Johannesburg:&nbsp;A statue of Mahatma Gandhi&nbsp;here has been defaced by a group of people who threw buckets&nbsp;of white paint on it amid racist taunts.&nbsp;
The incident occurred yesterday when the group came in a&nbsp;car at about noon and threw buckets of white paint on the&nbsp;statue and surrounding plaques detailing Gandhi's history in&nbsp;South Africa, security guard Ntandzo Khwepe said.
They were bearing placards reading: 'Racist Gandhi must&nbsp;fall'.
The statue in the centre of the city is believed to be&nbsp;the only one in the world showing Gandhi as a young lawyer in&nbsp;his court robes.&nbsp;
The statue is on a public transport hub square which was&nbsp;renamed Gandhi Square because the offices in which he&nbsp;practiced law during his stay in the city is on the periphery&nbsp;of the square.
"They said we should not stop them because Gandhi was&nbsp;a racist man," Khwepe said, adding that the group was wearing&nbsp;African National Congress (ANC) regalia.
Khwepe said one man was nabbed as the group tried to&nbsp;flee, but he remained nonchalant about it, claiming that his&nbsp;political bosses would soon get him free.
Police spokesman Kay Makhubela said he would be charged&nbsp;with malicious damage to property.&nbsp;
The incident occurred on the same day Prime Minister&nbsp;Narendra Modi unveiled a statue of the iconic leader, who is&nbsp;widely revered across the globe, in Germany.
ANC spokesman Keith Khoza condemned the incident&nbsp;and denied the ruling party's involvement, saying that they&nbsp;could have been posing as ANC members to discredit the party.
The ANC has been prominent in ensuring the survival&nbsp;of Gandhi's heritage in South Africa.
Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893. He moved to&nbsp;Johannesburg in 1903 and stayed there till 1914. Gandhi spent&nbsp;the early stage of his stay in Johannesburg with establishing&nbsp;his legal firm. From 1906 Gandhi became actively involved in&nbsp;politics; this helped formulate his ideas on passive&nbsp;resistance.
Since the first democratic elections in 1994, a number of&nbsp;statues of Gandhi have been erected across South Africa.&nbsp;One is at the at the railway station in Pietermaritzburg,&nbsp;where he was kicked off a train compartment reserved for&nbsp;whites, prompting the start of his Satyagraha movement in&nbsp;South Africa and later in India.
A bust of Gandhi and a permanent exhibition on his&nbsp;time in South Africa was unveiled by then President Pratibha&nbsp;Patil at Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg, the seat of the&nbsp;country's highest court.
In recent months, there has been an outcry from some&nbsp;Black youth groups about Gandhi having been racist because he&nbsp;had allegedly used the derogatory term for indigenous Blacks,&nbsp;kaffir, in his writings.
But veteran South African Indian politician Essop&nbsp;Pahad told a recent conference on Gandhi that he was writing&nbsp;on his early perceptions of the environment he found himself&nbsp;in when he arrived in the country from India as a young&nbsp;lawyer.

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A Mahatma Gandhi&nbsp;statue in&nbsp;Johannesburg was&nbsp;defaced by some people who threw buckets&nbsp;of white paint on it while calling Gandhi 'racist'

Hooligans call Mahatma Gandhi 'racist', deface his statue in South Africa

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Home / News / World News / Article / Hooligans call Mahatma Gandhi 'racist', deface his statue in South Africa

Hooligans call Mahatma Gandhi 'racist', deface his statue in South Africa

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