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25 February 2005

Thank you Programme Director,
Dr Albertina Luthuli and family,
Mrs Gcabashe,
Other members of the Luthuli family,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

The inauguration of our democratic South Africa in May 1994 was also the commencement of a broader national agenda to address the vast disparities existing in virtually every facet of life in South Africa.

We have assembled here today to celebrate the life, the work and the philosophy of one of the most outstanding leaders of the struggle for democracy and freedom in South Africa. Chief Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was an educator, a leader within his church, a traditional leader, a President of the African National Congress (ANC) and also the first African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the outstanding efforts he had made in the cause of human freedom, human dignity, democracy and peace.

Today’s documentary is one of numerous ways through which South Africa is ensuring that the ideas and the philosophy that informed the work of Chief Albert J Luthuli are preserved for South African posterity and for the world.

The defining moments of Chief Luthuli’s leadership of the liberation struggle were during the 1950s, a decade marked by militant mass struggles in the shape of the Defiance Campaign, the Stay-at-home strikes, the bus boycotts, the mass campaign against passes for women, the struggle against Bantu Education, the workers’ struggles for a pound-a-day minimum wage and a host of local struggles. This was also the decade that witnessed the commencement of the roll back of the outcomes produced by the Berlin Conference of 1884, where the continent of Africa was shared out among imperial powers. The Suez crisis of 1956 was a clear indication that the gun-boat diplomacy of a previous era was no longer an option for the Western powers. The following year, 1957, saw first Ghana, then in 1958, Guinea, and subsequently a number of African countries attain independence and reclaim their national sovereignty.

During an adult life taken up with political activism, on the basis of his strong Christian convictions, he forged a democratic political outlook that embraced people of all colours, races and creeds as members of the human family. In terms of tradition Luthuli was heir to the leadership of the AbaKholwa. His own father, John Bunyan Luthuli, became a Christian missionary and spent most of the last years of his life in the missions among Ndebele people of Zimbabwe. His mother, Mtonya Gumede, who had spent part of her childhood in the household of King Cetshwayo but was raised in Groutville. She joined her husband in Zimbabwe where their third son, Albert John, was born in 1898.

Mother and Albert John returned to South Africa, specifically to Groutville, where Albert John Luthuli was brought up by his uncle, Martin Luthuli, one of the founders of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.

Supported by a mother who was determined that he get an education, Albert John completed a teachers training course in 1917. After completing the Higher Teachers' Training Course at Adams College, he accepted an appointment at Adams, as one of two African teachers to join the staff. For the next 15 years he worked as a professional educator. In 1928 he became secretary of the Natal African Teacher's Association and in 1933 was elected as its President.

Chief Luthuli was a devout Christian, a lay preacher for many years, an adviser to the church, he became chairman of the South African Board of the Congregationalist Church of America, President of the Natal Mission Conference, and an executive member of the Christian Council of South Africa. He served as a delegate to the International Missionary Conference in Madras in 1938 and undertook a nine months lecture-tour of the United States on behalf of his church in 1948.

In 1933 the AbaKholwa elders approached Albert John Luthuli to assume the title of traditional leader. He finally acceded to their request in early 1936 and for the next seventeen years devoted himself to serving the 5 000 people who made up his community.

1936 was also the year when the white minority government disenfranchised the only Africans who had enjoyed any voting rights after 1910 - those of Cape Province. In response, a huge protest movement was organised. Deputations carried petitions to Pretoria; audiences were sought with the Prime Minister; deputations went to see the relevant Ministers, but all to no avail.

Not a single African enjoyed the franchise when Chief Luthuli joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944. His ability and capacity for hard work won him a place on the provincial executive of the ANC the following year and in 1951 he was elected to the presidency of the province. In 1948, when the National Party with its policy of apartheid gained control of the government, Chief Albert John Luthuli, was amongst those who assisted the secessionist ANC yaseNatal, which had walked out of the mother body during the 1930s, to return to the fold.

The complete disenfranchisement of the Africans in 1936 set the tone for the following two decades. In 1943 the Smuts government attempted to extend these measures to the Coloured people. It was only the fierce resistance that this measure encountered and considerations of the Second World War that compelled them to relent.

No sooner had the war ended than the white minority regime passed the notorious Pegging Act and the Ghetto Act that specifically targeted Indian property-owners. The Passive Resistance campaign that greeted these laws laid the basis for the famous three doctors’ pact among Drs AB Xuma, GM Naicker and Yusuf Dadoo, the Presidents of the ANC, the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress respectively. That pact was the foundation stone of the unity amongst the oppressed and their movements which was to blossom during the years of Chief Luthuli’s leadership of the ANC.

Beginning with the Defiance Campaign of 1952, the leadership of the ANC and the two Indian Congresses commenced a period of united action, built in and through struggles, that was to transform the ANC into a militant mass movement and place it at the head of an alliance of democratic bodies that became known as the Congress Alliance/movement.

Ironically, it was in terms of one of the laws that the Defiance Campaign had targeted that the apartheid regime sought to humiliate Chief Luthuli. In 1952 the then Minister of Native Affairs, the notorious Dr HF Verwoerd, ordered Chief Luthuli to either relinquish his position as President of the Natal ANC, or resign his post as traditional leader of the AbaKholwa. Basing himself on democratic principles, Chief Luthuli responded to the arrogant demand by pointing out that he had been elected to both positions and while those who elected had him had not withdrawn that mandate, he could not see his way clear to resigning either position.

A month later, in December 1952, Luthuli was elected President-General of ANC to replace the indecisive Dr JS Moroka. Responding immediately, the regime sought to minimise his effectiveness as a leader by proscribing his movements and disallowing him from the larger cities and from all public meetings for two years. Thus began a decade of harassment, imprisonment and restriction aimed at demoralising all democrats and freedom fighters.

When Chief’s first banning order expired, a second ban confining him to a 20-mile radius of his home for another two years was imposed. When this second ban expired, he attended an ANC conference in 1956, only to be arrested, along with 155 others, and charged with treason in December of that year. After being held in custody for about a year during the preliminary hearings, he was released in December, 1957, and the charges against him and 64 others were dropped.

Luthuli's return to active leadership in 1958 was cut short by the imposition of a third ban, this time a five-year ban prohibiting him from publishing anything and confining him to a 15-mile radius of his home. The ban was temporarily lifted while he testified at the continuing treason trial. It was lifted again in March 1960, to enable the regime to arrest and charge him for publicly burning his pass - a gesture of solidarity with those demonstrators against the Pass Laws who had been killed during the Sharpeville massacre. Chief Luthuli was found guilty, fined, given a prison sentence that was suspended because of the precarious state of his health, and returned to the isolation of Groutville.

Though isolated in Groutville and excluded from the public eye by banning orders, Chief Luthuli’s voice was still a commanding presence in the international arena. It was in response to his call that the international community mounted the boycott of South African goods. That campaign escalated over the next two decades culminating in the decision by the international banking community to refuse the apartheid regime further loans in 1989.

When the Nobel Peace Prize Committee decided to confer the Nobel Peace Prize on Chief Luthuli in 1961, the whole world read their action as an act in solidarity with the struggle for freedom in South Africa. With that sort of attention focused on Albert John Luthuli, the regime was compelled to lift the restrictions on his movement one final time. For 10 days in early December of 1961 Chief Luthuli was permitted to travel with his wife, uMama uNokukhanya, to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies in Oslo.

But not even the accolades he had earned could not save him from the harassment of the regime. In May, 1964 a fourth banning order, for five years, confined Chief Luthuli to the immediate vicinity of his home. In July, 1967, at the age of 69, he was fatally injured when he was struck by a freight train as he walked on the trestle bridge over the Umvoti River near his home.

This film, which pays homage to Chief Albert Luthuli, comes at a time when South Africa is playing a significant role in the endeavour to undo the damage inflicted on Africa by the colonial powers. Chief Luthuli’s role in the struggle for freedom has been universally recognised. He would have been proud to see South Africa playing such a pivotal role in the attempt to create lasting peace and bring about economic development in Africa.

South Africa’s relatively young film industry is making its own contribution in affirming the African experience and sharing our story with the rest of the world. I have often said that the history of this country, past and present, offers the gifted story-teller – on film, in song, on stage or on the printed page – a rich seam of material ready to be tapped and turned into excellent works of art. A South African cast returned from Germany this week where a South African film, shot in Xhosa, won the highest accolade. Within the next three days yet another South African film, “Yesterday”, we hope, will walk-away with another coveted international award. On the international film circuit South African films are lighting up the stage. Eleven South African feature films, made in association with our international partners, went on the international circuit during the course of 2004. There are promising developments in the film sector – three film studios are in the pipeline. But let me underscore that the success of our film industry is going to be largely dependent on us. It will depend on our broadcasters – private as well as public – the film distribution companies, but mostly on the response of the South African public.

Programme director, it is time I wound up. People came here to watch a movie and not to listen to long-winded speeches. Chief Albert John Luthuli gave his people and his country leadership at one of the most difficult periods in our history. For that we are honouring him today. I want to leave you all with a challenge: What are you, as a South African, doing to ensure that Luthuli's legacy lives on?

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
25 February 2005
Source: Department of Arts and Culture (http://www.dac.gov.za/)