The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

to empower “millions … throughout the world” with “the most powerful weapon” that
“one can shape one’s own destiny”. Sasol too had realised that “words [were] not enough”
and had invested in “social upliftment and the development of education, science and the
arts” on “an ongoing basis” as a means of confirming that “true empowerment require[ed]
action”. This would ensure that South Africa “[took] its rightful place” as ‘a powerhouse
driving the rejuvenation of an entire continent”. 90
The focus on Gandhi in the domain of public culture did not stop there. The “transforming
experience” that Gandhi had on the train at Pietermaritzburg station in 1893 provided an
opportunity for his biography to be inscribed in public sculpture. In 1993, at a biographic
occasion to mark the centenary of this event, Nelson Mandela unveiled a statue of Gandhi.
It bore the words, “My active non‐violence began from that date”. The statue’s unveiling
was followed by an academic conference on ‘Gandhi and his significance’, with papers on
the “Gandhian heritage” and the formative nature of Gandhi’s experience in South Africa.
There had been a tendency to see Gandhi primarily as an Indian figure and symbol of
India’s achievement of independence from colonialism. However, the conference drew on
a notion of the importance of the train experience to suggest that it was South Africa
which influenced Gandhi’s view of public life and which generated in Gandhi a “true
radicalism”. 91 Gandhi, it was suggested, could be claimed into the pantheon of South
African heroic leaders.
Biographic memorials, sites and routes
More generally, the question of commemmorative monuments as grand biographic
memorials was not without debate and controversy. Pretoria sculptor Danie de Jager,
creator of the rearing horses in Pretoria’s Strijdom Square and the Lost City’s rampaging
elephant, and builder of a statue of Hendrik Verwoerd and the huge head of Strijdom that
90 ‘He empowered millions of people throughout the world by introducing them to the most powerful
weapon at their disposal’ (Sasol advertisement), Mail and Guardian, 14‐19 April 2000. Other figures in
Sasol’s rainbow biographic heritage campaign were educationist, Harold Cressy, political leader
Pixley Seme and anthropologist Lucy Lloyd.
91 ‘Editors’ Preface’ and Judith M Brown, ‘Perspectives and Prospects’, in Judith M Brown and Martin
Prozesky (eds), Gandhi and South Africa: Principles and Politics, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal
Press, 1996, p 3.
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