Gandhi march recalls his striving for justice
THE 14th annual Gandhiluthuli Salt March – a symbolic representation of the resistance against both apartheid in South Africa and British colonialist rule in India – takes place in Durban today.
Starting at 8am at the Durban Amphitheatre (opposite Elangeni Hotel), people will march to Ushaka Marine World and back.
Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, said while the march was dedicated to her grandfather’s “Dandi March” in India, participants should also commit to the South African principles of ubuntu.
Gandhi heads the Gandhi Development Trust which hosts the annual peaceful resistance march to remember past and current injustices across the world.
In the 1900s, at the height of British colonial rule in India, the Salt Act prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, and forced them to buy it from British traders at a heavily taxed price.
On March 12, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi set out from his ashram in India with a small group of followers on an almost 400km trek to the coastal town of Dandi.
Along the way he addressed crowds. Each day more people joined the Salt March.
Defiance
By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, he led a crowd of thousands to the shoreline where he collected salt grains in a show of defiance against the British Salt Act.
The march was launched in 2005 as a tribute to former ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli.
It coincides this year with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela and Albertina Sisulu, both of whom Ela said had devoted their lives to the ideals of non-violence.