Volume 44, Number 13 · August 14, 1997
The Curse and Blessing of South Africa
By Timothy Garton Ash
At the beginning of this century, Mahatma Gandhi worked among the Indians of South Africa, organizing nonviolent protests from a settlement north of Durban. He built a school and a printing press, as well as his own solid brick house. Today, huts made of dried mud on rough timber frames crowd around the ruined buildings of the Gandhi settlement. Half-naked children play in the dust. There is no running water. Most of the huts have no electricity; most of their black African inhabitants have no work. And over the last decade the community now called Bhambayi has been torn apart by violence—murders, house-burnings, rapes—in a bitter war between one side, which is ANC-run, and the other, which supported the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). On one of the ruined buildings, you can still read the proud inscription 'International Printing Press Founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1903.' Lower down, there is a blood-red graffito. It says 'Viva AK 47.'
Feature, 3829 words
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