Let My People Go. Albert Luthuli
became Groutville’s second head. I know little about him but, according to church records, he and his wife, Titisi, were Grout’s first two converts to Christianity. Both were zealous Christians whom, as the founders of the Luthuli Christian line, I deeply honour.
One of the few anecdotes which I recall about him suggests that on relations between church and state he was basically sound. Being a deacon (elder) of the Groutville congregation, he was asked, at a time of war between the Zulus and the British, to pray for the success of the Queen’s forces. The prayer stuck in Ntaba’s throat. “O God,” he prayed eventually, “protect the victims of whoever is the aggressor in this war!”
Partly (no doubt) because of his gifts of diplomacy, Ntaba remained at the head of Groutville affairs until his death. First his cousin, and then later my uncle, Martin, succeeded to the office. The interesting thing about Martin’s appointment is that it was, contrary to older Zulu custom, the occasion of a definite popular choice by the community. There was another candidate for the office, and the choice between the two was made by election in a democratic manner. I might add that, although four out of Groutville’s seven chiefs have been Luthulis, my family has never laid claim to any hereditary rights. The people of Groutville have found democratic methods effective and satisfactory. They have used these processes not only to elect chiefs, but on two occasions to replace them when their rule was felt to be not in the community’s interest. This has the advantage that the tribe need never chafe under harsh rule, the standard of rule must be reasonably high, chiefs need not fear the more traditional elimination by assassination or revolt, and the people understand the process fully.
In the time of Martin Luthuli’s chieftainship the Groutville community became more clearly established. Relationships between the reserve and the colonial administration became more fully defined, land boundaries were marked, and independence from surrounding non-Christian communities was accepted. The abasemakholweni (converts) were a people in their own right, a small settlement of peasant farmers eking out a modest existence on the soil. The authorities of the time accepted such mission settlements as examples to be encouraged. Recently, however, the attitude has altered. In some areas their line of development has been reversed by the government. Whatever motive inspires the Nationalist desire to return to the primitive, it is certain that they knowingly and deliberately destroy missionary influence in a heartbreaking way. Perhaps that is their motive.
In 1921 Josiah Mqebu succeeded Martin Luthuli as chief; and in 1935 I was elected to follow Josiah.
2.
A Christian upbringing
MY FATHER, JOHN LUTHULI, was the second son of Ntaba, and thus the younger brother of Martin. Since he died when I was about six months old, I have no recollection of him at all.
My mother, Mtonya, upon whom fell the main burden of my upbringing, spent a part of her childhood in the Royal Kraal of King Cetewayo, a descendant of Dingane, in Zululand. It came about in this way: In the Zululand of the last century there existed a custom whereby important members of the tribe would, in paying their respects to the king, offer him the custody of children. (The nearest European parallel to this which I know of was the practice of “adopting” pages into the courts of medieval Europe.) My mother’s mother was a child transferred from her own family to Cetewayo’s court in this manner. For all practical purposes she became thenceforward a part of the royal house, enjoying the status of a king’s daughter.
In time Cetewayo gave her in marriage to a man he desired to honour, Mnqiwu Gumede. My mother was a child of this marriage. When she was past childbearing my grandmother was given leave, in accordance with custom, to return to her home, the royal court. Her youngest daughter, Mtonya, went with her to minister to her needs.
But the old lady seems to have been of a restless and adventurous disposition. She found her life circumscribed, and court routine dull. She resolved to leave Zululand, and bringing my mother with her she crossed into Natal and settled in Groutville with her husband’s cousins. Had her flight been discovered before she crossed the Tugela, she might well have paid with her life.
Before her marriage to my father in Groutville, Mtonya became a Christian, and lived for a while within the mission precincts. There she learned to read, and to her life’s end she was a fluent, devoted, and assiduous reader of the Bible in the vernacular. Curiously, she never learned to write nor to decipher longhand script.
Some time after their marriage my father left Natal with a group of young Europeans from neighbouring New Guelderland, and went to Rhodesia. This was the time of the Matabele Rebellion – as it is called – and my father went to serve in some capacity with the Rhodesian forces. I can do no more than speculate about the attractions which this venture held for him – probably he was young and curious, and felt like a change.
When hostilities ended he stayed on, attached to a Seventh Day Adventist mission near Bulawayo as an evangelist and interpreter. At this stage my mother, who in the meanwhile had suffered the death of one of her two sons, took the remaining son, Alfred, and dutifully went up into the unknown to join my father. I was born a while later on Rhodesian soil. My father died not long after my birth, and his mortal remains lie buried at Solusi mission, about thirty miles from Bulawayo.
I cannot be precise about the date of my birth, but I calculate that I was born in the year 1898, and certainly before 1900. My recollections of early years spent in Rhodesia are few and vague. I can remember the cemetery where my father lies buried, and I recall my brother Alfred’s marriage and the building of his home.
Two incidents, however, stand out with sharp clarity, and they both concern discipline. On one occasion my mother sent me on an errand. I dallied by the way, and she came upon me playing happily with twigs and stones in the sand. (My mother, I should explain, came of Qwabe stock, a clan renowned for its strict discipline.) I had what was probably my first taste of Qwabe discipline that day, and I can remember at this moment the feel of the leathering my mother gave me with one of my twigs. Not going when sent ceased abruptly to be one of my habits.
My mother dealt decisively with another of my infringements of her code. It seems that I contracted the habit of hanging around the homes of my playmates – some of them little white boys – when they were being fed, and of cadging part of their food. Unknown to me, my mother came to hear of this. She made no immediate mention of it.
One evening I came to the end of what had seemed an ordinary meal of sweet potatoes.
“Thank you, Mother,” I said, “I am satisfied. The food was good.” I began to sidle away.
“No, my boy, no.” My mother recalled me and placed before me a fresh helping of food. “You are far from satisfied. You are a hungry child. You are not properly fed at home, your mother neglects you and you have to beg from the neighbours. Eat now!”
My mother came and stood over me while I addressed myself of necessity to more sweet potatoes. I ate my way into them falteringly. Each hesitation was rewarded by a light flick from a cane, and only when I was ready to choke over another mouthful did the lesson end. I got the point.
The Seventh Day Adventists wanted to begin missionary activities in Natal. They asked my brother to return in order to act as their interpreter. Round about 1908 or 1909, in consequence, we left Rhodesia and returned to what was soon to become the Union of South Africa. We paid a short visit to Groutville, and then left for the Vryheid district of Northern Natal. Here we stayed on the farm of a white adherent of the Seventh Day Adventists. My brother took up his duties. I tended the mission mules – there were no schooling facilities.
It was my mother who rescued me from my intimacy with mules. She decided that I needed education and sent me back home to Groutville to get it.
Here I became a member of the household of my uncle, Martin, who was by this time the chief of Groutville. As can be imagined, I did not see much of him. His life was taken up by the affairs of the community. He had a constant stream of visitors, but of course their comings and goings took place well beyond my horizons – the courtesies demanded that when adults came, children disappeared. And the village deliberations, which were conducted in the traditional Zulu manner in the open, were not any affair