How ironic that this idiocy that Gandhi was a racist manifests while I am travelling in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, revered by most Indians and billions around the world. It’s a test of inner sincerity. Even Einstein described Gandhi in these words: “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” 

In the deep rural area of Araku Valley I sit in villages with tribal farmers where the Naandi Foundation has built incredible models of deep transformative regenerative agriculture among some of India’s poorest tribal communities. Here, as across India’s 1.4 billion people, the names of Mandela and Gandhi are spoken of in hushed tones as the founding fathers of democracy in India and South Africa. 

I was here more than a decade ago and witnessed today the transformed lives of more than 100,000 smallholder farmers and increased incomes of up to six times. And they now operate across more than 1,500 villages. 

I have met Naandi CEO Manoj Kumar, as well as Dr Vandana Shiva, one of the most prominent thinkers and a fierce fighter for the preservation of community seed banks, women and indigenous rights and the rights of Mother Earth as we face a catastrophic ecological crisis that threatens the lives of billions. 

Both are Gandhian followers and asked me to explain this errant position. I am unable to do so. And how out of context this view is. It’s a reflection of how deeply poisoned our politics has become in South Africa, pandering to self-interest and scapegoating to become relevant. 

A position that feeds a narrative that Mandela betrayed our people during the negotiations, weaves into the accusation that Gandhi was a racist. 

Gandhi came to South Africa to represent the interests of Indian traders who were out-competing white traders who had lobbied the white authorities to ban and place restrictions on Indians. It was arrogant to believe he was here to liberate black people from colonial oppression. 

But it was where he began his personal transformation on a lifelong mission to fight injustice. To misunderstand this context is to be dishonest politically. 

Every community I go to recognises the deep spiritual and political connection between the philosophy and values of two of the greatest leaders of the 20th century – Gandhi and Mandela. 

Both Vandana and Manoj run groundbreaking work in training women and young people in regenerative practices and have the capacity and the commitment to train hundreds of young black South African farmers here and send us experts to work with communities in South Africa. 

When I look at why our land reform failed even, where land is returned to communities, it has more to do with extension services support given to communities than with ownership of land. So, the work that has been done here is crucial to rebuild the expertise that was broken by the apartheid dispossession of land and breaking the connection that our people had with farming and land. 

Read in Daily Maverick: “Gandhi’s SA legacy under threat from government disinterest and dwindling funds”

I am the great-grandson of an indentured labourer, Angamma, who in the 1860s was shipped by the British colonisers to work as a slave on the sugar farms of KwaZulu-Natal in the single-biggest migration of 150,000 from the south of India. 

I cut my teeth in trade unionism in the city of Pietermaritzburg in the 1980s. It was here that we made breakthroughs in building the modern trade union movement that became Cosatu. The early unions faced brutal state repression, dismissals of worker activists, the war on the townships of Edenvale, Ashdown and further north in Howick, which bore the brunt of violence in the Eighties as our struggle for freedom intensified. 

The city was a crucible of a courageous struggle against apartheid and its allies. And as a volunteer here in 1980, I was part of building unity between Indian and African workers and the community mobilisation of the United Democratic Front that united our people. 

Now all we see is a collapsing infrastructure, mired by political corruption and practice that has betrayed many who across the racial divide sacrificed so much in the past, on the altar of political convenience and stupidity.  

Pietermaritzburg has a rich history of struggle that politicians today would do well to understand. 

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Yes, it was here that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi cut his political teeth. On 7 June 1893, only a week after he arrived in Durban, the “coolie barrister” boarded the first-class compartment of a train to Pretoria and at Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal, was thrown, bag and baggage, onto the platform after a white passenger objected to his “coloured” presence (notwithstanding the fact that he had a valid first-class ticket). 

It was this moment in Pietermaritzburg that transformed Gandhi, an English-trained lawyer, into a mahatma and global fighter for social justice, armed with the tools and weapons of nonviolence and satyagraha, and showed that oppressed people of colour could be mobilised against racism and colonialism. 

And his journey beyond Pietermaritzburg would have epochal significance and influence and set the DNA of civil rights and anti-imperialism struggles around the world. 

It was an event that was honoured on 25 April 1997 by the posthumous conferment of the freedom of the city on the Mahatma by Mandela. 

I was tasked by Mandela to accompany Prime Minister Gujral’s visit of 9 October 1995 to the ex-colonial railway station to commemorate the granting of the freedom of the city, which Mandela had conferred posthumously on Gandhi before he visited Johannesburg Fort, a notorious prison which over the years held both the Mahatma and Mandela. 

In 1946, India became the first country to sever trade relations with white racist South Africa. 

This is the true history of Gandhi and the historical solidarity between India and South Africa. Not some infantile, ahistorical version that seeks to divide our communities’ pursuit of a narrow agenda of political opportunism. 

Today India is the largest democracy in the world. With 1.4 billion people it has the largest population in the world and is one the fastest-growing economies. We are two countries connected by the umbilical cord of solidarity. We are both members of BRICS, the largest community of people in the world and an economic bloc that counterbalances established Western interests. 

I sincerely hope that the majority of councillors in the City of Johannesburg reject this resolution. That we stand by the historical relations between our two democracies. And that we present a united front against a sinister agenda of stirring up hatred and conflict between African and Indian communities in Pietermaritzburg and our country as a whole. 

Mandela, our founding father of our democracy, had this to say of Gandhi: “I could never reach the standard of morality, simplicity and love for the poor set by the Mahatma. While Gandhi was a human without weaknesses, I am a man of many weaknesses.” 

If Mandela had this to say about Gandhi, who am I or anyone else to judge Mahatma Gandhi in any other way? DM