Let My People Go. Albert Luthuli
were ill-equipped to withstand the impact of a twentieth-century industrial society. Our task seemed to consist of relating the past coherently to the present and the future.
The Zulu Language and Cultural Society throve satisfactorily until some time after I had left the teaching profession. Then it accepted a government grant, lost its independence, became involved in the Native Affairs Department and Zulu Royal House politics, went into decline, and (after withdrawal by the teachers) collapsed.
Beyond playing an occasional game of tennis for exercise, I took no part in sport while at Adams. None the less, the streak of fierce fanaticism which is looked for in presidents of African National Congresses showed itself in one way even then – I became a compulsive football fan. To this day I am carried away helplessly by the excitement of a soccer match, and I confess that when I watch matches between white South Africans and visiting teams, I invariably want the foreigners to win. So do other Africans.
Leaving Adams wrenched me from this addiction, as my political ban does now. All the same, over twenty-five years I have played what part I could in organising African and inter-racial sport, to the extent, for instance, that I was made the first secretary of the South African Football Association.
I think that what has attracted me as much as the game has been the opportunity to meet all sorts of people, from the loftiest to the most disreputable. I well remember how on one occasion after a football match, I found myself the only sober man in a car which was being driven at breakneck speed. To take my mind off my own imminent death, I confined myself to restraining a companion from simply opening the door and stepping out on to a road moving backwards at sixty miles an hour – in order to relieve himself!
One of the great benefits of Adams was that it brought those of us who stayed there over a number of years into contact with many people. I am not aware that I have ever been dominated by a stereotyped set of ideas – it could probably be said that I have spent a lifetime modifying my views in the attempt to fit them to the realities as I have been able to understand them. My ambitions are, I think, modest – they scarcely go beyond the desire to serve God and my neighbour, both at full stretch. But contact with people is the very breath of life to me.
At Adams the privilege of meeting people extended beyond students and staff. Perhaps because it was an American foundation, it attracted numbers of visitors, men who preached in the College Chapel or who addressed us at meetings, who were open to challenge and discussion, and who brought in with them a breath of the larger world.
Although I can thank no one person for exerting a decisive influence on me, I must set down here my gratitude to the many (most of them unwitting) who have deepened my understanding.
Among my colleagues I recall the pleasure and stimulus of friendship with Professor Matthews. He was not a professor then. He came to head the High School soon after I joined the staff of the Training College, and he built up his department of Adams in an impressive way. Certainly neither of us young African academes had the faintest suspicion that we should meet one day in Johannesburg to stand trial together for High Treason – Professor Matthews to be hauled from his study at Fort Hare University College, and I from my mission allotment. Still less could I foresee that at the end of an honourable and distinguished career, the professor would resign within two years of retirement, forfeiting about £7 000 in gratuities rather than submit to the travesty of the Separate Universities Act.
Still among my colleagues I recall with affection the head of the Industrial School, Dr Breuckner. I did not find him an arresting preacher, but one sentence which he spoke has lived with me until today: “You must give a charitable interpretation to every man’s actions,” he told us, “until you can prove that such an interpretation is unsound.” I have tried to adhere to this in my meetings with people.
One of my strangest encounters – subsequently it has become a bewildering one – with a colleague was my interchange with a man named De Villiers: an Afrikaner who, because of the “modernist” views which he held, was not accepted into the ministry of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr De Villiers seemed closer to the Africans on the staff than did most white teachers. Certainly he associated with us more freely and more often than did his white fellows. Not only did he often join us in our common room – a mild brand of apartheid prevailed at Adams – but he engaged us in lengthy discussions in our private rooms.
More than any one person, this man helped me to forestall intolerance of whites in general and of Afrikaners in particular. Although at this time the existence of oppression was seldom in the forefront of my mind, Mr De Villiers made me aware of it as the product of deliberate training which he had revolted against.
“If you find an Afrikaner who is liberal,” he once told us, and I took it that he referred to himself, “you must recognise that he gets to that point only after a good deal of heart-searching and repentance, because he’s been brought up to dislike and look down on natives. We’ve been taught that natives aren’t like you people here.”
I cannot forget the horror with which I understood that in South Africa children were being brought up to despise other children, and even their elders. Until this time I had, I suppose, looked on brutalities as individual aberrations rather than as the rotten fruit of childhood training.
Mr De Villiers made some impact on us as a person because he opened up a side of South African affairs of which we were largely ignorant. A vigorous apologist for Afrikaners, despite his own revolt against their ethos, he gave us a sense of Afrikaners as victims of their own past. Although the tendency to see oneself perpetually as a victim will lead to the evasion of responsibility and the condoning of evil, I think that much of this man’s interpretation of South African history was valid. It did enlarge my understanding of the forces which go to the making of men, and it gave me some insight into the dilemma of whites, particularly Afrikaners, which has possibly served in later years as a real protection against hatred and bitterness.
But Mr De Villiers has confronted me with a problem to which I find no solution. He is now Secretary for Bantu Education under the present government. He has aided the work of destroying African education. Can it be that he has repented of repenting?
There are many questions I should like to put to Mr De Villiers. Above all, I would like to understand what has caused this drastic change in his outlook, his apparent reversion to his childhood. I would like to understand how he reconciles his past with his present. But much has changed since last we met, and now I suppose that we could not meet as men, equals without constraint, to discuss our differences. It is regrettable.
Among visitors to Adams came Dr Aggrey. I remember his visit chiefly because of his impressive eloquence, and because he gave us a glimpse, rare in those days, of the eminence which black men may achieve. Yet I cannot say that even then his advice seemed wise, and certainly I reject it now. “Take what you are given,” he urged us, “even if it is only half a loaf. Only when you’ve used up the entire half-loaf should you ask for more.”
I am open to progressive compromise, but I reject Dr Aggrey’s advice to accept anything given. I must be sure it is bread I am offered, and in apartheid I see not bread but a stone.
At least one visit to Adams had a comic sequel. A Congregationalist minister spoke to the students about the British Royal Family – it was the occasion of George V’s jubilee. The speaker drew on more patriotism and less knowledge than was desirable, comparing the British Royal Family with the Zulu, greatly to the disparagement of the latter. There was no outward sign that the students had even taken in what was said – not a ripple. Then Edward VIII abdicated. When he abandoned his throne and his people (that is how a Zulu would see it) the students staged a minor demonstration. “Call Mr Taylor,” they clamoured, “to tell us more about the British Royal Family!”
Of my superiors at Adams, two at least made a deep impression on me. Dr Edgar Brookes took over the Principalship at a time when morale was very low. Starting with this disadvantage, he pulled the place together again in a short time, impressing his efficient personality on every department. He was the first head of Adams who was not a visiting missionary. He was a South African and not a missionary. Yet – this is what made the deepest impact on me – he treated his religion with utter sincerity. It may be that