How did Indian residents of South Africa resist the Transvaal registration ordinance?

In 1906, the Transvaal government introduced a humiliating ordinance requiring the Indian population to register and carry passes. In response, Indian residents held a mass protest meeting in Johannesburg that September.12

Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the community took a formal pledge to defy the ordinance if it became law and to willingly suffer the resulting penalties. This act of nonviolent resistance marked the birth of satyagraha—a philosophy of "devotion to truth" that seeks to redress wrongs by inviting suffering rather than inflicting it, and by resisting adversaries without violence or rancor.12

Over the course of a seven-year struggle, hundreds of Indians chose to sacrifice their liberty and livelihood rather than submit to laws they deemed repugnant to their conscience. By 1913, the movement escalated as thousands of Indian mine workers went on strike, facing imprisonment, flogging, and even shooting. This sustained, nonviolent pressure eventually forced the South African government to accept a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts.1