The historic relationship between the national movements of India and South Africa goes back to the early years of this century when Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend John Langalibalele Dube, who was to become the first President-General of the African National Congress, developed friendship and mutual respect.
The early lives of Gandhiji and Dube were largely parallel. Gandhiji was born in 1869 and Dube in 1971. Gandhiji studied in Britain from 1888 to 1891 and Dube in the United States from 1887 to 1892. Dube returned to South Africa in 1892 and was employed as a teacher for several years; Gandhiji went to South Africa in 1893 and stayed on for 21 years as a barrister and public worker.
Dube was very much influenced by Booker T. Washington, the conservative Black leader in the United States who stressed self-help and vocational education for the Blacks. Overcoming great difficulties, he established, in 1901, an Industrial School at Ohlange, modelled after the Tuskegee Institute of Dr. Washington.
Gandhiji too greatly admired Dr. Booker T. Washington and his educational methods. In 1904, he bought about a hundred acres of land in Phoenix, about a mile or two from Ohlange, and established a settlement dedicated to simple living. He set up a school for Indian children which stressed manual work as much as the three R's.
Both men were involved in public work for their communities. Gandhiji founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894; Dube helped found the Natal Native Congress in 1900. Gandhiji began publishing Indian Opinion - a weekly in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil - in June 1903. Dube launched the Ilange lase Natal, an African weekly in English and Zulu, in the same year; it was printed in the same press as Indian Opinion until Dube acquired a press for the Ohlange Institute.
We do not know when Gandhiji and Dube became acquainted. But in August 1905 they met at the residence of Marshall Campbell at Mount Edgecombe when the latter hosted a reception for delegates of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which had held its annual meeting in South Africa. Gandhiji was impressed by Dube's speech on that occasion.
Dube told the gathering that to deprive the Africans of their land and rights in Natal, the land of their birth, was like banishing them from their home. Without the Africans, he said, the whites could not carry on for a moment. It was unfair to burden them with taxes. Members of the British delegation were moved to subscribe and present 60 pounds on the spot to Dube for his school.
Gandhiji, writing about this meeting in Indian Opinion (September 2, 1905), said that Dube was an African "of whom one should know."
There was frequent social contact between the inmates of the Phoenix Settlement and the Ohlange Institute, as well as the mission at Inanda. Zulus and whites used to attend Gandhiji's prayer meetings at Phoenix. He was often seen playing with Indian and Zulu children.
The Bambata rebellion of 1906 was a time of trial for both Gandhiji and Dube.
Two white police officers were killed by Africans in February 1906, near Richmond, during the unrest following the imposition of a poll tax on all adult African males in Natal. The government declared martial law and sent its militia to crush African resistance. Chief Bambata and his followers carried on guerilla warfare for more than a year but were brutally suppressed. Almost four thousand Africans were killed and thousands were sentenced to whipping.
Gandhiji did not realise the scale of resistance and the strong feeling among the Zulus. He felt that Indians, who were seeking rights as citizens of the Empire, should shoulder their responsibilities to the government. He led a small stretcher-bearer corps which nursed the wounded Zulus whom the whites despised and left to suffer.
Gandhiji's family and friends were worried when he was in the field for a few weeks with the corps. The Phoenix settlement was in a Zulu area and the Zulus could have easily attacked it. But, happily, Gandhiji did not lose the friendship of the Zulus: "he became known as a well-wisher of the Zulus who became friends of the Phoenix Settlement..." (Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhi, 1957, page 42).
There was some criticism of Gandhiji in the small African press, because of his services during the Bambata rebellion, but this was forgotten when the Indians launched passive resistance later in the year, under his leadership, against the Transvaal Asiatic Ordinance.
Gandhiji was for many years reluctant to speak about his traumatic experience during the rebellion, but it had a great influence on his thinking. It helps explain his defiance of the Transvaal Ordinance, as well as his insistence on strict non-violence by the passive resisters.
Dube, for his part, came under attack by the whites for denouncing the military action against the Zulus. He was summoned before the Governor and given a reprimand. He then expressed regret and wrote:
"There are grievances to be dealt with, but I can fully realise that at a time like this we should all refrain from discussing them, and assist the government to suppress the rebellion." (Quoted by Andre Odendaal in Vukani Bantu, 1984, p. 70).
He probably feared that, in the tense atmosphere at the time, he might lose all white financial assistance for the Ohlange Institute.
As the Boers and Britons agreed to form a Union of South Africa, with a colour bar, Gandhiji supported the Africans in their opposition to self-government under white rule. Indian Opinion wrote in an editorial on August 1, 1908: "Our sympathies go out to our oppressed fellow subjects who are made to suffer for the same cause that we suffer, viz., our slight pigment of skin."
In 1909, when discussions were held in London on the proposed Act of the Union, the African and Coloured organisations sent a delegation to lobby against the Act. Dube assisted the delegation though he declined membership for fear of retaliation by the whites against his educational enterprises. Gandhiji and Hajee Habib were then in London, on behalf of the Transvaal Indians, to make representations on discriminatory measures against the Indians.
Gandhiji felt that while indigenous African and Coloured groups could demand full equality, Indians were a small community of recent settlers who should concentrate at that stage on their civil rights, rather than political rights. But his sympathies were clear. Indian Opinion had written on February 13, 1909, that the draft Act amounted to a declaration of war against the black population.
While the African organisations continued with protests, petitions and deputations - and the formation of a national body, the South African Native National Congress (later renamed the African National Congress) on January 8, 1912, with Dube as its first President - the Indian people continued with direct action.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the highly respected leader of the Indian national movement, visited South Africa in October-November 1912, at the invitation of Gandhiji, to meet the Indian community and the Government, and try to promote a settlement. Gandhiji, acting as his secretary, arranged for him to visit the Ohlange Institute on November 11, 1912, to meet John Dube and discuss the "Native question". He received a warm reception from the staff and students at the school.
On September 16, 1913, Gandhiji launched national mass resistance by the Indians and invited women and workers to join. Sixteen satyagrahis, including Mrs. Kasturba Gandhi and three other women, left Phoenix for the Transvaal to defy the immigration law restricting inter-provincial movement by Indians.
Then followed a general strike of tens of thousands of Indian workers - in the mines, plantations and municipalities - with hardly any formal organisation. The workers were inspired, above all, by the example of Gandhiji, his family and his colleagues. They said: "When the King (Gandhiji) and the Queen (Kasturba) and their children were imprisoned by the government for demanding justice for the workers, how can we continue to work?"
Unable to break the strike, the army and police, and the employers, resorted to utmost brutality - assaults even on women, solitary confinement, flogging, shooting of demonstrators, etc., - but though Gandhiji and other leaders were in prison, the workers stood firm and disciplined.
Dube followed the Indian struggle with great interest, though he could not conceive of such direct action by the Africans at the time.
Early in 1914, the Reverend W. W. Pearson, who had come from India to investigate the condition of Indian workers, visited Dube at the Ohlange Institute to enquire about the position of the Africans. We are indebted to Raochandbhai M. Patel, an inmate of the Phoenix Settlement who accompanied Pearson, for an account of the conversation which has been little known as it was published only in 1939 in a Gujarati book in India, Gandhijini Sadhana.
Dube explained to Pearson that the status of the Zulus was even worse than that of Indians. "The white man even doubts if we belong to the human race."
Asked why the Africans did not fight for their birthrights as the Indians did, Dube replied:
"Yes, Mr. Pearson, I understand what you say. I have thought over it a lot. I have studied in depth the struggle fought by the Indians under the leadership of Gandhi. And after being an eye witness to the struggle, instead of taking the Indian workers as uncivilised and treating them disdainfully, I have acquired a sense of respect for all the Indians.
"Mr. Pearson, we cannot emulate the Indians. We do not possess that divine power. I have been wonder-struck to see their work with my own eyes."
Then he gave a moving eye-witness account of the heroism of the Indian workers:
"The satyagraha struggle was going on. During that period one day I was coming from Durban. I alighted at Phoenix Station. At a little distance from that station there is an open square. There, about five hundred Indians were sitting together in a group. They had come there after going on a strike in their factory. They were surrounded from all sides by the white managers, their staff and white police. I tarried there for half an hour to see what would happen. Whiplashes began to descend on the backs of the Indians sitting there, in quick rapidity, without stop. The whites beat them with sticks and said, 'Get up, do your work. Will you go for duty or not?` But nobody rose. They sat, quite motionless. They would reply calmly, 'We will not report for duty, so long as Gandhi Raja is in jail.` When whips and sticks failed, gun butts came to be used. The whites now began to beat ladies and children also, along with the men. Some screamed, but none would budge. At last mounted police arrived and horses were made to run over them. 'Get up, otherwise you would be crushed,` they warned. The horses made their way through the legs and backs of some persons. Their skin was torn; the horses' feet caused wounds; they continued to bleed and groaned with pain, but did not move.
"Meanwhile the police brought there an Indian foreman. He was regarded as their leader. He gave bold replies. In reward to his fearless replies, cruelties began to be inflicted upon him. The spectacle of this torture made me shiver.
"Just then a police officer ordered the policemen belonging to my community, 'Spear this man. Don't just stand and stare. All this is due to this wicked man.` Those policemen immediately complied with the orders and pierced that leader of the workers with a spear. This inflamed the workers somewhat and taking that as an excuse, police opened fire, killing one or two persons. The 'leader` breathed his last. Others were injured. But no one moved from the place where they were sitting.
"Trembling at the cruelty of those white men that I had witnessed and amazed at the Himalayan firmness of the Indians, I walked away..."
Dube continued:
"But Mr. Pearson, we will be totally ruined if I ask my people to follow this path. Howsoever illiterate, ignorant, uncultured and wild the Indian workers may be, in their veins there runs the blood which is invigorated with the glory of the ancient culture of the Indians. After getting such a leader as Gandhi that culture has found a renewal. Their original divine power manifested itself again and they could display extraordinary endurance. If our Natives come in their place, nobody can control their violent nature. For their safety they would certainly retaliate. The white men of this place require only this much. If any brother of mine kills a white man after being excited, it would precipitate a great disaster upon us. Thousands of brothers of mine would be put to death in no time and we would be totally ruined. We do not possess so much prowess also to wage a satyagraha struggle. Only the strength of the Indians can endure it."
While, as an Indian, I greatly appreciate the handsome tribute paid by Dube to Indian workers and to Gandhiji, I feel that he was perhaps very much influenced by the frustration following the Bambata rebellion. For, at that very time, African women in the Orange Free State were carrying on an effective non-violent resistance movement against the pass laws.
Dube was certainly right in his assumption that white public opinion at the time would have been hardly outraged by violence and savagery against Africans. The success of the Indian movement depended partly on patient efforts by Gandhiji to develop understanding and support for the cause of the Indian community - among whites in South Africa, as well as in India and Britain. The violence against Indian women and workers in 1913 so outraged opinion in India that the Indian and British Governments had to intervene and prevail on the South African regime to bend and compromise.
What was most lacking on the African side was perhaps the type of leadership which Gandhiji gave to the Indian people - a leadership by example of courage, perseverance and sacrifice. It took time for the Africans to develop such a leadership and launch the Defiance Campaign in 1952. That campaign put an end to the myth that the African people were too "uncivilised" to follow the example of the "civilised" Indians. It also helped promote a powerful international movement of solidarity with all the oppressed people of South Africa.
In the long and difficult struggle since then, in cooperation with Indians and others, the African people and their leaders won the admiration of India and the world.
1.Published in Hindustan Times. New Delhi, January 26, 1992; and The Leader, Durban, June 5, 1992