Eight-foot statue of Mahatma Gandhi unveiled in Johannesburg's Tolstoy Farm
Johannesburg (PTI): An eight-foot-tall statue of Mahatma Gandhi has been unveiled at Tolstoy Farm, the commune that he had started during his tenure as a lawyer here in South Africa in the early 20th century.
The larger-than-life clay statue, unveiled on Sunday by the High Commissioner of India, Prabhat Kumar, now joins large busts of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, both commissioned by sculptor Jalandharnath Rajaram Channole, from the Sevagram Ashram in India.
“This statue probably resembles Mahatma Gandhi when he left South Africa at that time. We have seen Mahatma Gandhi’s photographs from 1914, and here he is much older. I think it’s a grand tribute to him at Tolstoy Farm, where he lived for five or six years. From 1910 to 1914, he intermittently lived here,” said Kumar as he unveiled the statue.
Kumar recalled that Gandhi’s friend Herman Kallenbach had donated the farm to establish a self-sufficient commune.
“This was because the people from our community here were struggling against the (discriminatory) pass laws and other laws,” he said, referring to the laws that required non-white citizens to carry passbooks for the indigenous Black African community and Astatic registration papers for Indians. Many men and some women voluntarily went to jail with Gandhi to resist these laws.
“They had to also bring up their families and to sustain those families, Kallenbach bought this farm and donated it to Mahatma Gandhi,” Kumar said as he recounted how these families grew fruits and vegetables on Tolstoy Farm with which they sustained themselves.
The envoy said that the same community spirit had to be re-established at Tolstoy Farm as he commended the Mahatma Gandhi Remembrance Organisation (MGRO) and its head, Mohan Hira, for what they had done to revive Tolstoy Farm.
By the 1990s, Tolstoy Farm had been wholly vandalised and left derelict after the last tenants had moved out.
Surrounded by informal settlements, everything was stripped bare, including the iron and wood house that Gandhi had lived in. Only the foundation, hidden by shoulder-height grass, remained.
Hira, now 84, almost single-handedly started a drive to restore Tolstoy Farm. For his efforts, Hira received the Pravasi Bharatiya Award, India’s highest civilian award for Diaspora Indians, in January this year.
“For the last few years, the MGRO has brought the attention of Tolstoy Farm back to all of us and the High Commission (in Pretoria) and the Consulate General (in Johannesburg) will spare no effort in making Tolstoy Farm self-sufficient in future. This will be our task,” Kumar said.
Kumar also appealed to the local community to get involved in and support this venture as he shared how he had been inspired by reading about and hearing from freedom fighters who had been there what Tolstoy Farm was like.
For this statue, Hira brought out Channole, who first did a cycle tour of Gandhian sites in South Africa before spending three weeks at Hira’s residence in the nearby sprawling Indian township of Lenasia, where the white minority apartheid government forcibly resettled Indians from all over Johannesburg for decades.
“It had always been my dream to have a larger-than-life statue of the Mahatma at Tolstoy Farm from the time I first started cutting down the grass surrounding the remains of his house,” Hira said emotionally as the guests gathered in the library that has been built next to the house with support from the Indian government.
The next phase for Tolstoy Farm is to involve the local communities in running empowerment programmes to make them self-sufficient and alleviate poverty, Hira said
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Netanyahu recommends his Cabinet approve Hezbollah cease-fire proposal
Beirut, Nov 26: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that he would recommend his cabinet adopt a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement with Lebanon's Hezbollah, as Israeli warplanes struck across Lebanon, killing at least 23 people.
The Israeli military also issued a flurry of evacuation warnings — a sign it was aiming to inflict punishment on Hezbollah down to the final moments before any ceasefire takes hold. For the first time in the conflict, Israeli ground troops reached parts of Lebanon's Litani River, a focal point of the emerging deal.
In a televised statement, Netanyahu said he would present the ceasefire to Cabinet ministers later on Tuesday, setting the stage for an end to nearly 14 months of fighting.
Netanyahu said the vote was expected later Tuesday. It was not immediately clear when the ceasefire would go into effect, and the exact terms of the deal were not released. The deal does not affect Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, which shows no signs of ending.
The evacuation warnings covered many areas, including parts of Beirut that previously have not been targeted. The warnings, coupled with fear that Israel was ratcheting up attacks before a ceasefire, sent residents fleeing. Traffic was gridlocked, and some cars had mattresses tied to them. Dozens of people, some wearing their pajamas, gathered in a central square, huddling under blankets or standing around fires as Israeli drones buzzed loudly overhead.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, kept up its rocket fire, triggering air raid sirens across northern Israel.
Lebanese officials have said Hezbollah also supports the deal. If approved by all sides, the deal would be a major step toward ending the Israel-Hezbollah war that has inflamed tensions across the region and raised fears of an even wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah's patron, Iran.
The deal calls for a two-month initial halt in fighting and would require Hezbollah to end its armed presence in a broad swath of southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops would return to their side of the border. Thousands of Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers would deploy in the south, and an international panel headed by the United States would monitor all sides' compliance.
But implementation remains a major question mark. Israel has demanded the right to act should Hezbollah violate its obligations. Lebanese officials have rejected writing that into the proposal. Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz insisted on Tuesday that the military would strike Hezbollah if the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, doesn't provide “effective enforcement” of the deal.
“If you don't act, we will act, and with great force,” Katz said, speaking with UN special envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.
The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said Tuesday that Israel's security concerns had been addressed in the deal also brokered by France.
“There is not an excuse for not implementing a ceasefire. Otherwise, Lebanon will fall apart,” Borrell told reporters in Italy on the sidelines of a Group of Seven meeting. He said France would participate on the ceasefire implementation committee at Lebanon's request.
Bombardment of Beirut's southern suburbs continues
Even as Israeli, US, Lebanese and international officials have expressed growing optimism over a ceasefire, Israel has continued its campaign in Lebanon, which it says aims to cripple Hezbollah's military capabilities.
An Israeli strike on Tuesday levelled a residential building in the central Beirut district of Basta — the second time in recent days warplanes have hit the crowded area near the city's downtown. At least seven people were killed and 37 wounded, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.
Three people were killed in a separate strike in Beirut and three in a strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Lebanese state media said another 10 people were killed in the eastern Baalbek province. Israel says it targets Hezbollah fighters and their infrastructure.
Earlier, Israeli jets struck at least six buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs. One strike slammed near the country's only airport, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. The airport has continued to function despite its location on the Mediterranean coast next to the densely populated suburbs where many of Hezbollah's operations are based.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee issued evacuation warnings for 20 buildings in the suburbs, as well as a warning for the southern town of Naqoura where UNIFIL is headquartered.
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told The Associated Press that peacekeepers will not evacuate.
Other strikes hit in the southern city of Tyre, where the Israeli military said it killed a local Hezbollah commander.
The Israeli military also said its ground troops clashed with Hezbollah forces and destroyed rocket launchers in the Slouqi area on the eastern end of the Litani River, a few kilometres from the Israeli border.
Previous ceasefire hopes were dashed
Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah would be required to move its forces north of the Litani, which in some places is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the strongest Iranian-backed force in the region, would likely significantly calm regional tensions that have led to fears of a direct, all-out war between Israel and Iran. It's not clear how the ceasefire will affect the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Hezbollah had long insisted that it would not agree to a ceasefire until the war in Gaza ends, but it dropped that condition.
Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel, saying it was showing support for the Palestinians, a day after Hamas carried out its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, triggering the Gaza war. Israel returned fire on Hezbollah, and the two sides have been exchanging barrages ever since.
Israel escalated its campaign of bombardment in mid-September and later sent troops into Lebanon, vowing to put an end to Hezbollah fire so tens of thousands of evacuated Israelis could return to their homes.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The bombardment has driven 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members.
Hezbollah fire has forced some 50,000 Israelis to evacuate in the country's north, and its rockets have reached as far south in Israel as Tel Aviv. At least 75 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians. More than 50 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive in Lebanon.
After previous hopes for a ceasefire were dashed, U.S. officials cautioned that negotiations were not yet complete and noted there could be last-minute hitches that delay or destroy an agreement.
“Nothing is done until everything is done,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.
While the ceasefire proposal is expected to be approved if Netanyahu brings it to a vote in his security Cabinet, one hard-line member, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said he would oppose it. He said on X that a deal with Lebanon would be a “big mistake” and a “missed historic opportunity to eradicate Hezbollah.”
