Albert Lutuli

South African political leader

• Born: 1898
• Birthplace: Near Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
• Died: July 21, 1967
• Place of death: Stanger, South Africa

In 1960, Lutuli became the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This international honor recognized his commitment to nonviolent means to free South Africans from apartheid and to restore the honor of Africa.

Early Life

Albert John Mvumbi (“continuous rain”) Lutuli (“dust”) was born to South African parents in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Lutuli (loo-TEW-lee) was an infant when his father died. In 1908, Lutuli’s mother returned to Natal and sent her son to Groutville to live with his uncle, Chief Martin Lutuli. Young Lutuli’s formal education was influenced by rural isolation and American missionaries, whose interaction gave him a slight American accent. In 1922, he accepted a faculty position at Adams Mission Station College and came under the influence of his renowned colleague, Zacharia Keodireland Matthews. In 1933, Lutuli became president of the African Teachers’ Association.

Lutuli’s devout Christianity led to church-sponsored trips to India in 1938 and the United States in 1948. While in the United States, Lutuli often spoke of his quest to merge Christianity with traditional African beliefs. His religion and sheltered life with his uncle helped shield him from the racist policies of South African government. These early experiences help explain why he was an advocate of nonviolence and free from bitterness when he entered politics late in life.

In 1927, Lutuli married Nokukhanya (“The Bright One”) Bhengu. Their happy marriage produced three sons and four daughters and encouraged his fondness for singing, sense of humor, and ability to put people at ease. His wife supported him throughout his difficult political career and convinced him that women had a pivotal role to play in the antiapartheid movement.

Life’s Work

In 1936, Lutuli exchanged his comfortable academic life for the government-paid, elected office of chief of five thousand Abase-Makolweni Zulus. From Groutville, Lutuli’s position of responsibility gradually revealed vistas of government-induced suffering and deprivation. By the time he had reached his mid-forties, Lutuli realized that the government needed more than prayer; in 1945, he joined the Natal chapter of the African National Congress (ANC). Six years later, he became president of the Natal chapter. In the meantime, the national ANC was changing course.

In 1944, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo helped organize the Youth League to replace ANC policies of petitions and deputations with mass mobilization. On June 26, 1952, the Defiance Campaign was launched. Discriminatory laws of apartheid were intentionally disobeyed; Lutuli and more than 8,500 protestors filled the jails. After the government dismissed Lutuli as chief in November, 1952, the ANC elected him president-general in December, 1952. Under Lutuli’s leadership the Youth League’s nonviolent, mass demonstration policies came of age.

In May, 1953, the government acted again. Lutuli was banned from attending public gatherings and from visiting some twenty cities for a year. Nevertheless, Lutuli’s dignified, moderate speeches continued to be read. His demand of a South Africa in which all people participated in government was rejected by the government. In July, 1954, Lutuli was banned for two years and confined to a twenty-mile radius of Groutville. His popularity with South African blacks increased with each ban. ANC leaders secretly met Lutuli in the isolation of Natal’s sugarcane country and reelected him president-general in 1955 and 1958.

Under Lutuli’s leadership, the ANC joined other antiapartheid groups in the Congress Alliance. Together a national convention was organized to discuss South Africa’s future. Recommendations from many South Africans were considered by an alliance committee responsible for drafting the Freedom Charter. Lutuli was kept informed about plans for the conference throughout the remainder of 1954, but his stroke in mid-January, a two-month period of convalescence, and his banning prevented him from contributing to the draft of the Freedom Charter or attending the convention.

From June 25 to 26 near Johannesburg, some three thousand delegates discussed and approved the Freedom Charter. Lutuli and the ANC Executive Committee endorsed it a few months later. The ten articles combined liberty, democracy, and socialism. The ANC’s highest award, the Isitwalandwe (“one who has fought courageously in battle”), was presented to Lutuli in absentia. Police broke up the meeting shortly before the end of the second day.

In December, 1956, Lutuli and other activists were charged with treason. The Treason Trial increased Lutuli’s stature among South African blacks and gave him much international recognition. Months of interrogation only produced his release in late 1957, although the trial lasted until March 29, 1961, when the remaining defendants were acquitted. Between late 1957 and mid-1959, Lutuli enjoyed relative freedom of speech and movement. He advocated reason to prevail in race relations to a wide variety of South African audiences and sought international support for a black boycott of certain South African produce. The government responded in May, 1959, by banning Lutuli for five years.

While government bans undermined Lutuli’s leadership in the ANC, the organization itself suffered a serious rift. A disgruntled faction called Africanists left and founded a new black nationalist movement in April, 1959. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) opposed the Freedom Charter and Lutuli’s nonracial alliance policies, charged that white communists and Indians within the ANC were pursuing their own ends, and demanded black exclusiveness in their struggle to create a black-dominated South African state. Lutuli and Mandela rejected PAC’s platform and argued to no avail that the real problem was apartheid.

PAC’s first nonviolent mass campaign, Anti-Pass Day, was set for March 21, 1961. At Sharpeville sixty-nine men, women, and children were shot and killed while fleeing government police. Lutuli burned his passbook, urged others to do likewise, and declared a National Day of Mourning to be observed by staying at home. Government repression increased. A state of emergency was declared on March 30, the ANC and PAC were outlawed on April 5, and Lutuli and more than eighteen thousand activists were arrested by May 6. The government released Lutuli after five months’ detention with a six-month suspended prison sentence. The timing was convenient.

On December 10, 1961, in Oslo, Norway, Lutuli received the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him the previous year. The Nobel Committee had chosen Lutuli because of his courage, humanity, and nonviolent tactics to promote social reform. Lutuli was the first African to receive this honor. During his acceptance speech, Lutuli called for international sanctions against South Africa, a nonracial, democratic government, and the redemption of the honor of Africa from centuries of racist slander. The government prohibited Lutuli from addressing cheering crowds that welcomed his return and banned his autobiography. Shortly afterward, Lutuli bought two farms in Swaziland with his prize money; they would serve as havens for political exiles from South Africa. Years later, the farms were sold to fund the Lutuli Memorial Scholarships.

Without consulting Lutuli, Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders decided in June, 1961, to adopt violent tactics. Umkhonto we Sizwe (spear of the nation) was created to attack strategic targets of apartheid without loss of life. Explosions damaged electric power stations and government buildings in the wake of Lutuli’s return from Norway. As the president-general considered resigning over this policy change, the government in late June, 1962, prohibited Lutuli’s words from being reproduced in any form. Two months later, Mandela, now underground, met secretly with Lutuli. The president-general criticized both Umkhonto’s announcement in December, 1961, that the period of nonviolence had ended and Mandela for neither consulting Lutuli nor the ANC grassroots membership. Mandela defended Umkhonto and argued that Lutuli was not consulted to protect the Nobel laureate. The next day, August 5, 1962, Mandela was captured.

On July 11, 1963, the police captured Umkhonto’s leadership. After they were tried and given life sentences, Lutuli proclaimed that the imprisoned leaders of Umkhonto represented the highest in morality and ethics, that no one could blame them for seeking justice by using violent methods, and that the ANC had never abandoned its policy of nonviolence. The following year, Lutuli called on the United States to implement full sanctions against South Africa.

Lutuli’s courageous leadership and international acclaim earned for him many honors. When the government left the British Commonwealth to become a republic, the South African Coloured People’s Congress nominated Lutuli for president. Lutuli received the Christopher Gell Memorial Award (1961), a rectorship at the University of Glasgow (1962), a visit from Robert Kennedy (1966), United Nations recognition for outstanding achievements in human rights (1968), and the Organization of African Unity’s tenth anniversary medal for service to humanity (1974).

On July 21, 1967, Lutuli died from multiple injuries after being struck by a train while walking across the Umvoti railway bridge in Stanger. Alan Paton, a friend and writer who gave the funeral tribute at the Groutville Congregational Church, said aptly, “History will make his voice speak again.”

Significance

Albert Lutuli devoted his life to end apartheid through nonviolent methods. As a Christian, teacher, chief, and ANC leader, Lutuli relied on faith and optimism to reform South Africa and to restore the honor of Africa. In spite of being banned, charged, or imprisoned almost constantly between May, 1953, and July, 1967, Lutuli transformed the ANC into an effective, internationally recognized organization. Still, he had his critics. Some argued that Lutuli’s bannings made him a figurehead and permitted the left wing to seize control of the ANC. Other critics argued that Lutuli’s idealism and moral scruples precluded viable options. Still other critics argued that Lutuli wasted the ANC’s limited physical resources. Critics aside, communications within the ANC were always difficult: Long hours, low wages, a dearth of room and board, an overwhelmingly illiterate, multilingual population, and government bannings of ANC leaders were all obstacles to Lutuli’s leadership. In addition, region, class, Lutuli’s isolation, and communist and Africanist members all contributed to the complexity of the ANC. Given these difficulties, it is a wonder that Lutuli, the humble, dignified mediator, succeeded at all. By promoting human rights, nonviolence, and democracy, Lutuli earned worldwide respect and renown. Lutuli contributed significantly to the process of social and political reform in South Africa by transforming from rhetoric into reality one of his favorite slogans “Mayibuye Afrika” (“Come back Africa”).

Bibliography

Benson, Mary. Chief Albert Lutuli of South Africa. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. An outstanding, early biography that is now a standard. Benson takes the best of Lutuli’s autobiography, adds other sources and Paton’s “Praise Song for Lutuli,” and assesses the chief’s contribution to events in South Africa until 1963 all in seventy-one pages.

Callan, Edward. Albert John Luthuli and the South African Race Conflict. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1962. This is another outstanding, early, brief biography. Contains good analysis, Lutuli’s Nobel Peace Prize address, and valuable bibliographic notes and a selected reading list for further research.

Gordimer, Nadine. “Chief Luthuli.” Atlantic 203 (April, 1959): 34-39. This eloquent, short biographical sketch of Lutuli is superb for younger readers. Its weakness is that it was written just before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Joseph, Helen. Side by Side: The Autobiography of Helen Joseph. New York: William Morrow, 1986. A strong, often persecuted opponent of the South African government and one of Lutuli’s non-ANC allies assesses the character and impact of her “Beloved Chief.” Joseph gives a recent, sympathetic interpretation of Lutuli. The work contains interesting anecdotes about Lutuli.

Karis, Thomas, and Gwendolyn M. Carter, eds. From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964. 4 vols. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1977. These four volumes are clearly the most valuable yet compiled on the relationship between the ANC and Lutuli. Perspective and analysis are outstanding. Many of Lutuli’s most important speeches are reprinted and discussed here.

Legum, Colin, and Margaret Legum. The Bitter Choice: Eight South Africans’ Resistance to Tyranny. New York: World, 1968. The chapter on Lutuli was written just after his death and contains a balance between the Legums’ analysis and quotations from Lutuli’s writings. This rather brief effort has the advantage of some hindsight.

Lutuli, Albert. Let My People Go. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962. Written with the help of friends, this work is a typical autobiography. While it gives readers important facts about the author’s life and a perspective from the center of activity, it lacks the circumspection only an objective observer can provide.