Walking 700 km to mark Dandi March in S. Africa
Johannesburg, 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.
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