Gandhi and the power of ordinary people
ONE hundred and twenty-five years ago, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was thrown off a first-class train – highlighting racial hatred that shockingly still haunts the world and South Africa today.
This event became a catalyst for the activation of “dharma” (human duty) in fighting against the forces of tyranny and oppression, that finally resulted in the India gaining independence in 1947 and by way of influence, laid the foundation for our very own victory in the freedom Struggle, here in South Africa, in 1994.
On November 14, 1980, Oliver Tambo delivered a speech on behalf of Nelson Mandela in accepting the Jawaharlal Nehru award for International understanding. In one part of this speech, Tambo said: “It is fitting that on this day, I should recall the long and glorious struggle of those South Africans who came to our shores from India 120 years ago. Within two years of entering the bondage of indentured labour, Indian workers staged their first strike against the working conditions in Natal.
“This was probably the first general strike in South African history. Their descendants, working and fighting for the future of their country, South Africa, have retained the tradition of militant struggle and are today an integral part of the mass-based liberation movement in South Africa.”
This first general strike and the resultant success for our mass democratic revolution, all but made Gandhi’s train throwing incident a worthy “incident” of history.
Gandhi’s “passive resistance” fight against oppression and injustice, from the 1893 Pietermaritzburg train station incident through to the pivotal strike of 1913, has significant bearing in our own understanding of how history is told and celebrated. Much has been written on the train incident, with very little written on the role-players and significance of the 1913 strike.
This strike eventually resulted the fleeting elimination of repressive laws against the Indians living in South Africa while delivering the “Mahatma” to the world stage. Most importantly, this event became a lasting influence to our massbased revolutionary movement on how to mobilise the masses to champion a revolution.
The final phase of Gandhi’s success in South Africa was delicately poised. Maureen Swan’s book, Gandhi, the South African Experience and Kalpana Hiralal and ES Reddy’s book, Pioneers of Satyagraha, both point out that the 1913 strike became the bedrock of Gandhi’s success in South Africa.
This political victory was all due to the unwavering if not unexpected wave of mass based mobilisation by the poor indentured classes, rather than Gandhi’s normal support base. After all his time in South Africa – about 21 years later, Gandhi finally saw the power of the masses as they came out to fight against the untold oppression as experienced in the mines, plantations, hotels and railways!
Like South Africa’s “Mandela-centric” literature of our freedom Struggle, “Gandhi-centric” literature of his time in South Africa often underscores the role of the ordinary, less popular foot soldiers in the pages of our history. The 1913 strike brought to the fore the “ordinary” heroes and heroines, who risked life and limb for a collective cause. The names of people like Thambi Naidoo, Mrs Thambi Naidoo, Bhawani Dayal, Mrs PK Naidoo, Mrs DM Lazarus, Ms Valliamma Moonsamy Mudaliar, Harbat Singh and many others often go without mention. The role of these soldiers is exquisitely highlighted in Hiralal and Reddy’s book, Pioneers of Satyagraha.
The 1913 strike was a result of three underlying causes. The first being the oppressive £3 tax promulgated by greedy colonialists who sought to re-indenture the poor ex-indentured and keep them bonded to plantation life for eternity. The second cause of oppression was the non-validity or non-recognition of religious marriages that degraded the legal status of Indian women living in South Africa. The third cause of concern was the restrictive immigration laws that prevented movement within and outside South Africa.
The £3 tax law, however, became the rallying call for the indentured community to fight and mobilise in a way that South Africa had not seen before.
The seeds of the 1913 uprising were sprouted in Newcastle by the mineworkers’ strike. The subsequent march on November 3 to Charlestown, a town 56km north of Newcastle, situated on the border of the old Natal and Transvaal, saw thousands of men, women and children marching together in solidarity, courting arrest and assault to simply fight against colonial oppression. The colonial authorities were not able to countenance this level of organisational structure and the collective community spirit from the different classes.
This success in mobilisation became the vanguard influence to the newly formed ANC of 1912 and much later to the leadership of the 1946 Natal Indian Congress (NIC) passive resistance campaigns that Oliver Tambo had mentioned in his speech of 1980.
News of this Charlestown march in northern Natal, together with the arrest of Gandhi and martyrdom of Valliamma Moonsamy Mudaliar, brought to the surface the dormant militant potential of Natal’s South Coast plantation workers. As Gandhi and an exhausted leadership, struggled to maintain the solidarity of striking workers in northern Natal, the strike’s success was ensured when it eventually spread to the South Coast plantations. The repeal of the £3 tax paved the way for an unprecedented upsurge of mass resistance by plantation labourers.
This oppressive tax law, together with a depressed economy, drove the ex-indentured to extreme measures of resistance. It is worth recalling that 65% of indentured were undergoing second or third terms of indenture. The level of discontent with colonial oppression was at peak.
The wave of discontent manifested in the November strikes of southern Natal.
William Campbell of Mount Edgecombe estates wrote: “The men now will not listen to anyone but Gandhi or the gun…”
Workers downed tools from the north of Durban, in Verulam and Tongaat, to places in the far south like Esperanza and Illovo.
“The police opened fire and the blood of the indentured flowed.”
“On November 27, 1913, at Mount Edgecombe, at least six Indians were killed and 55 severely wounded. Several women were beaten.”
District surgeons’ reports of this time reveal that many people were shot in the back.
A famous story of one deposition reveals how Colin Campbell murdered an indentured worker, by my namesake, called Selvan. Selvan’s son Antonimuthu gave testimony of how his father was stabbed with an assegai before being shot.”
By the end of November 1913, the strikes had paralysed the Durban and Pietermaritzburg fresh produce markets, closed down some of the sugar mills and stripped many coastal hotels, private residents and the municipality of their special servants.
The final stages of the strike of 1913 eventually saw General Smuts passing the Indian Relief Bill of 1914. Smuts was forced to submit to the will of the people and to the leadership of Gandhi.
Gandhi returned to India in January 1915, in the full knowledge that the path to success against oppression for his own people lay in the ability to mobilise the masses. This mobilisation was all but triggered by Gandhi being kicked off a first-class train for being the wrong skin colour.
The 125th anniversary of Gandhi’s train incident brings into sharp focus the contemporary need for continued militant struggle like those of our forebears.
It highlights the power of mobilisation, like that of our ancestors, in fighting against any form of oppression. There is an added significance to this anniversary.
Just last week, a 9-year-old girl was shot and killed during a hijacking in Shallcross. This unprecedented wave of crime, which has seen our basic right to protection being cruelly ripped away from us on a daily basis, requires mobilisation like that of the 1913 strike.
The power of ordinary people in fighting against tyranny of any kind must never be underscored. Let us use this power to continue the “dharma” that Gandhi initiated 125 years ago, in building a South Africa that we can ALL be proud of.
■ Selvan Naidoo is a curator: The 1860 Heritage
Centre