Pimville), where the council had erected iron barracks and a few triangular hutments. The rest of them had to build their own shacks. No provision was made for the alternative accommodation of other racial groups. The fire brigade then set the 1600 shacks and shop, plus an Indian temple, in Brickfields alight. Out of this holocaust there emerged one rat that was promptly shot. Thereafter the area was redeveloped as Newtown where a new market was built. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a qualified English barrister, came to southern Africa in 1893 to act as legal representative of some Indian traders in Pretoria. He moved to Natal, where he was instrumental in forming the Natal Indian Congress. In 1902 he concerned himself with the rights of Indians in the Transvaal Colony. He opened his own firm of attorneys (solicitors) in Johannesburg. In 1910 his supporters gave him the use of land to open an ashram, named Tolstoy Farm and dedicated to the ideas of the Russian novelist and philosopher Leo Tolstoy, outside Johannesburg, which was to become the centre of the next phase of satyagraha (nonviolent resistance). In 1913 Gandhi and 2,000 Indian men and women flouted the law and marched from Natal into the Transvaal. He was arrested and jailed. Eventually he reached agreement with General Smuts, resulting in the South African Parliament passing the Indian Relief Act of 1914. He regarded his work in South Africa as done and returned to India in 1915. He acquired the honorific title Mahatma. Sophiatown was originally part of the farm Waterval. In 1897 the speculator Hermann Tobiansky acquired a 237-acre portion of the farm, which was situated about four miles or so west of the centre of Johannesburg. In 1903 he had some of the land surveyed as leasehold township, divided into almost 1700 small stands. The township was named after Tobiansky's wife, Sophia, and some of the streets were named after his children Toby, Gerty, Bertha and Victoria. Blacks started acquiring land in Sophiatown. All the gold mines reopened and the Randlords returned to Johannesburg. The first mansion to be built was not in Parktown, but on the hill overlooking Doornfontein suburb. It was called "Eastington" and was built in 1902 for John Dowell Ellis. Soon they started building their Parktown mansions as well. One of the first to be built was "Northwards". It was designed by Herbert Baker and built at