Gandhi only belatedly acknowledged Africans as South Africa’s original inhabitants

Evidence

Around then, only three years before he was to leave South Africa, Gandhi condescendingly began to admit that Africans were the original inhabitants of the land: The negroes alone are the original inhabitants of this land. We have not seized the land from them by force; we live here with their goodwill. The whites, on the other hand, have occupied the country forcibly and appropriated it to themselves. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 258

Categorization

• QUESTION: What motivated Gandhi to concede African indigeneity in 1911, and how did this sit alongside his own Indian claims in South Africa?