GANDHI, WORKERS AND
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Alec Erwin

[From: B.R. Nanda, ed., Mahatma Gandhi: 125 years. New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1995.]

Throughout the history of humanity a person from another area, tribe, nation or even continent has had a profound effect on the destiny of particular peoples. This is undoubtedly the case with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who, as one of the great figures of the twentieth century, had a significant impact on South Africa.

Jawaharlal Nehru said of Gandhi:

"Tagore and Gandhi have undoubtedly been the two outstanding and dominating figures of India in this first half of the twentieth century."

Nehru continues in his comparison of these two great men to say of Gandhi:

"Gandhi, more a man of the people, almost the embodiment of the Indian peasant, represented the other ancient tradition of India, that of renunciation and asceticism. And yet Tagore was primarily a man of thought, Gandhi of concentrated and ceaseless activity."

This assessment of Gandhi was being made by Nehru as he wrote the Discovery of India whilst in prison between April and September 1944. This was, of course, long after Gandhi's direct impact on South Africa which ended in July 1914.

Yet this assessment by Nehru seems particularly appropriate for the purposes of this introduction. Gandhi's leadership attributes and the role he played, influenced the future course of political struggle in South Africa and his methods continued to have relevance for workers in the struggles of the 1980s, and 1990s.

No doubt it was also the case that his experience in South Africa was to influence his conduct in the Indian liberation struggle.

The link between Gandhi's use of satyagraha in the first part of this century and the use of mass action by workers in the 1980s and 1990s is, on the face of it, a tenuous one, but may in fact prove to be quite direct upon more careful examination.

It is all too easy to either over-or under-estimate personal contributions to the course of history. Gandhi's involvement in South Africa arose out of larger events that were to shape much of history - in particular that of the working class. But there can be little doubt, as Nehru points out, that Gandhi's conception of protest played a crucial role in India and surely in South Africa. In this brief introduction I want to reflect on the political complexities of mass action - complexities that Gandhi understood extremely well and which his campaigns in South Africa illustrate so clearly. It also seems appropriate to reflect on how a democratic South Africa can build on the link with India that Gandhi was so instrumental in forging.

One of the most stimulating debates in South Africa has been (and no doubt still is) around the weight, significance and degree of causality that race or class or a combination thereof had in South African society.

A rich debate on historiography emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Marxists, liberals, neo-Marxists, neo-liberals and conservatives wielded their papers, doctorates and polemics like so many swords through a maze of conferences, seminars and clandestine publications. These were heady days, but standing back, it is clear that the political, social and economic histories of many countries are fundamentally affected by a huge surge of migration as capitalism was inserted into these countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. Plantation agriculture and mining were necessary to feed the furnaces of industrialisation in Europe, but were at odds with the social formations within which these resources were located.

The result was a titanic clash of peoples, cultures and classes that resulted in a very complex process of proletarianisation. In South Africa the imposition of a migrant labour system to maintain a low money-wage structure for the mines shaped our society and remains some 100 years later a major socio-economic challenge.

However, all too often - to start sugar plantations or to build railways - urgent supply of a captive form of wage labour was essential. Measures to obtain this supply at short notice within the society were politically, socially and very often militarily difficult and time-consuming. The solution lay in the socio-economic ravages of imperialism within areas of India and China. The British Empire was able to move indentured labour around the Empire to meet specific needs. So from the 1860s, Indian indentured labour was recruited into Natal sugar plantations. As a result, race immediately coincided with a particular location within the proletariat. The indigenous African peoples retained access to land and were compelled (or in certain situations could elect) to perform wage labour for the purposes of meeting enforced monetised tax obligations or to make purchases in the monetised economy. A significant white proletariat was only to emerge later and it was to benefit from the political power of the British Colonial authority. The Indian and Chinese indentured labourers had no access to land, were not free labour and were disadvantaged in the struggle over political power - the struggle that Gandhi was to take up.

Each strata - racially defined - was subject to different conditions of reproduction. A white proletariat - dependent entirely on wage income for survival - feared cheap indentured labour and migrant labour. Likewise indentured labour feared migrant labour. Located at different points within the process of proletarianisation, white, Indian and African workers were also differentially located in the balance of political power.

The white imperial power had to subordinate the indigenous pre-capitalist society if capitalism was to expand. Yet for the same reason they had at times to bring in indentured labour. When this was followed by traders and professional persons white settler monopoly of these activities was threatened. Whilst the expansion of capitalism represented a powerful class interest, racism was the most effective political and ideological means of ensuring a supply of labour while suppressing the indigenous social formation. This imperative overrode the possibility of conferring class-based rights on Indian traders as opposed to indentured Indian labourers. This dilemma had perplexed South Africa's racist regime for decades and by the time they attempted to confer largely class rights in the 1980s it was too late.

For Indian political leaders opposed to this colonial discrimination, a similar dilemma existed. A class choice was possible in which they could seek to reach an accommodation between Indian traders and the bourgeois class interests of the colonial power. The alternative was that a more complex struggle could be waged in terms of linking the rights of the traders and indentured labour - a struggle for the rights of people irrespective of their class and by extension therefore irrespective of their race.

It seems to me that Gandhi's particular perceptions and qualities were to play a decisive role here - not only within Indian politics in South Africa - but for the subsequent course of the liberation struggle. To once again quote Nehru commenting on the Indian liberation struggle and Gandhi's influence in Congress:

"Gandhi held strong views on economic, social, and other matters. He didn't try to impose all of these on the Congress, though he continued to develop his ideas, and sometimes in the process varied them, through his writings... In two respects the background of his thought had a vague but considerable influence; the fundamental test of everything was how far it benefitted the masses, and the means were always important and couldn't be ignored even though the end in view was right, for the means governed the end and varied it.

"Gandhi was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the innermost depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual. It was basically concerned with his firm belief in the moral law, which he calls the law of truth or love." (Nehru, pp. 383-384)

Within this subtle concern for the masses, moral superiority and a readiness to act was the basis for mass mobilisation and action that would permanently influence the course of the struggle and the relation between classes.

Gandhi's articulation of satyagraha was to shape the South African Indian response to their repression and influence the general approach to struggle in South Africa. Satyagraha could be applied to the endeavours of any group in society protesting or seeking to establish their rights. However, it is clearly most effective when it takes the form of mass action. So let us first assess under what conditions mass action is most likely to be successful against a brutal and repressive regime.

The first obstacle to overcome is individual and collective fear of the State and its capacity for reprisal. This is a complex process. It requires a depth of feeling amongst a broad spectrum in society and political capacity to neutralise the most brutal excesses of the State. Few, if any, modern States are totally immune from international scrutiny and this limits their excesses to a degree. Excess brutality can in any event inculcate a determination and desperation in the opposition that strengthens it rather than smashing it.

However, in any one protest action there is no guarantee that brutality would not result. To quote a report of Gandhi speaking:

"They would notice he had changed his dress from that he had formerly adopted for the last 20 years, and he had decided on the change when he heard of the shooting of their fellow-countrymen. No matter whether the shooting was found to be justified or not, the fact was that they were shot, and those bullets shot him through the heart also. He felt how glorious it would have been if one of those bullets struck him also, because might he not be a murderer himself, by having participated in that event by having advised Indians to strike? His conscience cleared him of this guilt of murder, but he felt he should adopt mourning for those Indians as a humble example to his fellow-countrymen." (Speech at Mass Meeting, Durban, December 21, 1913, Collected works of mahatma gandhi,Volume 12, Document 200).

It is not enough to unify around a just cause. Gandhi's conduct as a leader lent moral superiority to that cause which allowed it to survive acts of brutality. The problems posed by civil resistance differ substantially from those of military resistance. A guerrilla army is clearly strengthened if its cause establishes moral high ground but we are dealing here with smaller numbers subject to greater levels of resistance. In the case of a conventional army, discipline can be used to keep coherence and determination of purpose. But in mass action it is ordinary people - not all in direct daily contact, not all in common organisation.

For ordinary people to risk death, injury, arrest or victimisation and to do it often is a complex political phenomenon and clearly Gandhi had a supreme understanding of what was necessary and in what circumstances these energies become a political and socio-economic weapon of struggle.

"I learnt only two or three days ago that you had returned from England. Will you allow me to tell you how deeply concerned I was when I learnt that your men were among the first to strike on the coast? At an important meeting, when I was actually asked why I would not advocate a strike on the sugar plantations also, I replied that we were endeavouring to confine the area to the collieries only, in the hope that the strike on the collieries would be a sufficient demonstration to secure relief." (See 3)

He goes on to justify the action by driving for high moral ground:

"As you know, in this struggle for honour and self-respect, and for the relief of the distress of my dumb and helpless countrymen, the indentured Indians, it was not possible for us to consider or confine the extent of our sufferings. In this struggle we have not hesitated to invite our own women and children to suffer and lose their all, and we could not very well be expected to consider the interests of individual friends and sympathisers. In all our struggles of this nature the innocent as well as the guilty suffer. I hope, therefore, that neither my countrymen nor I have forfeited the valuable cooperation and sympathy which you have always extended." (See 4)

The need to unify across the lines of class and to establish moral superiority in the eyes of the whole of society are clearly illustrated. Gandhi had to present his case and conduct himself in a manner that a purely working class organisation would find hard to maintain. Very similar problematics arose for COSATU in the 1980s and 1990s.

There is another area of tension within a strategy of mass action. Gandhi saw passive resistance as an instrument toward negotiating from a power base rather than as an instrument of insurrection:

"When all the preparations for the march were completed, I made one more effort to achieve a settlement." (See 5)

This tactic is a sophisticated and difficult one. It keeps open the chance of talking, thus establishing the opponent as intransigent and thereby capturing moral ground. But more than this it can in fact lead to negotiation and success. Gandhi was very conscious of this and was careful to state clear and potentially achievable demands. He understood that successes fuelled the engines of resistance rather than dampened them.

This strategy is not easy since mobilising mass action creates a momentum that makes compromise difficult. Yet precisely because of the mass and largely unorganised nature of such action these energies can also subside quickly. The role of leadership is difficult here - it either has to have considerable collective experience, courage and support or a religiosity of purpose around it. Gandhi largely invoked the latter and it is fascinating to watch his relationship with Congress in India - he came to be the embodiment of passive resistance standing apart from Congress leadership.

"The Committee [All India Committee] again appealed to Britain and the United Nations 'in the interest of world freedom'... (but) 'The committee resolves therefore to sanction, for the vindication of India's undeniable right to freedom and independence, the starting of a mass struggle on non-violent lines under the inevitable leadership of Gandhiji'. That sanction was to take effect only when Gandhiji so decided." (Nehru, p.507, reporting on Quit India Resolution 7-8 August 1942)

The difficult choices of timing, negotiating and selling of compromises could be embodied in Gandhi because he had come to occupy an almost religious position whilst remaining a key political actor. Where collective leadership has to make such decisions the position is most difficult for that leadership.

However, even more difficult than negotiating a compromise is the ability to sustain it as a victory. It is necessary to be able to consolidate the gains in real organisational activity. In the absence of this, victories can be all too easily whittled away by the regime once the pressure of mass action has subsided. An ongoing organisational and logistical capacity that can capitalise on the energies unleashed by mass action is an essential requirement for the success and sustainability of mass action. Providing such an organisational capacity is as complex as mass action itself, requiring leadership capabilities that combine mobilising and organising skills. This combination is seldom embodied in one individual - the relationship between Nehru and Gandhi is fascinating in this regard - and even if the capacities reside to different degrees within a leadership grouping it has to act in unison. In the 1990s a large part of COSATU’s success was to effectively combine these leadership skills and manage the tensions between mobilisation and negotiation.

For the ANC the same dilemmas were to emerge very powerfully in the period after 1990. Despite considerable problems there is no doubt that the existence of organisational and mobilising capacities within the Alliance leadership has been crucial. But there can also be little doubt that the stature of Mandela, both nationally and internationally, has been crucial in making difficult decisions. It is not too difficult to see the reasoning behind the Indian Congress placing complex negotiating decisions in the hands of Gandhiji when we reflect on our current circumstances.

In addition to this leadership role in providing the capacity to harness mass action, a wider organisational issue is raised. How are the differing interests unified in mass action dealt with in the organisational phase? In India the particular nature of Congress merged many interests into an uneasy balance. In South Africa a complex form of Alliance politics emerged. Whether this will make the future process of government more or less effective is difficult to know. However, it opens up an important area of theorising in the South African situation, since mass action is a very complex rather than a simple form of resistance. It also opens more complex potentialities of transforming the resistance into governance. This is an issue on which Gandhi and his influence cannot offer us a great deal because as the embodiment of satyagraha he never had the chance to invoke it in independent India.

In South Africa we are about to enter a crucial phase - that of governance. The Alliance is a more structured phenomenon than was the Indian Congress. The question is whether this can carry over into the process of governance. The Reconstruction and Development Programme is essentially a strategy that proposes a form of governance led by the State but involving civil society in policy formation and implementation. This is a strategic response to the magnitude of the socio-economic issues we face and the limitations our history places on the confidence in the organisational abilities of our people. Mass action across our land may have been a crucial contributor to building these capacities.

The more structured relations within the Alliance may also have developed capacities to embrace complex organisational forms that are integral to the process envisaged by the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The forums such as the National Economic Forum, National Housing Forum and others have been the outcome of mass action and will now be part of governance.

These are very rich areas for further debate, research and theorising. A retrospective look at Gandhi, his philosophy and organisational methods can only be instructive in such an exercise.

We cannot hold Gandhi to account for all that has happened in the struggle for liberation. However, there can be little doubt that his impact was significant. Gandhi raises so many issues within political and historical processes because such complexity seems to condense into one person. His legacy to South Africa is multi-faceted but it will be very interesting to evaluate what impact satyagraha, translated over decades in mass action, will have on our future. Will it be in part of our struggle for liberation and come to end or will it translate into a new form of participative governance?

The need to mobilise mass support for reconstruction and development arises from the extent of the socio-economic problems that apartheid created. New tensions and challenges will emerge between classes and within the Alliance. A concern with altering the socio-economic conditions of the majority of our people - a starting point for Gandhi - will spur us to take on these challenges.

In re-establishing relations - economic, social and political - with the world, the link established between India and South Africa will once again become important. There is a tendency to think of our future economic relations as being with the former colonial powers and the advanced industrial economies. Whilst these relations will continue, it may be that relationships with large economies such as India, China, Brazil and Indonesia may be even more important in our reconstruction and development. One of the goals of this programme is to establish worker rights for all and to eliminate discrimination. If this succeeds then a united working class may be a part of the economy of South Africa as it develops new relations with India. The intricacies and quality of this relationship will have been powerfully influenced by one of the greatest sons of India - Gandhiji.