Durban and the Gandhi effect
He left indelible footprints and a complex legacy all over the city
GANDHI attracts controversy. Had his life and work been without consequence, he would barely warrant a whisper in the annals of history.
As native children of this city, we have a keen interest in ferreting out the hidden histories of Durban.
Gandhi, whose 150th birth anniversary is today, left indelible footprints and a complex legacy all over the city and its surrounds.
From his arrival in the port at the Point on May 23, 1893, to his eventual departure 21 years later, to the immersion of his ashes in the Indian Ocean decades after his assassination, Durban owns a certain centrality in Gandhi’s transformation from a greenhorn English barrister with sometimes distressing racial prejudices to an all-embracing global peace icon.
Those shortcomings were recognised by Nelson Mandela in writing a book chapter in 1995 comparing his and Gandhi’s experiences as political prisoners: “All in all, Gandhi must be forgiven those prejudices and judged in the context of the time and the circumstances. We are looking here at the young Gandhi, still to become Mahatma, when he was without any human prejudice, save that in favour of truth and justice.”
In the context of a divided colonial state and in the absence of any non-racial narrative, it is hardly surprising that Gandhi’s focus was on campaigning for the rights of Indians. His initial interest was to defend the interests of the Indian trader community that had hired him as a lawyer.
Encountering the bondage of Indian workers on the plantations and in the coal mines, he was later to embrace their struggle too.
From Paul Tichmann’s excellent booklet, Gandhi Sites in Durban, we learn that Gandhi was met at the Durban docks by his client Dada Abdullah.
The firm Dada Abdullah and Co. had its premises at 427 West Street (now Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme). They were neighbours with Harvey Greenacre & Co at 417.
Gandhi ventured into court for the first time two days after his arrival.
The Durban Magistrate’s Court now serves as the Old Court House Museum on Aliwal Street.
The Mercury of May 26 1863 reported his first encounter: “An Indian entered the courthouse yesterday afternoon and took a seat at the horseshoe. … He entered the court without removing his head covering or salaaming, and the Magistrate looked at him with disapproval.”
The Natal Advertiser reported on the same incident with the heading, “An Unwelcome Visitor”. Gandhi wrote a response on May 29: “Just as it is a mark of respect amongst the Europeans to take off their hats, in like manner it is in Indians’ to retain one’s head-dress. To appear uncovered before a gentleman is not to respect him.” That incident occurred well before Gandhi was thrown off a train in Pietermaritzburg, heralding what is believed to be his real political awakening to racial prejudice in South Africa. He departed the Durban Railway Station (the Victorian building is still on the same site) on June 7, 1893. On August 4, 1894, he entered a partnership with an attorney called Coates. Their offices were in 326 Smith Street (now Anton Lembede). In January 1899, the law practice moved to 14 Mercury Lane, where he was joined by Advocate RK Khan in July of that year.
Mandela further acknowledges the profound impact of his activism in shaping the tone and tenor of resistance to the racist state: “Gandhi threatened the South African Government during the first and second decades of our century as no other man did.
“He established the first anti-colonial political organisation in the country, if not in the world, founding the Natal Indian Congress in 1894.”
The Natal Native Congress was to follow in 1900, the African People’s Organisation (APO) and the African National Congress in 1912. NIC meetings were held at Congress Hall on the corner of Grey and Commercial Roads in the vicinity of the still bustling Ajmeri Arcade.
Responding to the charge that Gandhi had an exclusive focus on Indians and ignored Africans altogether, scholars Catherine Corder and Martin Plaut delve into the letters of Betty Molteno, who was the eldest child of the first prime minister of the Cape and a woman deeply concerned with race equality in South Africa.
They argue that “Molteno’s letters attest to an ongoing warm relationship between members of the Phoenix and Ohlange communities and provide a first-hand account of the complexities inherent in the relationship between Gandhi and his near neighbour John Dube, first President of the African National Congress.”
Mandela too notes that Gandhi and Dube “… were neighbours in Inanda, and each influenced the other, for both men established, at about the same time, two monuments to human development within a stone’s throw of each other, the Ohlange Institute and the Phoenix Settlement.” Gandhi had earlier taken up residence on August 7, 1894, in “a nice little house in a prominent location” on Beach Grove, close to the residence of the Attorney-General, Harry Escombe. The site is now a parking lot with a little plaque reflecting its earlier occupant.
In 1903, both men founded newspapers as political vehicles. Ilanga lase Natal was for a time printed on the same press as Gandhi’s Indian Opinion.
Corder and Plaut cite a letter from Molteno to her life-partner Alice Greene dated December 5 1913: “Had a talk out with Dube – he has no fears whatever of our coming to Ohlange Heights – no matter how much I went to Phoenix – or identified myself with the Indian Question – he says the Indian cause is the native cause. That the Indians are leading the way – showing them the way to strike – should that become necessary.”
Gandhi’s relationship with Dube cannot, however, be characterised as close. Doyen of historians of the South African struggle for freedom Enuga Reddy notes that after Gandhi met Dube at the home of Marshall Campbell in Mount Edgecombe in August 1905, he wrote in Indian Opinion that Dube was an African “of whom one should know”.
Thanks to Gandhi’s voluminous writings, we are able to discern a soul laid bare with all its initial prejudices and imperfections.
He resisted the honorific, mahatma, or great soul, believing himself to be no more than a common man.
As his 150th birth anniversary is commemorated around the world, one cannot escape the reality that he had a profound impact in shaping the course of history in his homeland in India and the African country that awakened him. More than that, the debates he attracts demonstrate the continued relevance of his thought on subjects ranging from peace to political activism and to the environment.