Nadine Gordimer - Telling Times - Writing and Living, 1950-2008

When he joined Congress in 1945, he was elected to the executive of the Natal Branch at once, and he remained on it continuously for the six years during which the movement felt its way to effectiveness, leaving behind the old methods — deputations, petitions, conferences that enabled the government to ‘keep in touch with the people’ without having to take their views into account — that had failed to achieve anything for the Africans. Finally, in 1949 Congress drafted a Programme of Action that was based on the premise that in South Africa freedom can come to the non-white only through extra-parliamentary methods. A year later, when Luthuli had just been elected Provincial President of Natal, Congress decided to launch a full-scale passive resistance campaign in defiance of unjust colour-bar laws. ‘This decision,’ he comments, ‘had my full approval.’

The official-sounding, platitudinous remark covers what was the result of considerable heart-searching on Luthuli’s part. Luthuli sees it and, for himself, used it as Gandhi conceived it — not only as a technique but as a soul force, Satyagraha .

In 1952 the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, and other related associations organised defiance groups all over the country. Thousands of Africans and, in lesser numbers, Indians, and even some whites, defied the colour-bar laws and invited arrest. Africans and Indians entered libraries reserved for white people, sat on railway benches reserved for white people, used post office counters reserved for white people, and camped out in open ground in the middle of the white city of Durban. Black and white, they went to prison. Luthuli was everywhere in Natal, addressing meetings, encouraging individuals, carrying with him in the most delicate situations, under the nose of government ire and police hostility, an extraordinary core of confidence and warmth. All his natural abilities of leadership came up simply and strongly.

The Defiance Campaign went on successfully for some months before it was crushed by the heavy sentences imposed upon defiers under new legislation specially devised by the government, which fixed the high penalties (up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of £300) that may be applied to anyone protesting against any of the racial laws or inciting others to do so.

Luthuli had gone into the Campaign a country chief; he came out a public figure. In September 1952, while Defiance was still on, he was given an ultimatum by the Native Affairs Department: he must resign from Congress and the Defiance Campaign or give up his chieftainship. ‘I don’t see the contradiction between my office as chief and my work in Congress,’ he answered, courteously but bluntly. ‘In the one I work in the interests of my people within tribal limits, and in the other I work for them on a national level, that’s all. I will not resign from either.’

On Wednesday 12 November 1952, the Native Commissioner announced that Chief A. J. Luthuli was dismissed by the government from his position as chief of the Umvoti Mission Reserve. In reply to this, the African National Congress issued a statement by Luthuli under the title ‘Our Chief Speaks’. It is a statement that has been much quoted, in and out of South Africa, both in support of those who believe that right is on the side of the Africans in their struggle against racial discrimination and in support of those who regard the black man’s claim to equality of opportunity with the white man as a fearful black nationalism that aims — to quote, in turn, one of the favourite bogies of white South Africa — ‘to drive the white man into the sea’.

The lengthy statement is written in the formal, rather Victorian English, laced with biblical cadence and officialese, that Luthuli uses — the English of a man to whom it is a foreign or at best a second language, but impressive, for all that. ‘In these past thirty years or so,’ he said,

I have striven with tremendous zeal and patience to work for the progress and welfare of my people and for their harmonious relations with other sections of our multi-racial society in the Union of South Africa. In this effort I have always pursued what liberal-minded people rightly regarded as the path of moderation …

In so far as gaining citizenship rights and opportunities for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately, and modestly at a closed and barred door?

… Has there been any reciprocal tolerance or moderation from the Government, be it Nationalist or United Party? No! On the contrary, the past thirty years have seen the greatest number of Laws restricting our rights and progress until today we have reached a stage where we have almost no rights at all: no adequate land for our occupation, our only asset — cattle — dwindling, no security of homes, no decent and remunerative employment, more restrictions to freedom of movement through passes, curfew regulations, influx control measures; in short we have witnessed in these years an intensification of our subjection to ensure and protect white supremacy.

It is with this background and with a full sense of responsibility that … I have joined my people in … the spirit that revolts openly and boldly against injustice and expresses itself in a determined and non-violent manner … Viewing Non-Violent Passive Resistance as a non-revolutionary and, therefore, a most legitimate and humane political pressure technique for a people denied all effective forms of constitutional striving, I saw no real conflict in my dual leadership of my people.

A month after his deposition as chief, Luthuli was elected President-General of the African National Congress and became leader of the entire Congress movement in South Africa. Wherever he went, he was greeted by cheering crowds of Africans; at last they had a leader who had shown himself a leader in places less comfortable and closer to their lives than conferences and conventions.

The government found that ex-Chief Luthuli seemed to be more of a chief than ever. A ban was served on him under one of those new powers that had been legislated to deal with the Defiance Campaign, a ban which debarred him for a year from all the important cities and towns in South Africa. The day it expired, Luthuli opened the South African Indian Congress in Durban and, guessing that his time was short, left at once by air for Johannesburg to attend a protest meeting about Sophiatown removals. It was his first visit to Johannesburg since he had become President-General, and the people of Sophiatown, under arbitrary orders to quit their homes and move to a settlement farther away from the white city, were heartened at the idea of having him among them as champion of their protest.

As he stepped off the plane at Johannesburg, the Special Branch police served him with a second ban. And what a ban! This time he was to be confined for two years to a radius of about twenty miles around his home in Groutville village. During the long period of confinement he suffered a slight stroke, and while he lay ill in his house in Groutville, his wife had to beg permission from the police to let him be taken to a hospital in Durban, sixty miles away. Permission was granted, and he was rushed to Durban. There he spent two months in the hospital, and from the second day Special Branch men hung about his ward in constant attendance. Despite these unwelcome presences, who, he says, day after day used to inquire sheepishly after his health, Chief made a complete recovery except for a barely perceptible droop that shows itself in his left eyelid when he is tired.

His ban expired in July 1956. He was free to move about the country again; but not for long. About four in the morning of 5 December, there was a loud knocking at the door of the Luthulis’ house in Groutville. The Luthulis struggled out of sleep. Four white Special Branch men were at the door; they had come to arrest Chief on a charge of treason. He was flown to Johannesburg and taken straight to prison at the Johannesburg Fort. And there he found himself accused of treason with 155 others. Some were his respected colleagues over many years; some represented ideologies that were largely or partly distasteful to him; some he had never heard of before.