Sonia Schlesin

Sonia Schlesin
Schlesin is on one side and Henry Polak on the other with Gandhi in centre at his office near what is now Gandhi Square.
Born	(1888-06-06)6 June 1888 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	6 January 1956(1956-01-06) (aged 67) Johannesburg, South Africa
Nationality	Russian
Education	University of the Cape of Good Hope
Occupation	Personal assistant
Employer	Mohandas Gandhi

Sonia Schlesin (6 June 1888 – 6 January 1956) was a Russian Jew best known for her South African work with Mohandas Gandhi while he was living in South Africa. Beginning her service to him at the age of 17 as his secretary, she quickly ascended to become entrusted with the executive decision making within Gandhi's law practice and sociopolitical movements by her early twenties. Gandhi said "during the Satyagraha days ... she led the movement single handed". She was a lifelong friend to Gandhi and would have been a fellow lawyer if she had not been female. She ended her career as a teacher of Latin and made a late attempt to become a lawyer at the age of 65.

Schlesin was born in Moscow in 1888 and moved to South Africa with her parents Isidor and Helena Dorothy Schlesin (born Rosenberg) in 1892. By the age of fifteen she had matriculated at the University of the Cape of Good Hope which was the city where her family lived. She was recommended for a job by the architect Hermann Kallenbach to a new immigrant Indian lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi. Kallenbach described her as honest and clever, but mischievous and impetuous. Gandhi was so impressed by Schlesin and her speed at shorthand that he offered her a generous wage which she turned down for a more modest figure initially suggested by Kallenbach. Schlesin told Gandhi that she wanted to work for him because she supported his work and not for the money that he was offering.

Gandhi would take on large administrative and important tasks. In 1904 he persuaded the authorities to rehouse gold mine workers in the Transvaal where the pneumonic plague was taking a toll. Gandhi had taken on the problem and his legal office team had been reassigned to nursing for the sick. The workers' old houses had to be burnt and the dispossessed had only the money that they had buried for safe keeping. Gandhi became their banker and took in about £60,000. This needed to be accounted for so that he could successfully return it several years later.

In 1908 the South African government introduced the "Restriction Act" which was further legal discrimination and was known as the "Black Act". It was Schlesin who wrote a speech for herself to give to 2,500 protesters and asked her parents for permission to deliver it. In the end, it was Gandhi who delivered it, but it was Schlesin's speech that challenged the people "to give up all, aye very life itself, for the noble cause of country and religion". The Chinese community awarded Schlesin a gold watch and the Indian community gave her ten pounds. Schlesin took to smoking and wearing a collar and tie and she cut her hair short. She also included the suffragists as examples of protest in speeches she wrote. The smoking led to Gandhi slapping her when she smoked in his presence.