Mahatma Gandhi’s statues keep his legacy alive in South Africa

Johannesburg

Statues and busts of Mahatma Gandhi commemorating the key role he played in helping fight the oppression and discrimination in South Africa during the apartheid era are abound across the country, inspiring the younger generations to imbibe his ideals.

While most of his statues in South Africa show Gandhi’s traditional bald-headed, bespectacled, dhoti-clad image, the most significant ones that reflect his arrival in the country as a young lawyer are in Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg.
Pietermaritzburg is the place where Gandhi as a young lawyer was unceremoniously thrown off a train compartment reserved for white people, inspiring his path of Satyagraha.

In June 2018, late Sushma Swaraj, who was then External Affairs Minister, unveiled a unique two-side bust of Gandhi in Pietermaritzburg.

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