Let My People Go. Albert Luthuli
that I gathered some understanding of lay activity and witness in the church.
Dr Brookes was then a member of the Oxford Group. Frequent meetings were held at his house, and at them many themes were discussed in a free and relaxed atmosphere. Among other things, we found ourselves able to consider quite frankly the difficulties brought about by the confluence of races in South Africa. I cannot say we solved our country’s problems, but we did exchange ideas with a simplicity and charity which now seemed totally discordant with the present mood.
I do not know whether Dr Brookes still belongs to the Oxford Group, now known, I believe, as Moral Rearmament, but he continues to be one of South Africa’s greatest champions of public and private sanity and morality.
Early in my career at Adams I came under the influence of CW Atkins, head of the Training College, and for a time principal of the entire institution. This man typifies for me the side of Adams which I found most valuable and enduring. He placed his emphasis on loving God and on service of the society in which one finds oneself, and he had no hesitation in involving us deeply in the affairs of the African communities which lay within reach of Adams. Possibly this was really the combined achievement of Adams, but Atkins remains in my memory as a symbol of it.
Among my many debts to Adams and its people the greatest was the gift of an ethos gradually absorbed, and profoundly lasting in its effects. It became clear to me that the Christian faith was not a private affair without relevance to society. It was, rather, a belief which equipped us in a unique way to meet the challenges of our society. It was a belief which had to be applied to the conditions of our lives; and our many works – they ranged from Sunday School teaching to road-building – became meaningful as the outflow of Christian belief.
Adams taught me what Edendale did not, that I had to do something about being a Christian, and that this something must identify me with my neighbour, not dissociate me from him. Adams taught me more. It inculcated, by example rather than precept, a specifically Christian mode of going about work in society, and I have had frequent reason to be grateful for this in later life.
4.
“No grazing in white pastures”
IT WAS AT ADAMS COLLEGE that I met my wife.
Nokukhanya Bhengu was the granddaughter of a polygamous Zulu chief, Dhlokolo Bhengu of the Ngcolosi, the husband of many wives. It was customary in those days for a chief to nominate his heir late in life in order to protect him from the possible jealousy of rivals. For this reason my wife’s father, although the eldest son of Chief Dhlokolo, was not the old man’s heir. Nevertheless, as we Africans look at it, my wife is of royal blood, while I am a commoner, a circumstance which does not seem to have caused either of us any embarrassment.
With my wife’s father, Maphitha Bhengu, the heathen line ended and the Christian line began. Maphitha was the husband of one wife, and both of them were probably among the early converts at the American Board Mission Station at Umgeni near Durban. Like me, therefore, my wife had a Congregationalist upbringing, first in school at Inanda, and later as a teacher in training at Adams.
At one stage we must have been together in school at the Ohlange Institute, but if so we were not aware of it. I first became conscious of the existence of Nokukhanya Bhengu when, having returned to Adams for the second time to take her first grade Teacher’s Certificate, she became one of my students in Zulu and School Organisation classes. She later taught at the Adams Practising School and acted also as a member of staff at the Adams Hostel for Girls. She resigned from both these posts at the time of our marriage.
After the usual lengthy negotiations between our two families – in true Zulu style – had culminated in our marriage, my wife settled in Groutville.
Behind our decision to live apart right from the first year of our marriage lay the spectre which haunts all Africans in the Union who dwell in cities – the spectre of impermanence and insecurity. It is more acute now than it was then, for that was in the days before the Group Areas Act and Influx Control regulations. But it was present enough, even then. Whatever Adams may have offered us, it was not a permanent home, and so my wife left to establish one in Groutville. For all we knew at the time, this separation might have to persist throughout our lives, since we had no idea that my public duty would ever place me in Groutville. As it turned out, we were fortunate. We lived away from each other for only eight years.
To my ageing mother our marriage brought at last relief from toil. It was a great joy to me that I was able to offer haven to one who had laboured long and unremittingly largely for my sake. We welcomed the opportunity to serve her in our home until her death.
Over the inner reality of our marriage and the depth of the attachment between my wife and me, I draw a veil. But I may say here that I count myself fortunate among men to have married so good a wife, and so devout a Christian woman. Her mother died when she was young, her early years were years of struggle, yet out of the struggle have come qualities of character which I have come to value more and more with the years. I have her to thank for maintaining the dignity of our home, a good deal of the time with little help from me. She has created the one place of relative security and privacy which we know.
I think what I value most about Nokukhanya is her integrity, which expresses itself in everything from her steadfast reliance on God, her devotion to me and our family, right down to such things as paying our accounts without delay or immediately acknowledging herself to be in the wrong if she discovers that she has made a faulty appraisal or has misunderstood a situation.
We do not have many of the things of this world, Nokukhanya and I and our family, and on top of this she has found herself married to a man immersed in public affairs and (except when under some ban or other) given to too much travel. Yet, largely because of my wife’s openness and honesty, we have found our relationship with each other unthreatened and uncomplicated – and I have never known her to grumble over the things we have to forgo.
She has not once intruded upon me, as she might many times have done, the conflict between family and work. She has not said at any time – not when I entered the political battle nor when I became President-General of the African National Congress, or during the Defiance Campaign, or when I was charged with High Treason – “But what will become of the family and me?” Instead, she has created a home, sometimes my background, occasionally my foreground, which has all through been stable and constant and inwardly secure.
I cannot express how grateful I am, especially as I quite literally neglect my family and feel extremely guilty about it. Ungrudgingly she has taken on, since I entered public life, the whole burden of the home and of working our smallholding.
Her contribution has not stopped short at being purely domestic. At one time she rallied the women of Groutville and led a movement for the establishment of a clinic. The women responded well, even being ready and willing to tax themselves to raise the necessary money. But the whole project disintegrated because of apathy and obstruction in the Native Affairs Department, which had the last word. They are accustomed to tell us that we do nothing to help ourselves – it is one of the themes of Baasskap – yet I wonder how much of our recent history is littered by white official frustration of African initiative.
In political affairs my wife is with me, although I have never suggested to her that she should be. It is simply a fortunate coincidence, but to me it makes all the difference. She is not a platform orator, though when she speaks in public she has the gift of talking good sense. Most of the time, however, she cannot be prevailed on to make public addresses. She sticks to the Biblical advice to take the lowest seat; and, besides this, she is a shy person.
In private, I may say, Nokukhanya is less shy. She is more forthright than I am, and speaks her mind without hesitation. I am not by temperament a very aggressive person, and I tend when confronted by (for instance) the ill behaviour of others, to extenuate for them and look for the explanations of their conduct. My wife, on the other hand, goes straight to the heart of the matter, always gently and always quite firmly.
We were married in 1927. Between 1929 and 1945 Nokukhanya bore me seven children, of whom the first and the last two were boys.
We