ABSTRACT
This unjust law came into being on 1 July 1907 and gave rise to Satyagraha, the start of a new kind of action for Gandhi and his companions. He had come a long way from being the simple vakil, the young advocate, with little experience who arrived alone in Pretoria in 1893, having already suffered his first brush with South Africa's virulent racial discrimination. The Passive Resistance Association was recruiting young volunteers to dissuade even the rare voter from voting for this racist law. Gandhi proposed the creation of a new structure that would be both a cooperative and a kind of commune; he also wanted it to be close to Johannesburg since Phoenix was a day and a half away by train from the big city. Gandhi, 'in a gesture of chivalry' delayed the latest satyagraha campaign and the inquiry into the crimes committed by the police against the striking miners in Newcastle and elsewhere.
