Satyagraha in South Africa
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~140,000 words · 677 passages
Cite this work
- APAMahatma Gandhi. (n.d.). Satyagraha in South Africa. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/satyagraha-in-south-africa
- MLAMahatma Gandhi. Satyagraha in South Africa. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/satyagraha-in-south-africa.
- ChicagoMahatma Gandhi. Satyagraha in South Africa. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/satyagraha-in-south-africa.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Gandhi's own account of the twenty-year struggle of Indians in South Africa, where he invented and tested the method he would later take to India.
Context and history
He wrote it in 1923-24 in Yerwada prison, in Gujarati, and Valji Govindji Desai translated it into English. It tells how the word satyagraha — 'firmness in truth' — was born: Gandhi had it coined by competition because 'passive resistance' struck him as misleading; what he was proposing was not the passivity of the weak but a form of action demanding more courage than violence. The book is history and handbook at once, and it has the merit of showing the failures: the strikes that collapsed, the agreements betrayed, the moments when discipline broke down. It repays reading before the autobiography, because here the method can be watched working on a small scale.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
One of these is Johannesburg, the golden city of South Africa. Only fifty years ago, the site on which it now stands was desolate and covered with dry grass. But when gold mines were discovered, houses began to be built one after another, as if by magic, and today there are many hand¬ some and substantial buildings. The wealthy people of the place have got trees from the more fertile tracts of South Africa and from Europe, paying as much as a guinea for a tree, and have planted them there. A traveller ignorant of this previous history would imagine that these trees had been there for all time. I do not propose to describe all the parts of South Africa, but will confine myself only to those which are connected with our subject-matter. One part of South Africa is under the Portuguese, and the rest under the British. The territory under the Portuguese is called Delagoa Bay, and this is the first South African port for steamers from India. As we proceed further south, we come to Natal, the first British Colony. Its chief sea-port is called Port Natal, but we know it as Durban, under which name it is generally known all over South Africa. Durban is the largest city in Natal. The capital is Pietermaritzburg, situated inland at a distance of about sixty miles from Durban and at a height of about two thousand feet above sea-level. The climate of Durban is somewhat like that of Bombay, although rather colder. If we proceed further inland beyond Natal we reach the Transvaal, whose mines supply the world with the largest amount of gold. Some years ago diamond mines were also discovered in one of which was the world’s largest diamond. The Cullinan , so called after the name of the proprietor of the mine, weighed over 3,000 carats, or over 1^ lb. avoirdupois, while the Kohinoor now weighs about 100 carats and the Orloff , one of the Russian crown jewels, about 200 carats.