Mahatma rises from the ashes

NOT MANY people outside South Africa would know that 1996 was the 50th anniversary of a passive resistance campaign started in Durban by Albert Luthuli (a citizen of KwaZulu Natal who later earned the Nobel peace prize), a campaign founded on Gandhian principles and espoused by a significant number of people, many of them Indian.

The University of Natal hosted a commemorative function this year where President Mandela paid tribute to the Indian people of the province and their role in the struggle against apartheid. He also paid tribute to Gandhi himself - someone who had spent many of his formative years in South Africa and who described his ejection from a train at a Pietermaritzburg railway station in 1893, in the small hours of a winter night because of his colour, as an event which dated the beginning of his "active non-violence".

Gandhi is much revered in South Africa and especially in KwaZulu Natal where there is the largest Indian population outside India. It was a cause of great joy when Gandhi's grandson was recently appointed as the Indian high commissioner to South Africa. It was extremely interesting when a collaborative venture between India and South Africa resulted in a film production recording Gandhi's early years in South Africa entitled The Making of the Mahatma with the screenplay being written by an emeritus professor of our university. A recent book launch was further cause for remembrance.

Mahatma Gandhi once lived near Durban on a farm he named Phoenix in a simple house called Sarvodaya, meaning the "welfare of all". Materially, Phoenix Settlement revolved around the operation of a printing press and production of the newspaper Indian Opinion. It also presaged the communal organisation that would support the movements of passive resistance or satyagraha that matured in Gandhi's years in India. Phoenix was both a spiritual and temporal support base for the South African passive resistance campaigns led by Gandhi in 1907 and 1913.

Gandhi wrote that "the workers could live a more simple and natural life, and the ideas of Ruskin and Tolstoy be combined with strict business principles". Today the very trees planted there, once strong and tall, compete for life with extremely poor people who have occupied the settlement. Wood is fuel. Space within commuting distance of the city centre is at a premium.

When Gandhi called his village Phoenix had he some prescience that it would be burnt to ashes? By 1985, though Indian Opinion had been closed, Phoenix Settlement housed a school, clinic, library and museum. It had also become a refuge for people fleeing the first onslaughts of internecine violence that have continued in KwaZulu Natal to this day. In August 1985 bands of attackers torched the settlement, chased away the refugees and stripped the buildings of all material that could be used for building the kind of shack shelters that now crowd this once-rural farm.

The launch of the book published by the University of Natal Press was a good reason to celebrate the endurance of Gandhi's legacy in KwaZulu Natal. Gandhi and South Africa: Principles and Politics, edited by Judith M. Brown and Martin Prozesky, arose from a conference held at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg in 1993 as a centenary commemoration of the genesis of Gandhi's resolve to counter injustice by non-violent means.

As the deathly frost of apartheid began to thaw, South Africa's relationship with India began to bloom again. In so many ways Gandhi's legacy has been the pollination. The book launch showed the richness and potential of that heritage. The guest of honour was Gopala Krishna Gandhi, the high commissioner of India in South Africa and Gandhi's grandson. Another guest was Gandhi's grand-daughter, Ela Gandhi, who has been a torch-bearer of Gandhi's satyagraha politics in South Africa from childhood. Now a member of parliament representing the ANC, she remains a proponent of Gandhi's principles.

Segregationist and apartheid policies sundered families with ties to both India and South Africa and froze the affinity that ought to flow naturally from such cultural and familial closeness.

Now it seems we will have an Indian ocean spring and the resurrection not just of diplomatic politesse but of economic and technological interaction, of tourism, of academic, cultural and religious exchange and of Gandhi.

To be of relevance today Gandhi's vision of peace-making needs to be retrieved from hagiography. Both India and South Africa are in desperate need of an understanding of how peace is found or made. Sadly, according to Judith Brown, "the record of Gandhi's Indian years suggests that only in very specific situations was non-violence a working political option which led to a resolution of the conflict situation in which it was adopted". She suggests that there are different tasks for those examining Gandhi's relevance for today. For some it will be the moral transformation required of the true satyagrahi. In KwaZulu Natal, it is impossible to ignore the practical imperatives of daily life which is fear-ridden, violent and poverty-stricken.

The mission for scholars here is to use the inspiration of Gandhi's vision to give impetus to the study of peace. The task for universities is to combine those elements within themselves, whether they be historical, developmental, religious, political, literary or legal, that would contribute to understanding the nature of present-day violence and peace, and to provide the province with leaders skilled in conflict resolution, negotiation, clear communication and, if the mixture is right, ethical stamina.

Gandhi was a builder of bridges and sought new inclusive identities, particularly a national identity based on sarvodaya - the welfare of all. If his vision hoped for personal growth, it required institutional transformation. I like to think there are parallels between the shifts of consciousness required to bring the end of colonialism and the paradigmatic shifts demanded of South Africans now, particularly in institutions of higher education.

It is in the cooperation between disciplines at universities and in the fusion of new interdisciplinary identities that I see our proper and necessary contribution to the welfare of all in this country. I also see it as particularly appropriate and important that the University of Natal and the other universities of this province play a major role in peace studies.

I have no doubt the Phoenix will arise again among our young students if we give them opportunities to grow. Their inheritance is rich indeed.

Brenda Gourley is vice chancellor of the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa.