He went to South Africa because he couldn't find work in India. He
was a poor lawyer, in both senses of the word. He suffered from stage
fright.
The "Encyclopedia Britannica" describes his first days there:
"Africa was to present to Gandhi challenges and opportunities that he
could hardly have conceived. In a Durban court, he was asked by the
European magistrate to take off his turban; he refused and left the
courtroom.
A few days later, while traveling to Pretoria, he was unceremoniously
thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and left shivering and
brooding at Pietermaritzburg Station; in the further course of the
journey he was beaten up by the white driver of a stagecoach because
he would not travel on the footboard to make room for a European
passenger; and finally he was barred from hotels reserved "for
Europeans only." These humiliations were the daily lot of Indian
traders and labourers in Natal who had learned to pocket them with the
same resignation with which they pocketed their meagre earnings."
He was about to sail to London when he read about a bill to deprive
the Indians of their right to vote.
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