DURBAN (South Africa). June 5: One hundred years after Mahatma Oandhl was thrown off a segregated train in South Africa, he will be honoured by the city that humiliated him and sparked his philosophy of passive resistance.

A larger-than-life statue of Gandhi will be unveiled by African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela In the Natal provincial capital Pietermaritzburg on Sunday.

"It was In South Africa that he discovered himself as a political leader and now seems to be the appropriate time to honour him,” Gandhi biographer and Indian historian B R Nandu told Reuters.

Earlier this week democracy negotiators moved South Africa closer to the end of 350 years of white rule, proposing April 27 as the date for its first all-race elections.

"If things go for the best (In South Africa), it will be a realisation of his dream." Nandu said.

Gandhi's philosophies inspired countless ANC-backed Deaceful mass action campaigns against the apartheid policies of successive white-minority governments, political analysts said.

He spent 21 years in South Africa, from 1893 to 1914, using non-violent methods to fight racial discrimination. For much of that time, he worked as a lawyer In the eastern Natal province.

Gandhi established a commune in Phoenix, near Durban, where he preached his philosophy.

Using non-violent mass action, he won assurances from the South African government in 1914 of fair treatment for the country's Indian population --promises which many Indians believe the administration failed to live up to.

Today, Gandhfs settlement at Phoenix is destroyed.

Political slogans extolling the use of violence In a brutal turf war In Natal between the ANC and the rival, malnly-Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, are daubed against the one remaining wall.

Following clashes between blacks and Indians tn 1995 near the settlement, most Indian families fled the area and black squatters moved in, said police spokesman Bala Naidoo;

There is nothing left there." Naidoo said.

Black rural areas and townships around Durban have seen much of the feuding between supporters of the ANC and Inkatha.

Since the fighting flared eight years ago. more than 8,000 people have been killed in the province.

"Maybe we failed to carry the message of Gandhi to the people," said T S Rukmani, a professor of oriental studies at the University of Durban-Westville.