FROM THE AFRICAN ELEMENT IN GANDHI : ONE
II A
During his major struggles in South Africa and after his return to India in 1915 Gandhi remained conscious
that when he worked for Indian rights or for Indian freedom back in India, it would be of benefit to other oppressed peoples.
Gandhi said on July 12, 1944: �Today there is no hope for the Negroes, but Indian freedom will fill them with hope� (CWMG,Volume 77, p.351) .
He knew that his struggles were based on the principle of racial equality and advanced that cause regardless of who suffered for that cause by participating in them. In South Africa Gandhi reached out to Africans like John Dube who was later to be the first President General of the African National Congress and who had an industrial school , the Ohlange Institute, in Inanda near Phoenix. �There was frequent social contact between the inmates of the Phoenix settlement and the Ohlange Institute� (See E S Reddy, Gandhiji�s Vision of a Free South Africa, op. cit. p.49) Reddy writes that John Dube�s paper Ilange lase Natal, an African weekly in English and Zulu , used to be printed in the Indian Opinion press until the Ohlange Institute acquired a press of its own. Gandhi commended Dube�s work as he did that of Tengo Jabavu to set up a college for Africans. (See also CWMG, Vol 5, p. 55).
On the franchise question in Natal, soon after the founding of the Natal Indian Congress, Gandhi who had turned 25 years old a bare three weeks earlier, declared: �The Indians do not regret that capable Natives can exercise the franchise. They would regret it if it were otherwise. They, however, assert that they too, if capable, should have the right.� ( The Times of Natal, 26 October, 1894, CWMG, Vol 1, p. 166).
Soon after Gandhi�s arrival in South Africa he came into contact with Trappists, a Catholic order of largely German Monks who had settled in South Africa. It was initially for their vegetarianism, about which he had read in England, that he sought them in Mariann Hill, near Pinetown, a village �16 miles by rail from Durban�. He was pleasantly surprised by what he found and praised them for their good treatment of Africans: �They believe in no colour distinctions. These Natives are accorded the same treatment as the whites. They are mostly children . They get the same food as the brothers , and are dressed as well as they themselves are.�, he recorded (The Vegetarian, May 18, 1895, CWMG, Vol 1, p.226). Gandhi noted that the Trappists � love and respect, and are in turn loved and respected by, the Natives living in their neighbourhood who, as a rule, supply them with the converts." (Idem). The Order at Mariann Hill was founded by Francis Pfanner. �Red Wendell�, as the Abbot has been called with reference to the name given to him by his parents, was perhaps too radical not only for the Church of Rome but also for the Trappists themselves. Ultimately, on the Abbot�s death in 1909, Mariann Hill was constituted into a separate Order. It has been claimed that Gandhi was shown around Mariann Hill, on his first visit there in April 1895, by the Pater Bernhard Huss. This has been disputed on the ground that Huss was not in Mariannhill at the time of Gandhi�s visit in 1895. Be that as it may, the possibility of more than one visit by Gandhi to Marianhill cannot be ruled out. Incidentally, the Zulu poet, Dr Vilakazi was a pupil of Huss. Certain features of Mariann Hill, including the dignity of labour and the African presence that Gandhi noticed there, were to be introduced also in the settlements which Gandhi established in South Africa.
Gandhi protested in print on learning that African and Indian boys were used as targets and shot in their faces by a picnic party of European children in Natal. ( The Times of India, October 20, 1896,CWMG, Vol 2, p. 87).
He criticised the Bloemfontein Municipal Ordinance of the Orange River Colony under which �natives� and �coloured persons� could be �removed like criminals or cattle from one place to another at the sweet will of the Corporation� (Indian Opinion, August 6, 1903, CWMG, Vol 3, p. 399).
The Johannesburg Town Council earned a sharp rebuke from Gandhi for the proposal that �every Native holding a cycle permit and riding a cycle within the municipal area , should wear on his left arm, in a conspicuous position , a numbered badge which shall be issued to him together with his permit�. Gandhi referred to this as �persecution� and praised the minority in the Council who � did not hesitate to defend the Native against unnecessary and wanton indignity.� (Indian Opinion, February 4, 1905, CWMG, Vol 4, p. 347).
A few months later Gandhi raises his voice again against the report of the Native Commission under which the coloured community in the Transvaal, even if already enfranchised, would retain the franchise only in state elections but lose it �in the event of elections for a Federal Parliament� ( CWMG, Vol 4, p. 351). He deplored this as �being much at one with the general attitude adopted by the white population of South Africa towards the non-white. In matters of Colour prejudice, it is, unfortunately, almost impossible to convince by logical argument � (Indian Opinion, February 11, 1905, CWMG, Vol 4, p. 351).
In 1905 there was a move in the Transvaal to deprive and restrict African rights in land. Gandhi protested strongly against such a measure ( Indian Opinion, August 12, 1905, CWMG, Vol 5, pp 39-40). He records that before the Boer War Africans had at least been free to own land in the Transvaal. In his writings he repeatedly points out that one of the justifications offered for the Boer War had been the treatment meted out to the Coloured races by the Dutch. It had therefore been presented as a �war of emancipation�.(Ibid., p. 39). Yet, Gandhi cites statements in support of the view that �the treatment the Coloured races have been receiving in the Transvaal since British occupation is worse than before.� (Idem).
He puts Lord Selborne, the Governor of the Transvaal, on test by holding the administrator to his assertion that : �If in any respect the British administration is unjust to the Native, civilised or uncivilised, it is a blot and a stain on our administration, and one which I feel personally as an implication of disgrace.� (Indian Opinion , August 12, 1905, CWMG, Vol 5, pp 39-40). Adds Gandhi : May His Excellency have sufficient courage and strength to initiate the policy he has thus boldly enunciated!�. (Ibid., p. 40).
IIB
The Indian Opinion issue of August 26, 1905 carried an article by Gandhi in tribute to Abraham Lincoln. �Only a person who has a clear picture in his mind of the America of those days, can properly appreciate Lincoln�s virtues and his services. From North to South, America was at this time a camp of slaves. Nobody saw anything wrong in openly selling Negroes and keeping them in slavery. The high and the low, the rich and the poor saw nothing strange in owning slaves. No one thought it was wrong to do so. Religious minded men, priests and the like saw nothing amiss and did not protest against the system of slavery being kept up. Some even encouraged it, and all of them thought that slavery also was a divine dispensation and that the Negroes were born to it. Few could then see that the slave trade was very wicked and irreligious.� (CWMG, Vol 5, p. 51).
A week later Gandhi quoted appreciatively a �very impressive� speech by John Dube in Natal. In the course of what Gandhi described as an �eloquent speech�, Dube argued that for the Africans �there was no country other than South Africa; and to deprive them of their rights over lands, etc., was like banishing them from their home.� (Indian Opinion, September 2, 1905, CWMG, Vol 5, p. 55). Gandhi remained impressed with and close to Dube.
Years later, when the eminent Indian leader, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, visited South Africa he was taken by Gandhi on November 11, 1912 to meet John Dube at the Ohlange Institute near Phoenix and discuss the �Native question�. (See E S Reddy, op. cit., p. 22). Gokhale received a warm welcome from the staff and students of the school.
What a meeting it must have been! Eight decades before the complete liberation of South Africa, a past and a future President of the Indian National Congress (Gokhale had been President of the Congress in 1905; Gandhi became President in 1924) calling on one who in January 1912 had become President-General of the South African Native National Congress (later renamed the African National Congress).
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