Post card from South Africa.

South Africa is a country on the southernmost tip of the African continent, marked by several distinct ecosystems. Inland safari destination Kruger National Park is populated by big game. The Western Cape offers beaches, lush  lands around Stellenbosch and Paarl, craggy cliffs at the Cape of Good Hope, forest and lagoons along the Garden Route, and the city of Cape Town, beneath flat-topped Table Mountain.
Gandhi was 24 when he arrived in South Africa to work as a legal representative for the Indian Traders based in the city of Pretoria. He spent 21 years in South Africa, where he developed his political views, ethics and political leadership skills.
Gandhi faced the discrimination directed at all coloured people.
In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony’s Indian population. Gandhi adopted Satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time. He urged Indians to defy the new law and thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot for striking, refusing to register, for burning their registration cards or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. the public outcry over the harsh treatment of peaceful Indian protesters by the South African government forced South African leader Jan Christian Smuts, himself a philosopher, to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi’s ideas took shape, and the concept of Satyagraha matured during this struggle.
During the Boer War Gandhi volunteered in 1900 to form a group of ambulance drivers. He wanted to disprove the British idea that Hindus were not fit for “manly” activities involving danger and exertion. Gandhi raised eleven hundred Indian volunteers.General Redvers Buller mentioned the courage of the Indians in his dispatch. Gandhi and thirty seven other Indians received the War Medal.

Nelson Mandela, who was often dubbed as the 'Gandhi of South Africa', had strong Indian connections and striking similarities with India's 'Father of Nation'.
The anti-apartheid icon shared a special bond for India and this was there for the world to see when he chose the land of Gandhi, whom he called his 'political guru' and a 'role model', as his first destination abroad in 1990 after spending 27 years behind bars.