Opinion Sudheendra Kulkarni writes | Lessons from South Africa: The fading Gandhi-Mandela legacy

“I have scored 95 per cent in my qualifying exam. But I’ll never be seen as black enough to be eligible for admission in a good university here, or for a government job. The reservation system helps black students with even 50 per cent get ahead in education and employment.”

His son went to Japan, became an executive and is now living there. His daughter also wants to leave South Africa for studies and a career. “Soon, only I, my wife and our dog will live here,” said my friend. He had previously worked in a public university in Durban for 25 years. He was good at his work. He was qualified to become a dean, but was denied promotion because, “I was an Indian and the post was given to a black colleague. Reluctantly, I came to a private university in Cape Town.”

He added: “The British brought my forefathers from India to South Africa as indentured labourers or semi-slaves over 125 years ago. I am a fifth-generation South African. I have no links with India anymore. In the eyes of Indians, I am a South African. But in the eyes of radical black South Africans, I am still an Indian, an outsider. The reservation system does not affect whites because they are the wealthiest people in South Africa. They control the economy. They have one foot here and the other in Europe or America. It’s people of Indian origin who have become victims of discrimination.”

“Would you call it reverse racism?” I asked him. “Of course, it is,” he replied. “But we can’t do anything. We have only two options. Keep quiet or leave the country.”

Nevertheless, he also made a revealing confession. “I don’t entirely blame blacks for this. We Indians are also guilty. Many Indians think they are racially superior to blacks. For example, my mother never treats poor black servants in our home as human beings. She fires them after six to eight months and hires new ones. They are helpless because there is a lot of poverty and joblessness among blacks.”

I had many such eye-opening conversations about the current situation in South Africa during my trip to Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town last month. Not all blacks have a negative attitude towards people of Indian origin. A majority of them admire Indians for their contribution to South Africa’s progress and prosperity. However, a small but aggressive section of the black community has become xenophobic. Their outlook towards Indians worsened when the Gupta brothers, a wealthy Indian business family, managed “state capture” by building a highly corrupting relationship with the country’s former president Jacob Zuma (2009-2018). A radical party of black Africans, called the Economic Freedom Fighters, which often makes viciously anti-Indian remarks, coined the term “Zupta” for him — that is, Zuma plus Gupta. When Zuma was arrested in July 2021 over corruption charges, riots broke out violently targeting Indians in many places. Hence, many Indians are also feeling insecure.

All this is worrying because India has had close historical ties with South Africa. After all, Mahatma Gandhi lived in South Africa for 21 years (1893-1914) and led the non-violent Satyagraha movement against the injustice suffered by Indians under the white rule. Nelson Mandela, leader of the epic anti-Apartheid struggle, was inspired by Gandhi and Nehru. His party, the African National Congress, took its name after the Indian National Congress. But the situation has changed now. Indians are marginalised in politics and government. Being a minority, they have no hope of being elected. They account for only 2.6 per cent of South Africa’s population of 6 crore.

In their campaign against Indians, black extremists have resorted to another ploy. They have launched the false propaganda that Gandhi was a racist. They criticise even Mandela for his dream of making South Africa a non-racial “rainbow nation” with equal rights for all. “I am opposed to white oppression, but I am also opposed to black oppression,” Mandela had said. That is not the reassurance Indian South Africans hear from today’s ANC, which has been governing the country since 1994. “It has become corrupt, faction-ridden and incapable of controlling rising crime and hostility towards non-blacks,” several people told me.

I encountered another disturbing feature when I went to Lenasia, a large Indian township near Johannesburg. The polarising anti-Muslim politics in India has begun to divide the Indian diaspora in South Africa on communal lines. I was pained — indeed, the Mahatma would have been deeply pained — to hear that “Many young Indian Muslims do not want to identify themselves as Indian.” Indians of all castes, religions and linguistic communities had come together under his leadership in South Africa. Similarly, they unitedly participated in the ANC’s subsequent anti-Apartheid struggle.

From Africa, I went to Rwanda and Kenya. What did I learn from this visit? In short, Indians must take Africa seriously and build comprehensively cooperative relations with all its 54 countries. Africa’s importance is growing immeasurably in today’s fast-changing world. Above all, we should establish close people-to-people relations based on equality and free from all traces of racial prejudice towards blacks, which, we must truthfully admit, still colours our attitude towards them. Above all, our ruling establishment must know the harm its communal politics is doing to India. The Hindu-Muslim divide is deepening at home; it is also, alarmingly, partitioning the Indian diaspora.

The writer, a close aide of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has recently established the Gandhi-Mandela Centre for India-Africa Friendship