PROFILE The Voice Of Black South Africa

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29178, 12 April 1960, Page 15

PROFILE The Voice Of Black South Africa

IBy SIMON KAVANAUGH\ LONDON, April 1. It began in uneasy silence, with a score of policemen behind a wire fence eyeing warily a fast-swelling crowd of 20,000 Africans. Sharpevilie, 28 miles south-west of Johannesburg, was still just a name on the. map. But not for long. The African demonstrators, clamouring for arrest, were in an ugly mood and not to be scared. When the police moved in with armoured cars, and jets. zoomed over, they began throwing stones. Then—flashpoint. An order was rapped out; and for two terrible minutes barking Sten guns were answered by the anguished howls of the wounded. When it was over, torn bodies littered the square that had be* come a battlefield. Sharpevilie spelled tragedy across the world. After that, few were surprised when South Africa was declared to be in the grip of emergency; or when the hard-fisted white police rounded up in a pre-dawn swoop more than 150 white, African and Indian political leaders. Least of all the big, statuesque negro of 63 who complained of being hit twice in prison soon after he was arrested. Routine

For Chief Albert John Luthuli, the rugged president-general of the African National Congress, it was simply the same predictable thing happening all over again. The same summary bundling to the cells for the owner of the one clear voice that booms out above the mounting fury and the chatter of guns for the negro in South Africa.

It is a rich, ponderous voice; it carries no gospel of wild extremism to the waiting millions in the shantytowns and the kraals. It is the voice of hardheaded moderation; the voice that has told the white folk: ‘“You have nothing to fear from us if you treat us fairly. We do not want to kick you out of the country and we do not want to marry your sisters. All we want is a fair deal in our own country.” Significantly, it was not this friendly giant with the firm handshake and the impressive dignity who urged Africans to tempt violence by descending on their police stations without their passes. Not his moderate Congress, but the newer, more militant Pan-African Congress. But it was Luthuli, after the slaughter, who ceremonially burned his pass (required by law to be carried by all Africans) in public—and joined the breakaways in proclaiming as passive protest a day of mourning for the dead. Authentic Voice Chief Luthuli is not for the extremist firebrands. He is not particularly for the Communists —even though his voice has sometimes had a Kremlin ring, and he has yet to reject their help or refuse them their say. His is the authentic voice of millions of middle-of-the-road

black Africans caught up in the swirl of racial upheaval. The voice of the polyglot band of idealists—Christian, Communist, Moslem, Nationalist, Ghandi-ists—-who are the Congress. He looks a chief all through and a man all through with his square smile, measured walk and slow, gesture-laden speech. He might even be taken for the kind of courteous, gentle, old-time Zulu “Good African” the ancient settlers remember gratefully. And so, in a way he is. A reasoning, non-violent chief. But none the less forthright for that. In the mission village of Groutville. Natal, young Albert grew up in an atmosphere of fervent religious zeal. His father was a Congregational interpreter, one of a tribe of Zulu believers. From the local mission school he went on to the American missionary Adams College. After graduating, he returned to teach there for 15 years. And he still looked like a “mission boy” when, in 1936, the special mettle that has made him the voice of the black man began to shine through. Groutville was not prospering when Luthuli was asked to assume the unrewarding task of chief. It meant less money, more worry, perhaps being labelled a white man’s pawn. But he took it on. As an ardent worker for the South African Christian Council, he represented his country in India, and later toured America. As a chief, he struck the political trail by joining the Congressthen solidly middle-class at one end and youthfully militant at the other. Faith Fails And slowly, stage by stage, his faith in the white man’s pledges began to slip away. First at the failure of the Natives’ Representative Council; and again after the war, when the pledges of rights for Africans were lost in limbo.

When Dr. Malan appeared on the scene in 1948, disenchantment set in for good. Three years later, spurred by the gathering momentum of African affairs, he accepted the presidency of the Natal Congress.

And the following year, when 8000 Africans and Indians were swept into gaol on the crest of the congress defiance campaign. Luthuli refused to accept the Bantu Authorities Act It cost him his chiefs title and his salary. But today it is the whites who call him ex-chief: never the African millions from whose heart he speaks. It was reward enough, that same year, to become President-General of the congress. He would have risked gaol then, if they had let him, by defying the drastic new laws.

But the Congress, for a time, was playing it softly. With simple, massive dignity, Chief Luthuli travelled widely abroad; addressed many a drab African meeting-hall conclave of sympathetic liberalists. Trouble Begins Once, in Pretoria, Intruders stormed up to the platform as he was about to address a white audience and kicked him down. He had not long been president when he was confined to his home district and the rambling house from which he acts as postmaster, helps to run a local shop and village affairs. But at his crowded desk he did not stop writing out his

speeches in careful longhand, a Zulu-English dictionary at his elbow. In 1956 there came an earlier dawn swoop. Luthuli found himself arrested, with 153 others—to face the protracted, still-continu-ing proceedings of the “Treason Trials.” A year later, allegations against him were withdrawn. But when he was arrested again the other day he was already serving yet another (five-year) term of banishment to his home area. Luthuli’s message remains clear and firm. He is not anti-white. He even came to like one Afrikaner detective who had to trail him. : Extreme nationalism, says his urgent voice, is a greater danger than communism. He wants the help of Europeans. He wants the co-operation of all who will work to preserve the ideals of western civilisation that Black Africa has grown to like. For half his life, Chief Albert Luthuli says, he has been knocking modestly and hopelessly at a barred door. Now it has swung open with disconcerting suddepness. Others more clamorous than the gentle old Zulu .are jostling to swarm through first. Can he beat them to it?—(Expressi Feature Service.)