Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/311



APPENDIX I ______

THE STRUGGLE OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

(By the Editor, Indian Opinion.)

To survey, within a limited space, the origins and incidents of a movement that has occupied eight years of the history of South African Indians is a task impossible of satisfactory fulfilment. The present sketch will, therefore, be but a hasty outline, with here and there an indicator emphasising a noteworthy occurrence or a fundamental outline.

The origins of the Passive Resistance Struggle are to be sought, not in the agitation of 1906, but in that which commenced, in one of its phases, in the Transvaal. In 1885, and, in another, in Natali in 1894. The old Republican Law 3 of 1885, whilst imposing various burdens upon Asiatics residing in the country, required that such of them as entered for purposes of trade should be registered at a fixed fee, and that, "for sanitary purposes," they should reside in locations specially set apart for them. To a large extent, both requirements proved a dead 191