Saturday 30 January 2016

30 JAN 1908 GANDHIJI SUMMONED BY JAN SMUTS










TheSATYAGRAHI

A meeting in Johannesburg on 11 September 1906 marked the start of the resistance campaign, which ultimately became known as satyagraha (meaning ‘truth-force’), with its practitioners called satyagrahi.
This mass meeting of about 3 000 people took place in the Empire Theatre in Ferreira Street (between Fox and Commissioner streets) in downtown Johannesburg (sadly, the theatre is long gone).
The gathering was in protest against the impending Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance of 1906, requiring all male Asians in the Transvaal to be fingerprinted and carry a form of pass, including children over the age of eight.
One of the resolutions passed at the meeting was that, failing all other intercessions, including a trip to London led by Gandhi, Indians would elect to go to prison rather than submit to the law in question.
But the government passed the law a few weeks later, and in October that year, Gandhi travelled to England to petition the authorities.
Although the British government vetoed the law, the Transvaal was granted self-government just a few months later and General Louis Botha, the prime minister of the Transvaal, was allowed to re-enact the law in 1907 in the form of the Transvaal Registration Act.
During the following seven years, protesters were imprisoned, flogged and even shot for refusing to register, or for burning their passes and engaging in other forms of resistance against the law.
A pivotal moment for the satyagraha movement was on 16 August 1908 when, outside the Hamidia Mosque in Jennings Street, Fordsburg, Gandhi encouraged those present to burn their identity documents. More than 2 000 documents were burned in a large cauldron outside the mosque. This action is widely regarded as being a precursor to the anti-pass campaigns of the African National Congress in the 1950s.
A second major satyagraha campaign was initiated in 1913 in protest against a £3 tax that was being imposed on ex-indentured Indians and because the state refused to recognise Hindu and Muslim marriages.
During this campaign, Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, was arrested at the border at Volksrust while attempting to cross the border into Transvaal by train with a group of women in protest against their marriages being declared invalid.
Gandhi also led a large group of striking workers across the Transvaal border along the Durban-to-Johannesburg railway line. This great march (a forerunner to the famous Salt March in India in 1930) started on 6 November 1913 and had in its ranks 127 women, 57 children and some 2 000 men. Gandhi was arrested and let out on bail three times.
The 1913 protest actions were what led to General Jan Smuts setting up a commission to investigate Indian grievances that would ultimately end in the passing of the Indian Relief Act, which paved the way for Gandhi's return to India, having achieved a major legal milestone for Indians in South Africa.
So powerful was this form of non-violent resistance that, as Gandhi was leaving South Africa in 1914, he described it as 'perhaps the mightiest instrument on earth'. His prophetic words were borne out, not least in South Africa where there were many instances of peaceful marches against apartheid.

Hamidia Mosque, Fordsburg

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WHAT’S THERE?
The Gandhi Memorial, also known as the Burning Truth, depicts a symbolic cauldron (created by artist Usha Seejarim) that commemorates the first recorded burning of passes that took place in South Africa on 16 August 1908.
WHERE?
Jennings Street, Fordsburg, Johannesburg
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SOUTHAFRICA.NET
“To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.”
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ThePRISONER

Between 1908 and 1913, Gandhi was sentenced to four terms of imprisonment in South Africa during the satyagrahacampaigns; he served a total of seven months and 10 days of these sentences in prisons around the country.
In July 1907, the Boer Republic Transvaal started to register Indians, sparking off the first campaign during which Gandhi and others actively refused to register and have their fingerprints taken while resolutely remaining in the Transvaal.
Gandhi was first arrested on 27 December 1907 for failing to register and staying in the Transvaal. When he appeared before a judge in early January 1908, he asked to be given the heaviest sentence possible and was sent to prison in the Old Fort on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on a two-month sentence.
As the protest continued, the number of Indian prisoners swelled to some 155 and the authorities had to put tents up in the yard to accommodate them. Here, Gandhi elected to join his compatriots sleeping in the open.
Gandhi was released from the Old Fort after a meeting with General Jan Smuts (colonial secretary and education secretary in Prime Minister Louis Botha’s Transvaal government), during which he agreed to encourage voluntary registration in exchange for the legislation being dropped.
When Smuts failed to keep his word, the satyagraha campaign gained in intensity and continued in different forms in the years that followed.
Gandhi also spent time in prison in Volksrust and Pretoria, and his wife, Kasturba, was held in Pietermaritzburg.

Video: Gandhi the prisoner

In 1908, Gandhi was imprisoned in the Old Fort on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on a two-month sentence. Today it houses a permanent exhibition on Gandhi's South African sojourn.
Image: Ryan James/Darling Lama Productions

Old Fort, Constitution Hill

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WHAT’S THERE?
In the Old Fort Prison Complex there is an exhibition titled Prisoner of Conscience focusing on Gandhi’s imprisonment and the satyagraha campaigns. There is a replica of the pair of sandals Gandhi once gave to General Jan Smuts. There are several other fascinating exhibitions here relating to Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment and the Women’s Gaol.
WHERE?
Constitution Hill, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
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