I must admit that the highlight of my time in South Africa came in Durban, a beautiful coastal city that abuts the Indian Ocean. (It felt sinful to stroll the stellar downtown beaches and relax in the subtropical climate, especially when I learned that it had snowed near Cape Town only hours after my departure from that city!)

Durban is known as the busiest port city on the African continent and the largest in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Shaka, the legendary Zulu king, called this place home. But it’s a current Durban leader, not a past one, who has a hold on my heart.

A few years ago, I started developing an online friendship with Ela Gandhi, executive director of Satyagraha, a Durban-based Mott grantee that publishes a newspaper by the same name. While I was in town, I finally got to meet her. (Yes, she is from that Gandhi family.)

Ela is the granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, world-respected leader who is widely known for leading peaceful protests in India during Great Britain’s colonial rule. But what is less well known is his South Africa connection. Gandhi pioneered a nonviolent resistance movement that protested discrimination against people of color in South Africa in the late 1890s. Yes, long before Mandela and Tutu there was Gandhi.

Although Ela has fond childhood memories of her grandfather and treasures her family’s historical heritage, she is a respected peace activist with credits of her own. She has received numerous national and international awards for her social justice work in South Africa and elsewhere. During the country’s apartheid era, she was banned from political activities and placed under house arrest for many years. She’s a modern-day freedom fighter and one of my heroes.