Albert Luthuli

Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born around 1898 near Bulawayo, in what is now Zimbabwe, into a family of Zulu chiefs. After his father died he was raised at Groutville, a mission village among the sugar-cane fields of Natal, South Africa. He trained as a teacher and taught at Adams College, and grew into a devout Christian and lay preacher. His praise-name, Mvumbi, means ‘continuous rain’ — a sign of steady blessing.

In 1936 the people of the Umvoti Mission Reserve elected him their chief. He left the better-paid life of teaching to serve them, becoming known simply as ‘Chief Luthuli’. As South Africa’s government built the harsh system of apartheid, which divided people by the colour of their skin, Luthuli joined the African National Congress. In 1952 he was elected its president-general. When the government told him to choose between his chieftainship and the ANC, he refused to abandon his people — and was dismissed as chief. ‘The road to freedom,’ he said, ‘is via the cross.’

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, Luthuli insisted on nonviolence. He helped lead the peaceful Defiance Campaign and later told his country’s story plainly in his autobiography, Let My People Go. The government tried to silence him with repeated banning orders that confined him to Groutville — but in 1960 the world honoured his peaceful struggle with the Nobel Peace Prize, the first ever awarded to an African. He flew to Oslo to accept it in December 1961. He died in July 1967 near a railway bridge close to his home; the apartheid government called it an accident, but that account has been doubted ever since.