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700 km walk to mark Dandi March in S. Africa
An eight-member team walked almost 700 km from their township of Lenasia here to Durban.
South African Indian athlete Laura Moodley was the only woman in an eight-member team that walked almost 700 km from their township of Lenasia here to Durban for the 75th year celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi March.
The determined team, describing their effort as "an exhilarating experience", took only five hours to drive back home here Tuesday evening, instead of the five days they took to walk to the event.
Led by veteran Gujarati sportsperson Mohan Hira from the huge, mainly Indian, township of Lenasia, south of here, Laura was accompanied by her husband Kovalan, his twin brother Komalan, Adam Bongani, Thebo Kagtwa, Douglas Naidoo and Bashir Bagus.
The team left Tolstoy farm, the commune started by Mahatma Gandhi during his tenure in Johannesburg at the turn of the 19th century, last Tuesday and arrived in Durban Sunday -- when they participated in celebrations on the beachfront to commemorate the Salt March, which Gandhi and his followers undertook to oppose plans for a tax by then British rulers of India.
Some of Gandhi's ashes had been scattered into the sea from the same point after his cremation.
Hira said the team had initially planned to go to India to join the Salt March anniversary celebrations there.
"But we felt we should rather participate in our own country with what was planned in Durban by Gandhi's granddaughter Ela Gandhi."
The group had previously walked to Durban over a weeklong period to raise funds for Tolstoy Farm, and more recently to the town of Volksrust on the border of the then Transvaal and Natal provinces, where Gandhi had been imprisoned.
Laura Naidoo, one of very few South African Indian professional runners in South Africa, said the 'Dandi walk' was a definite highlight of her career even though she had won many major races.
"In January, I joined the team that walked for four hours from Gandhi Square in central Johannesburg, where the Mahatma had his law offices when he stayed here (at the turn of the 18th century) to Tolstoy Farm (about 50 km away).
"We started at three in the morning and it was a real thrill to go through the quiet streets of a normally bustling Johannesburg as we eventually joined a function at the Farm where Gandhi's death anniversary was being observed," Naidoo told IANS.
The petite runner was full of praise for the back-up team that accompanied the group on their ventures, adding that the whole team always went out of their way to make her feel special, although she felt "just like one of the boys".
Hira, who undertook the first walk from Johannesburg to Durban 15 years ago, has since initiated a number of events in his commitment to further the Gandhian cause in South Africa, through the Mahatma Gandhi Remembrance Organisation which he established with veteran activist from Gujarat, Maheshbhai Kothari.
