Gopal Krishna Gokhale begins a South African tour

African Political Organisation activists and allies observed the Prince of Wales's arrival as a day of mourning, protesting the South Africa Act's disenfranchisement of African, Coloured and Indian...

The four settler colonies formed the Union under the British Crown. The constitution concentrated power in white hands and preserved racial exclusions that stimulated later national liberation...

The resistance campaign paused when Jan Smuts entered negotiations with Gandhi. The unresolved conflict later resumed after government promises were not fully implemented.

The Umlazi arrived with the final group of indentured Indian workers, ending more than fifty years of officially sponsored Indian indenture in Natal.

Delegates met in Bloemfontein to create a national African organization against racial discrimination and political exclusion. The SANNC was renamed the African National Congress in 1923.

The Union government enacted a literacy test and broad exclusion powers that particularly restricted Asian immigration. Indian communities organized against this racial legislation.

The law confined African land purchase and tenancy to designated reserves comprising about seven percent of the country. It accelerated dispossession, labour coercion and rural poverty.

More than 2,000 striking Indian workers, including women and children, crossed from Natal into the Transvaal in defiance of immigration controls and the three-pound tax.

The act recognized Indian marriages and abolished the three-pound tax on former indentured workers. Other racial restrictions remained, but the settlement ended the mass satyagraha campaign.

The troopship sank after a collision, killing more than 600 members of the South African Native Labour Contingent and crew. Black servicemen had been recruited for wartime labour while denied equal...