conditions were harsh. At the end of their tenure, most laborers opted for the choice of getting a small piece of land rather than returning to India. Many became farmers and entrepreneurs and thrived in business.

South African Indians were segregated during apartheid. Their movement and progress was restricted. They built schools, temples and mosques to ensure the educational and cultural survival of their descendants, who today have a literacy level of 100 percent, according to BusinessStandard.

The memorial statue will interpret the role that the Indian community has played in the struggle for freedom, according to the City Council.