ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to set up a diptych involving two anti-colonial nationalists, both of whom began their political work just over one hundred years ago in South Africa, and who played influential and even iconic roles in the movements which they led. Both arguably left their mark on some of the ‘postcolonial’ concepts of resistance we work with today. Both, too, were locally grounded, and yet cross-nationally connected as activists and intellectuals – hence the neat symmetries of the diptych. The two historical figures are, on the one hand, the African nationalist Solomon Plaatje (1876-1932), and, on the other, the Indian nationalist Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), who, from 1893, spent some 21 years working as a lawyer in South Africa representing Indians, in particular the rights of indentured people.1
