Albert John Luthuli

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Albert John Luthuli, born in Oslo in 1961

Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli (actually Lutuli ; * around 1898 near Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia (today's Zimbabwe); † July 21, 1967 in Groutville near Stanger , today KwaDukuza, South Africa ) was a South African politician and tribal leader of the Zulu , teacher and religious leader and from 1952 until 1967 President of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1960 he was the first African to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He received it on the grounds that, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence , he had used peaceful means to oppose South Africa's policy of racial segregation .

biography

Albert John Luthuli was born in 1898 as the son of a Christian missionary and leader of the Zulu. Between 1908 and 1909 he came to Natal in the Vryheid district because his brother was helping as an interpreter to set up the missionary work of the Seventh-day Adventists in this region. At first he did not attend school, but was sent to Groutville by his mother. There he attended the mission school . In 1914 Luthuli studied at the Ohlange Institute, which was headed by John Langalibalele Dube at the time , and in the following year moved to the Methodist Institute in Edendale near Pietermaritzburg , where he was also trained as a teacher. He then started teaching in Blaauwbosch (Natal) in 1919. In 1921, Luthuli began another two-year teacher training course at Adams College and also served as a lay preacher in the Methodist Church . At this university he taught isiZulu and music as main subjects for 13 years , he was also active in the school administration and as the director of the college choir. In 1927 he married Nokukhanya Bhengu. Luthuli was also involved as a teacher outside the school. In 1928 he became secretary of the African teachers' association and in 1933 its president. He made the experience that the authorities later no longer received an agent and did not discuss their decisions with those affected. During this time, Luthuli and others founded a branch of the teachers' association, the Society for Zulu Language and Culture. As an enthusiastic supporter and organizer of multiethnic football, he was active in sports for 25 years, where he was elected first secretary of the South African Football Association. During his work at Adams College, the charisma of this institution resulted in many encounters with active personalities. As a young teacher, he made friends with Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews , who took over the management of the high school here. In 1935 he was elected head of his tribe and after giving up teaching, he took over the leadership of the tribe after the death of his father (until 1953). In 1938 he was a participant in a meeting of the International Mission Council in India . In 1946 he became a member of the Natives' Representatives Council (NCR), which was dissolved a short time later.

As a fighter against apartheid

Monument on the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town
Monument in KwaDukuza , KwaZulu-Natal

Also in 1946 he became a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and its president for the province of Natal. In 1948 he traveled to the USA to take part in the North American Mission Congress. In 1952, the ANC and the South African Indian Congress launched the Defiance Campaign . In December of that year, Luthuli was elected President of the ANC. For this reason he became one of the most prominent black politicians in Africa and was the direct opponent of the South African government in the fight against apartheid . Together with Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews , he worked on the draft of the ANC's Freedom Charter, which was adopted in 1955 at the Congress of the People in Kliptown .

In the Durban township of Cato Manor , Luthuli achieved a strong politicization among the black and Indian population in the mid-1950s , in which the city government saw a danger, against which they proceeded with disproportionate police means.

Luthuli repeatedly admonished the black population to be calm and patient; he himself was arrested and banned several times for his political commitment . He was only allowed to stay in his hometown area. In 1956, Luthuli and 155 others involved in the anti-apartheid movement were indicted in the Treason Trial , which only ended in 1961 with an acquittal of all involved. Albert John Luthuli were accused of conspiracy and incitement to racial struggle in this process . Released in 1958, he was imprisoned again in 1959 and was then banned from leaving the Groutsville area, which was not lifted until the end of his life. In 1961 he opposed the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the militant arm of the ANC, but was eventually convinced by Nelson Mandela , so that the MK was finally founded in December 1961.

In 1960 Albert John Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. However, he was unable to receive it immediately because the apartheid regime did not allow him to leave the country and his stay was restricted to the Lower Tugela district due to the ban . It was not until a year later that the South African government granted him and his wife Nokukhanya Luthuli a ten-day trip to Oslo to receive the award on December 10, 1961. A stopover in Tanganyika on the route to Norway was rejected by the authorities . When asked about the nomination by the Nobel Committee, the South African interior minister said that his government did not understand the award ceremony and could therefore not support it, since in their opinion Luthuli did not promote peaceful community life in the country.

death

Luthuli lived with high blood pressure in old age and suffered a minor stroke. The ability to see and hear was increasingly impaired. When he wanted to pass a railway bridge over the Umvoti River near his home town of Groutville at the age of 69, he was hit by a moving freight train and fatally injured. It is assumed that this accident can be explained with its health restrictions.

Appreciations

  • In 1955, the ANC recognized his commitment during the Defiance Campaign with the Isitwalandwe award .
  • In 1962 he was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow for the period from 1962 to 1965 . Although he was prevented from traveling to Scotland by pre-trial detention, he won the election against prominent competitors from Scottish politics. Furthermore, he could not continue to leave his country while he was rector of the university.
  • In 1963, the Society for the Family of Man awarded him US $ 5,000 , an organization of the Protestant Council of the City of New York Council of Churches of the City of New York .
  • Luthuli was posthumously awarded the United Nations Human Rights Prize in 1968 .
  • Since 2003 South Africa has awarded the Order of Luthuli named after him as a high state honor.
  • A parish in the Gert Sibande district in the South African province of Mpumalanga was named after Albert John Luthuli, see Albert Luthuli (municipality) .
  • The Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital is a hospital in Cato Manor , a suburb of Durban.
  • The Luthuli House in Johannesburg, the party headquarters of the hosts African National Congress .
  • The Albert Luthuli Center for Responsible Leadership exists at the University of Pretoria , a teaching and research area with a focus on leadership development.
  • A life-size bronze statue of Luthuli stands in KwaDukuza , KwaZulu-Natal .
  • In the Burgholzhof district of Stuttgart , the roundabout in front of the Robert Bosch Hospital was inaugurated as Albert Luthuli Platz on March 11, 2009 .
  • In 1999 he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Southern Cross in gold.
  • In 2012 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Mapungubwe by the South African government in platinum, the highest level.

Fonts

  • Let my people go. An autobiography . McGraw-Hill, New York 1962
  • My country - my life. Autobiography of a great African . Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1963 (English: Let my people go .).
  • For freedom in South Africa. Statements by Albert J. Lutuli on receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1961 . United Nations Center Against Apartheid, New York 1981

Literature on Luthuli

  • Edward Calian: Albert John Luthuli and the South African race conflict . Western Michigan University Press, Kalamazoo 1962
  • Mary Benson: Chief Albert Lutuli of South Africa . Oxford University Press , London 1963
  • Rolf Italiaander et al .: The peace makers: Three negroes received the Nobel Peace Prize. ( Ralph Bunche , Martin Luther King , Albert John Luthuli) . Oncken , Kassel 1965

Web links

Commons : Albert Lutuli  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nobel Media AB: The Nobel Peace Prize 1960 . at www.nobelprize.org (English)
  2. ^ South African History Online (SAHO): Biography of 'Chief Albert John Lutuli' ( Memento from February 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  3. ↑ Albert Luthuli: My country, my life. Autobiography of a great African . Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1963, pp. 28–32, 43–46, 309–310
  4. ↑ The Congress of the People, Kliptown 1955. at www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  5. ^ History of Cato Manor . at www.mantramedia.us , accessed December 2, 2015
  6. ^ Nobel Media AB: The Nobel Peace Prize 1960. Acceptance Speech . at www.nobelprize.org (English)
  7. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1961 . Johannesburg 1962, p. 29
  8. ^ The Nobel Peace Prize 1960: Albert Lutuli . at www.nobelprize.org (English)
  9. ↑ SAHO: Chief Albert Luthuli, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of the ANC, is killed in Groutville . www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  10. ^ University of Glasgow: The University of Glasgow Story. Albert Luthuli . www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk (English)
  11. ↑ Washington Afro-American, reported November 3, 1964. online at www.news.google.com (English)
  12. ^ List of previous recipients. (PDF; 43 kB) United Nations Human Rights, April 2, 2008, accessed on December 29, 2008 (English).
  13. ^ Province of KwaZulu-Natal: Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital . on www.ialch.co.za ( Memento from February 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ^ ANC: Luthuli House - HQ . on www.anc.org.za ( Memento from February 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ UP. The Albert Luthuli Center for Responsible Leadership . at www.up.ac.za (English)
  16. ↑ Albert-Luthuli-Platz inaugurated . In: Burgholzhof district newspaper . No. 40 , March 28, 2009 ( stuttgart-burgholzhof.de [PDF; 4.5 MB ; accessed on December 7, 2013]).
  17. ↑ List of recipients of the order 1999 sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on August 25, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Luthuli, Albert John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Luthuli, Albert John Mvumbi (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African politician and religious leader
DATE OF BIRTH around 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Bulawayo , Southern Rhodesia
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1967
Place of death near Groutville , South Africa