In 1913 Gandhi protested a south african law that
Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa
James D. Hunt
Shaw University
The South African period of Gandhi’s life continues to be the least explored and the least understood. Even Judith Brown’s fine new study, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, published last month by Yale, is of little help in this regard. Yet more than ever it demands analysis, especially as recent events call for a deeper understanding of the various populations of South Africa.
A particularly vexing question has been the relationship between Gandhi and the Black people. Did he restrict his efforts strictly toward the betterment of the Indians? Could he have achieved more by working in cooperation with the other oppressed populations of the country? Was he even aware of the strivings, the leaders, and the organizations of the Blacks? If he was, why did he not attempt to work with them toward common goals?
Many scholars have looked at this relationship and found it unsatisfactory. Les Switzer, an expatriate South African who is an authority on the Black press in that country, wrote in 1986,
Men of the moral and intellectual stature of Solomon Plaatje, John Dube, John Tengo Jabavu, Walter Rubusana and Abdul Abdurrahman, to name but a few, exercised, if anything, a more profound influence in the history of resistance in this period than did Gandhi. Did the Mahatma have links with any of these Black leaders or with any of the political, economic and cultural organizations being developed by Blacks during this period? The record suggests that he did not.
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