Gandhi Heritage Portal: Repository of Authentic Information on the life and thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi Heritage Sites - Writeups

Background
Gandhiji was not sure about his stay in South Africa at the beginning of February 1903. In a letter to his nephew Chhaganlal Gandhi, he wrote, ‘There is great uncertainty about me….If it does not involve a breach of duty, I shall make every possible effort to return home. It’s no bed of roses here.’ (February 5, 1903)

Soon Gandhiji decided to settle down in Johannesburg in view of public work and enrolled in the Bar of Transvaal Supreme Court in February 1903. Gandhiji established Phoenix Settlement later in the year. But he could not stay there for long. He had to move to Johannesburg.

At Home
• Gandhiji rented a house at 11, Albemarle Street in the eastern area of Johannesburg. An estate agent Charles Kew helped him find the house in the whites-only suburb.
• Kew wrote to Gandhiji in October 1947 how residents of nearby area Troyeville displayed considerable indignation and tried to offset the arrangement. The owner of the house supported Kew and Gandhiji got possession of the house.
• Gandhiji’s wife Kasturba and three sons Manilal, Ramdas, and Devdas reached Johannesburg late in 1904. Gandhiji stayed at the house with his family, friend and associate Henry Polak, and an Englishman. Millie Graham married Henry Polak and joined the household on December 30, 1905.
• According to Millie Polak, ‘the house was situated in a fairly good middle-class neighbourhood, on the outskirts of the town. It was a double-storied, detached, eight-roomed building of the modern villa type, surrounded by a garden, and having, in front, the open spaces of the kopjes. The upstairs verandah was roomy enough to sleep on it if one wished to do so, and indeed, in the warm weather, it was often so used.’
• As Millie Polak recollected, ‘At 6:30 every morning, all the male members of the household assembled for the grinding of the wheat for the day—all bread being made at home. A rather big hand-mill was fixed in a storeroom for this purpose, and the grinding took from fifteen to thirty minutes each morning…Talk and laughter accompanied the sound of grinding, for in those days laugher came quite easily to the household.’
• Gandhiji wrote to M.H. Thurston, owner of the house in June 1905, to complain about an out-of-order chimney and reduction in the rent.
• Gandhiji left the house in mid-1906 to serve in Ambulance Corps during the Zulu ‘rebellion’. According to Gandhiji, ‘If my offer [of form an Indian Ambulance Corps] was accepted, I had decided to break up the Johannesburg home. Polak was to have a smaller house and my wife was to go and settle at Phoenix [Settlement]… As soon, therefore, as I got the reply from the Governor, I gave the landlord the usual one month’s notice of vacating the house, sent some of the things to Phoenix, and left some with Polak.’