One hundred years ago, on February 28, 1924, a four-foot-10-inch woman of colour gave a speech at the Wanderers Hall in Johannesburg. Despite speaking at the home of both rugby and cricket in the Transvaal province, she poured scorn on the British, writes historian Goolam Vahed, for thinking “they were the ‘masters’ and the Indians the ‘menials’.” She parodied the British attitude as follows: “We conquer, we rule, we trample down, we make graveyards where there were gardens, we rule with the iron heel, we flash the sword and daze the eyes of those who would look us in the face.”
And she ended with a warning. If the British thought they had successfully “fettered and manacled and trampled” Indians, this was “[their] illusion. In the end, the land goes back from the conquered to the true inheritors.”
