| Intro | South African politician |
| A.K.A. | Albert John Mvumbi Lutuli, Albert John Lutuli, Albert Luthuli |
| Was |
Politician Autobiographer |
| From | South Africa |
| Type |
Literature Politics |
| Gender | male |
| Birth |
1898, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe |
| Death |
21 July 1967, KwaDukuza, South Africa |
| Politics | African National Congress |
Inkosi Albert John Luthuli (very often spelt Lutuli; c. 1898 – 21 July 1967), also known by his Zulu name Mvumbi (English language: continuous rain), was a South African teacher, activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and politician. Luthuli was elected president of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1952, at the time an umbrella organisation that led opposition to the white minority government in South Africa, and served until his accidental death. He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the non-violent struggle against apartheid. He was the first person of African heritage to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Luthuli was a lay preacher of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA) based at its Groutville Congregational Church in Stanger, KwaZulu Natal, where Luthuli was laid to rest upon his passing in 1967.
Early life
Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born in Solusi Mission Station near Bulawayo, in southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. While his date of birth remains unknown, he later calculated his year of birth to be 1898. His father, John Bunyan Luthuli, was the younger son of a tribal chief at Groutville in the Umvoti Mission Reserve near Stanger, Natal. He became a Christian missionary at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and at the time of Albert’s birth, was working as an interpreter among the Matabele of Rhodesia. His mother, Mtonya Gumede, spent part of her childhood in the household of Cetewayo kaMpande, the king of the Zulu Kingdom, but was mostly raised in Groutville. Albert was the couple’s third child. Since no information is available about his siblings, it is assumed he was the only surviving child.
John Bunyan Luthuli, Albert’s father, died when Albert was a young child. Sometime between 1906 and 1908, he accompanied his mother to his ancestral home in Groutville. There he lived in the household of his uncle, Martin Luthuli, who had succeeded his grandfather as the tribal chief.
In 1911, supported by his mother, who now worked as a washerwoman, Albert entered the local Congregationalist mission school. Here he studied until standard four. Living with his uncle, he also imbibed tribal traditions and values.
In 1914, Albert was shifted to Ohlange Institute. It was a boarding school, run by Dr. John Dube, the founding President of the South African Native National Council and here he studied for two terms.
On passing the year-end examination at Ohlange Institute, Albert was transferred to a Methodist institution at Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg to undergo a teachers’ training course. He graduated from there in 1917.
The third son of Seventh-day Adventist missionary John Bunyan Luthuli and Mtonya Gumede, Albert Luthuli was born near Bulawayo in what was then called Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe), around 1898. His father died, and he and his mother returned to her ancestral home of Groutville in KwaDukuza (Stanger), Natal, South Africa. He stayed with his uncle, Martin Luthuli, who was at that time the elected chief of the Zulu Christians inhabiting the mission reserve area now covered by the Umzinyathi District Municipality. Luthuli attended the Adams College south of Durban.
Teaching
On completing a teaching course at Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg, Luthuli accepted the post of principal and only teacher at a primary school in rural Blaauwbosch, Newcastle, Natal. Here Luthuli was confirmed in the Congregational Church and became a lay preacher. In 1920 he received a government bursary to attend a higher teachers’ training course at Adams College, and subsequently joined the training college staff, teaching alongside Z. K. Mathews, who was then head of the Adams College High School. To provide financial support for his mother, he declined a scholarship to University of Fort Hare.
In 1928 he became secretary of the African Teacher’s Association and in 1933 its president. He was also active in missionary work.
Tribal chief
In 1933 the tribal elders asked Luthuli to become chief of a Christian branch of the Zulu tribe in succession to his uncle. For two years he hesitated, but accepted the call in early 1936 and became a chieftain. He held this position until he was removed from his office by the Apartheid government in 1953. Their having done so notwithstanding, amongst his people he retained the use of the dignity “chief” as a pre-nominal style for the remainder of his life.
Anti-Apartheid activist
In 1936 the government disenfranchised the only black Africans who had voting rights at that time — those in Cape Province. In 1948 the Nationalist Party, which was in control of the government, adopted the policy of apartheid (apartness) and over the next decade the Pass Laws were tightened.
Prior to Luthuli’s involvement with the African National Congress (ANC) Luthuli also had served on the executive committee of the Christian Council of South Africa. Luthuli was one of its delegates to an International Missionary Conference held in Madras, India, in 1938.
In 1944, Luthuli joined the African National Congress (ANC). In 1945 he was elected to the Committee of the KwaZulu Provincial Division of ANC and in 1951 to the presidency of the Division. The next year, he joined with other ANC leaders in organizing nonviolent campaigns to defy discriminatory laws.
The government, charging Luthuli with a conflict of interest, demanded that he withdraw his membership in ANC or forfeit his office as tribal chief. Refusing to do either, he was dismissed from his chieftainship.
A month later, Luthuli was elected president-general of ANC, formally nominated by the future Pan Africanist Congress leader Potlako Leballo. Responding immediately, the government imposed two two-year bans on Luthuli’s movement. When the second ban expired in 1956, he attended an ANC conference only to be arrested and charged with treason a few months later, along with 155 others. In December 1957, after nearly a year in custody during the preliminary hearings, Luthuli was released and the charges against him and sixty-four of his compatriots were dropped.
He stood close to the International Fellowship of Reconciliation that in 1957 opened a branch in Southern Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe.)
Bans
Another five-year ban confined him to a 15-mile (24 km) radius of his home. The ban was temporarily lifted while he testified at the continuing treason trials. It was lifted again in March 1960, to permit his arrest for publicly burning his pass following the Sharpeville massacre. In the ensuing state of emergency he was arrested, found guilty, fined, given a suspended jail sentence, and finally returned to Groutville. One final time the ban was lifted, this time for 10 days in early December 1961, to permit Luthuli and his wife to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies in Oslo, an award described by Die Transvaler as “an inexplicable pathological phenomenon”.
ANC
Luthuli’s leadership of the ANC covered the period of violent disputes between the party’s “Africanist” and “Charterist” wings. Africanist critics claim Luthuli was peripherialized in Natal and the Transvaal ANC Provincial branch and its Communist Party (CPSA officially dissolved 1950 but secretly reconstituted 1953 as SACP) allies took advantage of this situation. Luthuli did not see the Freedom Charter before it was adopted by acclaim at Kliptown in 1955. After reading the document and realising the ANC, despite its numerical superiority, had been subordinated to one vote in a five-member multiracial and trade union “Congress Alliance”, Luthuli rejected the Charter but then later accepted it partly to counter the more radical Africanist wing whom he likened to black nazis. In 1959, the Africanists split from the ANC over the issue of the Freedom Charter and Oliver Tambo’s 1958 rewriting of the ANC Constitution, founding the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). The PAC posed a serious challenge to the ANC until its military wing was destroyed at Itumbi camp, Chunya, Tanzania in March 1980.
uMkhonto we Sizwe
In December 1961, without Luthuli’s sanction, Nelson Mandela of the Provincial ANC publicly launched uMkhonto we Sizwe at the All In Conference, where delegates from several movements had convened to discuss cooperation. Mandela’s charisma and the global publicity surrounding his trial and imprisonment upstaged Luthuli, who grew increasingly despondent 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 took place:
- He was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow by the students, serving until 1965. Since he was banned from travelling to Glasgow the Luthuli Scholarship Fund was set up by the Student Representative Council to enable a black South African student to study at Glasgow University.
- He published an autobiography entitled Let My People Go.
A fourth ban, to run for five years confining Luthuli to the immediate vicinity of his home, was issued in May 1964, to run concurrently with the third ban.
In 1966, he was visited by United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was visiting South Africa at the time. The two discussed the ANC’s struggle. Senator Kennedy’s visit to the country, and his meeting with Luthuli in particular, caused an increase of world awareness of the plight of black South Africans.
Personal life
In 1927, he married Nokukhanya Bhengu, the granddaughter of the Zulu chief, Dhlokolo of the Ngcolosi. Seven children were born to the couple.Luthuli spent his last years in enforced isolation while African National Congress abandoned the policy of nonviolence. He also suffered from high blood pressure, once having a slight stroke. As he grew older, his hearing and eyesight also became impaired.
On 21 July 1967, Luthuli was fatally injured when he was struck by a freight train while walking across a trestle bridge over the Umvuti River near his home in Stanger (now KwaDukuza).
Veneration
Luthuli is honoured with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on 21 July, the day of his death in 1967.
Luthuli Street in Nairobi, famous for its electronic shops, is named in his honour.