 A pretty city on the east coast of South Africa. With its beautiful coastline and elegant colonial buildings, Durban is a good mix of the old and the new. It is also the city where a large number of people of Indian origin live. The nearly 1.3 million members of the Indian community in South Africa constitute barely 3% of the total population. The Indian community is now slowly rediscovering its roots. Indian songs and dances are specially popular. They are a unique bridge between the two countries, as to a history that goes back a long time. After many unsuccessful attempts by Sea Fairies, the Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama finally succeeded in reaching Indian shores in the late 15th century after rounding the Cape. A century and a half later, in the middle of the 17th century, the first Dutch settlers, heading home from the Dutch East Indies, or modern-day Indonesia, landed in the Cape. With slavery at an end, British plantation owners in Natal and elsewhere desperately wanted cheap labour to work for them. They turned to look eastwards to their other colonies. That is where India helped out. The Indian government and the South African government were the colonies, the Natal colonial government. They had negotiations and then they agreed to have labour in dentures from India to South Africa. Thousands of Indians from different parts of British-ruled India left their humble villages in North, West and South India to head for Mauritius, Fiji, the Caribbean and South Africa to work in the sugar fields. By the late 19th century, despite hardships and discrimination by the ruling whites, the Indians had settled in Natal and reports of a better life attracted more of their fellow countrymen. Among the new visitors was a young London educated lawyer, Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi's political activism fired the imagination of the Indians who came together to fight the ruling whites. A similar fire was also burning among black Africans who had been subjugated by racist rulers for centuries. Mohan Das Gandhi left the shores of South Africa forever in 1914 but kept an abiding interest in its problems. The late 1940s saw major changes in both countries. In 1947, India shrugged off the yoke of colonial rule and took its place in the Committee of Nations. The very next year, a new, dark chapter began in the troubled history of South Africa. The newly victorious National Party imposed a pernicious and racist system of segregation. They called it apartheid. With apartheid came even more suppression of the fundamental rights of blacks, Indians and all non-Europeans. The more prominent political activists were shifted to one of the world's most notorious prisons, Robben Island. The most famous prisoner was undoubtedly Nelson Mandela, a young lawyer sentenced in 1962 to life imprisonment on charges of treason. He was kept in the notorious Section B where only the most serious cases were jailed. In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released, bringing hope and joy to millions of ordinary South Africans and to people all around the world. His first visit outside South Africa was to India, where he was awarded the country's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna. After months of painstaking negotiations, the first ever democratic elections were held in South Africa in 1994, and soon after, the first ever black majority government was sworn in. The journey, begun by Mohandas Gandhi a century ago in South Africa, had finally culminated.