He might be.
The story of Indian migration in the early 19th century Empire is pretty unknown by most of us. I have in fact just purchased a new book about NZ's early colonial history within the imperial trade routes that deals a little (so far as I can tell) with the movement of Indians to and from NZ before 1840 (on British ships usually).
Fair enough.
But any Indian migration to southern Africa prior to 1840 would have been restricted to the Cape (if it happened). The Boers wouldn't have been particularly open to Indian migration I don't think (during apartheid it was still illegal for a person of Indian origin to stay overnight in the Orange Free State). The Pioneer Column only entered Rhodesia in (I think) 1893, so any Indian migration there would have likely only started in the late 1890s or early 1900s.