About Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli: South African Statesman (1898-1967)
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Inkosi Albert John Lutuli (often spelled Lutuli; C. 1898 – 21 July 1967), also known by his Zulu name mwombi (English: continuous rain), is a South African teacher, activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner and politician. Luthuli was elected president of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1952, an umbrella organization leading opposition to South Africa’s white minority government, and served until his unexpected death. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 for his role in the nonviolent struggle against apartheid. He was the first African-American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Luthuli was a lay missionary for the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA), headquartered at the Groutville Congregational Church in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal, where Luthuli was buried after his death in 1967.
early life
Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born at Solusi Mission Station near Bulawayo in southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Although his date of birth is still unknown, he later calculated his birth year to be 1898. His father, John Bunyan Luthuli, was the youngest son of the chief of the Groutville tribe in the Umwati Mission Reserve near Stanger, Natal province. He became a Christian missionary for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and at the time of Albert’s birth he worked as a translator in Matabele, Rhodesia. His mother, Mtonya Gumede, spent part of her childhood at the home of the Zulu king, Cetewayo kaMpande, but grew up mostly in Grautwil. Albert is the couple’s third child. Since there is no information about his siblings, it is assumed that he is the only surviving child.
Albert’s father, John Bunyan Luthuli, died when Albert was young. Sometime between 1906 and 1908, he accompanied his mother to his ancestral home in Grautville. There, he lived in the home of his uncle, Martin Luthuli, who succeeded his grandfather as tribal chief. In 1911, with the support of his mother (now a washerwoman), Albert entered the local Congregational Church school. Here, he studied all the way up to Standard Four. He lived with his uncle and also absorbed the traditions and values of the tribe.
In 1914 Albert was transferred to the O’Ranger College. This is a boarding school run by Dr John Dube, the founding chairman of the South African Indigenous Peoples Council, who studied here for two semesters.
After passing the Ohlange Institute’s end-of-year examinations, Albert was transferred to a teacher training course at Methodist College in Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg. He graduated from there in 1917.
Albert Luthuli, the third son of Seventh-day Adventist missionaries John Bunyan Luthuli and Mtonya Gumede, was born around 1898 near Bulawayo, then known as Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). His father died and he and his mother returned to the home of her ancestors, Groutville, in KwaDukuza (Stanger), Natal, South Africa. He lived with his uncle Martin Luthuli, the then elected Zulu Christian chief, in the mission area now covered by the Umzinyathi district municipality. Luthuli attended Adams College in South Durban.
teaching
After completing a teaching course in Edendale near Pietermaritzburg, Luthuli accepted the position of principal and sole teacher of a primary school in the village of Blaauwbosch, Newcastle, Natal. Here Lutuli was confirmed in the Congregational Church and became a lay preacher. In 1920, he received a government bursary to attend Adams College’s Advanced Teacher Training Program, and then joined the training college staff, teaching with ZK Mathews, who was then principal of Adams College High School. In order to provide financial support to his mother, he turned down a scholarship to Ford Hale University.
In 1928 he became secretary of the African Teachers’ Association, and in 1933 its president. He was also active in missionary work.
tribal leader
In 1933, tribal elders asked Luturi to succeed his uncle as head of the Christian branch of the Zulu tribe. He hesitated for two years, but accepted the call in early 1936 and became chief. He held this position until he was removed by the apartheid government in 1953. Although they did, among his people he retained the use of the dignified “chief” as a titular style for the rest of his life.
anti-apartheid activist
In 1936, the government stripped the only black Africans who had the right to vote at the time—the Cape blacks. In 1948, the National Party, which controlled the government, adopted a policy of apartheid and tightened pass laws over the next decade.
Before Luthuli’s participation in the African National Congress (ANC), Luthuli also served on the Executive Committee of the South African Christian Council. Luthuli was one of the delegates to the International Missionary Congress held in Madras, India in 1938.
In 1944, Lutuli joined the African National Congress (ANC). In 1945, he was elected to the ANC KwaZulu Branch Committee, and in 1951 he became the Branch Chairman. The following year, he joined other ANC leaders in organizing a nonviolent campaign against discriminatory laws.
The government has accused Luthuli of a conflict of interest, requiring him to withdraw from the ANC membership or relinquish his position as tribal chief. Refusing to do so, he was removed from his chieftainship.
A month later, Lutuli was elected president of the ANC, formally nominated by the future leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, Portraco Lebalo. The government responded immediately, imposing two two-year bans on Luthuli’s movement. When the second ban expired in 1956, he attended an ANC meeting, but was arrested and charged with treason a few months later along with 155 others. In December 1957, after nearly a year in pretrial detention, Luturi was released and the charges against him and 64 compatriots were dropped.
He was closely associated with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, which opened in Southern Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) in 1957.
ban
Albert Luthuli during his visit to Oslo in 1961.
Another five-year ban restricted him to a 15-mile (24-kilometer) radius of his home. The ban was temporarily lifted when he testified in the ongoing treason trial. It was lifted again in March 1960 to allow his arrest for the public burning of the pass following the Sharpeville massacre. In the ensuing state of emergency, he was arrested, convicted, fined, suspended, and finally returned to Grautville. The last time the ban was lifted, this time for 10 days in early December 1961, was to allow Luturi and his wife to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. horizontal knife as “an inexplicable pathological phenomenon”.
ANC
Luthuli’s leadership of the ANC spanned a period of violent disputes between the party’s “Africanist” and “Charter” factions. African critics claim that Lutuli was marginalized in Natal and that the Transvaal ANC branch and its Communist Party (CPSA was officially disbanded in 1950, but secretly reorganized as SACP in 1953) allies took advantage of the situation . Luthuli did not see the Freedom Charter until it was unanimously passed in Kliptown in 1955. After reading the document and realizing that the ANC, despite its numerical superiority, has one vote in a five-member multiracial and unionized “congressional coalition,” Lutuli rejected the charter, but later partially embraced it to counter the more radical Africanist faction that he likened to black Nazis. In 1959, Africans fought with the ANC over the Freedom Charter issue and Oliver Tambo’s 1958 rewrite of the ANC constitution Separated to form the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). The PAC posed a serious challenge to the ANC until March 1980 when its military component was destroyed at Camp Itumbi in Chunya, Tanzania.
uMkhonto we Sizwe
In December 1961, without Luthuli’s approval, Nelson Mandela of the provincial ANC publicly launched uMkhonto we Sizwe at the All In conference, where representatives from various movements met to discuss cooperation. Mandela’s charisma and the global publicity surrounding his trial and incarceration stole the show for Luturi, who grew increasingly frustrated in isolation. (In Mandela’s autobiography, he claims that Luthuli was consulted and consented before the formation of uMkhonto we Sizwe.)
In 1962 the following events occurred:
- He was elected by the students as Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, serving until 1965. As he was barred from travelling to Glasgow, the Student Representative Council established the Luthuli Scholarship Fund to enable a black South African student to study at the University of Glasgow.
- He published an autobiography entitled let my people go.
A fourth injunction was issued in May 1964 for five years, confining Luthuli to his home, at the same time as the third.
In 1966, US Senator Robert Kennedy, who was visiting South Africa at the time, visited him. The two discussed the ANC struggle. Senator Kennedy’s visit to the country, especially his meeting with Lutuli, brought the world more awareness of the plight of black South Africans.
personal life
In 1927 he married Nokukhanya Bhengu, the granddaughter of Zulu chief Dhlokolo. The couple had seven children. Lutuli spent his final years in forced isolation, while the African National Congress abandoned its policy of non-violence. He also suffers from high blood pressure and has had a minor stroke. As he got older, his hearing and vision also began to suffer.
On July 21, 1967, Luthuli was seriously injured when he was hit by a freight train while walking on a trestle on the Umvuti River near his home in Stanger (now KwaDukuza).
Respect
Statue of Albert Lutuli at Nobel Square on Cape Town’s V&A waterfront.
Luthuli feasted on the American Episcopal liturgical calendar on July 21, the day he died in 1967.
Nairobi’s Luthuli Street, known for its electronics store, is named after him.
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