School of International Training (SIT) students speak with a volunteer at the Durban Lesbian and Gay Community and Health Centre. The Centre provides support and services to the LGBTQ community around Durban and promotes equal rights for all. For more information on the Durban Lesbian and Gay Community and Health Centre, visit their website.
-Jackie Flynn
MAIN IMAGE: Portrait of Ela Gandhi taken by SIT student Serena Hawkey.
“He read the Quran, the Bible, all the scriptures so he could learn. These scriptures made him realize that there is something more to life. It’s about being more responsible, about the fact that everyone deserves to enjoy social justice,” Ela Gandhi reflects.
The man she refers to is her grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most well-known historical figures around the globe. Known for his peaceful approach to conflict resolution, he showed mankind a new and nonviolent approach to political movements.
He was also an inspiration for his family, many of whom who have followed in his footsteps. Ela Gandhi has taken on political activism in her own life, previously serving as an ANC member of Parliament in the first democratic government and currently serving as a chairperson of the Gandhi Development Trust.
Speaking to a group of SIT students this week she said,“Contrary to what a lot of people believe —that he didn’t have a close relationship with his family — he was a very warm family member. He wrote letters to me up until the day he was assassinated — a seven-year-old. He felt it was important.”
Though Gandhi is widely known for his leadership in the fight for Indian independence from the British, he also had an influential impact in South Africa. He lived in the country for 21 years and had some of his first encounters with racism in Durban.
In 1893, Gandhi arrived in Durban to work as legal counsel for an Indian business firm. On a train ride from Durban to Pretoria, he was asked to move to a third-class car as Indian people were not allowed in first-class carriages. Gandhi had purchased a first-class ticket and refused. At the Pietermaritzburg station he was forcibly removed from the train.
Later on, while Gandhi was visiting a courthouse in Durban, he was asked by the local magistrate to remove his turban. Gandhi refused and walked out of the courtroom.
These events, along with growing legislative discrimination against non-white communities in the country, fuelled Gandhi’s involvement in South African social liberation movements. It also motivated the entire Gandhi family to speak for marginalised people.
Ela Gandhi, who is a social worker by training, was banned and subjected to house arrest for nine years by the Apartheid government. She remains passionate about the fight against inequality and non-violence.
Read more about Ela Gandhi and her work here Ela Gandhi Bio
Today the students from the Spring 2018 SIT programme based in Durban, South Africa, spoke with Sophie Macmanus from Open Data Durban. Open Data Durban is a non-profit open-information-advocacy organization based in the city that aims to ensure easy access to information for citizens. Sophie gave us an overview of the purpose of the group and also explained some of the projects they’re working on.
— Jackie Flynn
MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE— “It took one-second and boom. I don’t know how I did it, but I broke through the door,” says Mozambican academic Yussuf Adam as he describes the day almost three decades ago when his friend and colleague Ruth First was assassinated.
First was assassinated in 1982 when the ANC was working out of Mozambique and was being aggressively pursued by the South African Apartheid government. A parcel containing C-4 explosive was delivered to the office where she and Adam were working.
Adam, now a faculty member at the Centre for African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, said First’s committed political activism and her role as a journalist and writer in South Africa meant she was targeted by the South African government. In South Africa at various times she had been banned, arrested and held in solitary confinement. She remained in the sights of the South African government after she moved back to England, and then to Mozambique where she became research director at the Centre for African Studies.
Though many details of Ruth’s death are still unknown, the man responsible for making the bomb has been identified as Craig Williamson. Adam states that Williamson won’t say who gave him the orders but that the government of Mozambique has talked with him several times.
In a meeting with Adam last week, he described First as a larger than life personality. “She would walk into a room and everyone payed attention to her. She would ask you about everything — even your dog. Why would she care about my dog?” Adam said.
First was a mentor to Adam and an adored friend.
Reflecting on the violence of the period, Adam stressed the importance of preventing war again. Adam said, “No matter what you study: biology, journalism, mathematics: it’s all a study of different forms of reality for us to live together. That’s the biggest thing: to prevent war again.”
Read more on Ruth First here: http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first
