JOHANNESBURG: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrives in South Africa this week on a highly symbolic visit to honour Mahatma Gandhi who helped free both countries through his "passive resistance" drive launched here 100 years ago.
Singh's four-day visit starting on Saturday will focus on beefing up trade between the two regional powerhouses from four billion dollars last year, according to Indian figures, to three times that by the end of the decade.
Singh is a fervent admirer of Gandhi as is South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Singh starts his South African by taking a train ride to the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, where Gandhi -- a London-trained barrister -- was thrown off a whites-only first-class compartment in 1893.
The searing insult first led to a sense of helplessness. "It was winter... my overcoat was in my luggage but I did not dare ask for it lest I should be insulted again," Gandhi wrote in his memoirs.
But it ultimately spawned a lifelong fight against injustice and oppression through satyagraha, which culminated in India's 1947 freedom from British rule.
South African anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, were inspired by Gandhi's call to stage peaceful protests and flood the jails.
This, along with other pressure tactics, led to the demise of apartheid in 1994.
Gandhi launched his passive resistance movement in Johannesburg on September 11, 1906 when he organised an unprecedented protest against laws restricting the movement of Indian immigrants.
He resolved to send his people to jail rather than submit and later said that a force, which he described as "the moral equivalent of war," was born that day.
Singh will on Sunday visit a communal farm near Durban set up by Gandhi, who honed his policy of peaceful resistance by drawing inspiration from the teachings of Jesus Christ as well as the writings of Russian author Leo Tolstoy and American thinker David Thoreau.
Later Sunday he will visit a Durban park where prominent South African activists inspired by Gandhi briefly occupied a plot of land reserved for whites in 1946 and thereby challenged the notorious Ghetto Act.
In the evening, Singh and South African President Mbeki address a giant crowd at Durban's main stadium.
On Monday, Singh travels to Pretoria where he will be accorded a formal welcome by Mbeki and the two leaders are scheduled to hold talks on a raft of subjects ranging from global issues to closer economic ties.
He will also visit a Johannesburg jail where Gandhi was incarcerated. Later inmates included Nelson Mandela and a slew of South African activists.
Indian deputy high commissioner Banashree Bose Harrison underscored the symbolic importance of the visit.
"This is about South Africa and India jointly honouring a global citizen who has influenced the world," she said.
"This is also India saying that the father of my country's freedom was an apprentice in yours."
Although political ties between India, the first country in the world to sever ties with the apartheid regime, and South Africa are excellent, trade remains a fraction of its potential.
South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ncguka who visited India recently said the figure should be trebled by 2010.
