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Between the two campaigns

Moves were now afoot to forge a Union of South Africa out of the four colonies. Prime Minister General Louis Botha and Smuts went to England to facilitate the process. Gandhi set sail for England and arrived on 10 July 1909, determined to avert anti-Indian legislation that he expected to be enacted in the new union. With the British government acting as mediator, Gandhi and Smuts struggled to reach a compromise. Gandhi demanded equality for the Indians, but Smuts gave little – he was determined to limit Indian immigration, prepared only to allow educated, professional, English-speaking Indians to come to the Transvaal.

Gandhi publicised the Indian issue, meeting with MPs, editors, journalists and various ideologues. He returned to South Africa in November 1909 and in May 1910 established Tolstoy Farm – a retreat for Satyagrahis, a place where their families could live while they were in prison. Kallenbach, who had bought the farm and donated it to the Satyagrahis, taught Gandhi how to make sandals, and the residents engaged in various self-help activities such as farming, carpentry, and making foodstuffs such as bread and marmalade.

The immigration question was at he top of the Union government’s agenda, and Smuts was now Minister of the Interior. By 1911 the resistance movement had dwindled and its main activities were negotiations with the government. In 1911 Gandhi met with Smuts and agreed to suspend the campaign.

Towards the end of 1912, Indian nationalist G.K. Gokhale toured South Africa on the invitation of Gandhi, to assess the condition of the Indian community. He travelled from Cape Town to Johannesburg and met with Union cabinet ministers, including their leaders, Smuts and Botha. Gokhale reported to Gandhi that the Black Act and the £3 tax on former indentured labourers would be repealed. Gandhi was sceptical.

In parliament, Smuts said that the £3 tax would not be repealed because Natal’s White employers would not allow it. In the Cape colony, a judge ruled that only Christian marriages would be recognised.

Gandhi called for a strike and a renewed passive resistance campaign against the £3 tax at a meeting on 28 April 1913. There were other demands: the right of Indians to travel between provinces, fair trading laws, recognition of marriages conducted under Hindu and Muslim rites, and the right to bring wives and children from India to South Africa.

Gandhi’s leadership was not without its detractors. Several critics laid into him, accusing him of egoism, of insincerity – especially since he had not supported earlier campaigns against the £3 tax – and of antagonising the white population.

The 1913 Campaign: Strikers and Marchers

Women jailed for the passive resistance campaign

The campaign was launched in September 1913. The first resisters were women who crossed over from the Transvaal into Natal, while women from Natal crossed over into the Transvaal. The Natal women were the first to be arrested, and outraged Indians flocked to join the cause. The Transvaal women were not arrested, so they went to Newcastle and persuaded workers to go on strike.

Gandhi went to Newcastle and spoke to the striking miners, whose employers had turned off the water and lights in their compounds.

On 13 October a meeting was held in Newcastle, and Gandhi was represented by veteran passive resister Thambi Naidoo, who was also president of the Johannesburg Tamil Benefit Society. The meeting formed a passive resistance committee, and Naidoo tried to get workers at the railways to go on strike, but failed. Naidoo was arrested, but was released on 15 October, when the committee addressed 78 workers at the Farleigh colliery. The workers went on strike, were arrested and warned to return to work on 17 October. They refused, and within a week the strikers swelled to 2000. Within two weeks, between 4000 and 5000 workers went on strike. Gandhi, Thambi Naidoo and labour activist CR Naidoo moved around the area, urging workers to join the strike.

On 23 October Gandhi announced that he would lead a march of workers out of the compounds and that they would seek arrest. The plan was to lead more than 2000 strikers across the border into the Transvaal, stopping at Charleston. The march was set to take place from 6 November.

The Indian Mineworkers Strike in 1913 was part of the passive resistance campaign. Source: Omar Badsha, Private Collection.

Coalmine owners then sought a meeting with Gandhi, and Gandhi met with them on 25 October at the Durban Chamber of Commerce. Gandhi explained to them that the strike was a response to the government’s failure to uphold its promise to Gokhale to repeal the £3 tax. The mine owners consulted with government, which denied that they had promised to repeal the tax, and planned to issue an ultimatum for the workers to return to work. On the day, 6 November, before the ultimatum could be communicated, Gandhi led 200 strikers and their families on the march to Charleston. The next day, Thambi Naidoo led a further 300 strikers towards the border. Another column of 250 left the next day, and after a few days some 4000 strikers were on the march for the Transvaal.

The strikers were supported by Indian businessmen, who arranged for food to be distributed along the length of the march. The strike was costing the organisers about £250 a day for distributing a minimal diet of bread and sugar. Money was also sent from India to support the strikers.

The strike spread to the south of Natal by the beginning of November, and by the 7th the strike was effectively underway, joined by about 15000 workers in spontaneous fashion. Workers at South African Refineries, Hulett's Refinery, Chemical Works, Wright's Cement and Pottery Works, and African Boating, among others, joined the strike.

Many strikers congregated in townships and some went to Gandhi’s Phoenix settlement. However most, according to Swan, remained in their barracks, refusing to work. Swan also notes that the strikers were unorganised, and motivated by rumour and unconfirmed reports of support from Gokhale, among other reasons.

Meanwhile the marchers were on the move. They went first to Charleston, on the Transvaal-Natal border 60km from Newcastle. They were given 1,5 pounds of bread and some sugar, and told to submit to the police if they were beaten, to behave hygienically and peacefully, and not to resist arrest. They arrived without incident, and were fed with food donated by local businessmen and cooked by Gandhi.

Gandhi informed the government of their intention to continue into the Transvaal, and called on them to arrest the strikers before they arrived, but Smuts calculated that the strike would dissolve before long, and he decided on a policy of non-intervention. Gandhi decided that if the strikers were not arrested, they would march to Tolstoy Farm in Lawley, 35km southwest of Johannesburg, covering 30 to 40km a day.

The marchers then crossed the border into Volksrust, just 2km from Charleston, and proceeded to Palmford, a further 14km away, where Gandhi was arrested. He appeared in court in Volksrust but the judge allowed for bail, which Kallenbach paid, leaving Gandhi free to join the marchers.

When the marchers arrived at Standerton, Gandhi was again arrested, this time by a magistrate. Again he was freed. Two days later, on 9 November, Gandhi was arrested yet again.

On 10 November the government arrested the marchers in Balfour and put them on a train to Natal. Gandhi was arrested on three occasions during the march, and on 11 November he was sentenced nine months’ hard labour. Within a few days, Polak and Kallenbach were also arrested and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.

By the end of November, the strike was also coming to an end, and workers began returning to their places of employment.

The strike – by about 20 000 Indian workers in total – paralysed sections of the economy of Natal, especially the sugar industry, and questions arose regarding law and order exercised by the authorities. Rumours that black workers were poised to join the strike sent shivers through the province. Police were sent in and some workers were shot and killed.