11 Sep 2006: ISS Today: The Other 9/11

11 September 2006: The Other 9/11

 

Today is being marked around the western world as a watershed moment in modern history. Five years since the attacks on the Twin Towers in the United States, the event continues to define the destinies of so many nations far removed from the streets of New York. In a world that has been defined in binary terms by the US President, George Bush, between good and evil, and with a need to counter violence with violence, it would be pertinent for us to reach back into history and rediscover a reason to celebrate this day.

 

One hundred years ago on this day, Mohondas Karamchand Gandhi launched what came to be known in English as the ‘passive resistance’ campaign in South Africa. In 1906 the Smuts government enacted a law that would enforce the registration and regulation of Indians in the former Transvaal. Under the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance, any Indian who did not register by the determined date would not be allowed to live or work in the Transvaal. Once registered, any Indian who could not produce his/her certificate was at risk of being detained. The Act also affected the Chinese community who had come to work in the mines and railways of the Transvaal.

 

Deeply affected by his experiences as a victim of racism in South African, the mild-mannered Indian barrister became instrumental in opposing these pass laws and the continuing imposition of racist policies on the Indian community. The campaign included boycotts, pickets and peaceful demonstrations and soon became a mass movement that would later bolster the sentiment of African opposition to Apartheid in coming years. It was started in the aptly named Empire Theatre in Johannesburg and used its most powerful weapon to maximum effect - peaceful protest. And while the campaign has been referred to as “passive resistance”, Gandhi himself believed this term to be inadequate as he saw their actions as actively opposing injustice, thus the name “Satyagraha”, which can be translated as “the force that comes from love, truth and non-violence”. During the eight-year long Satyagraha Campaign men and women alike were detained or deported back to India, even those who were born in South Africa. As we know the struggle against racist domination was only in its infancy with the whole institution of Apartheid yet to rear its ugly head. Indeed, Oliver Tambo remarked that the new phase of struggle would have to use more overt strategies of protest, hence the launch of the African National Congress’s Defiance Campaign.

 

As we look back on the hundred years since the initiation of the Satyagraha movement, we should draw strength from the South African inspired model of using the basic principals of humanity to protest against human suffering and injustice – a far more noble means of achieving change than the current benchmarks used for the “war on terror”.

Mariam Bibi Jooma, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Pretoria