Place · administrative capital · South Africa
Pretoria
The South African administrative capital where Gandhi practised law from 1893 to 1902 as the legal counsel to the Dada Abdulla & Co trading firm, the position that had brought him to South Africa from Bombay. In Pretoria Gandhi organised the first meeting of Indians to address their legal grievances (around 100 attendees), and his legal work on indentured labour contracts and the £3 head tax on free Indians produced his first political engagement. The Pretoria years were the formation period before the 1906 satyagraha vow at the Empire Theatre, Johannesburg. The Mahatma Gandhi House in Pretoria and the Transvaal High Court building where he practised remain. Gandhi returned to Pretoria in 1904 during the Boer War reconstruction.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- -25.748, 28.229
Connections (1)
- Historical routePietermaritzburg
Gandhi was thrown off the train at Pietermaritzburg in June 1893 and completed the journey to Pretoria by stagecoach, being beaten on the way for refusing to sit outside with the driver. Within weeks of arriving he had called the first political meeting of Indians in South Africa. The two towns are the beginning of the twenty-one years, and the connection is a schematic one rather than a claim about a single continuous journey.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Pretoria”. M.K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa; The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Publications Division).
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