Luthuli Condemns “Oppression”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29695, 13 December 1961, Page 19

Luthuli Condemns “Oppression”

(N .Z.P. A.•Reuter—Copyright) OSLO, December 12. Africa was a continent in revolution against oppression and there could be no peace until the forces of oppression are overthrown, Chief Albert Luthuli, who received the 1960 Nobel Prize this week, said last night.

But, by comparison with the revolution in Europe, the African revolution was proving to be “orderly, quick, and comparatively bloodless,” he said. Mr Luthuli told a dinner given in his honour that the black people of South Africa had. with few exceptions, remained non-violent, and if the peace prize had been given to South Africa through a black man it was because “nothing has turned us from our chosen path of disciplined resistance.” He described South Africa as “a museum piece of our time, a hangover from the dark past of mankind, a relic of an age of which everythink else is dead or dying.” Almost a million Africans a year there, he said, are arrested and gaoled or fined for breaches of pass and permit laws that do not apply to whites. Mr Luthuli said: “Ours is a continent in revolution against repression. And peace and revolution make ‘uneasy bedfellows. There can be no peace until the forces of oppression are overthrown. “Carved Up” “Our continent has been carved up by the great Powers? j . In these times there has been no peace, there could be no brotherhood between men. “But now the revolutionary stirrings of our continent are setting the past aside... . . In the turmoil of revolution, the basis for peace and brotherhood in Africa is being restored by the resurrection of

national sovereignty and independence, of equality and the dignity of man.” Mr Luthuli noted that the European revolution stretched across two centuries and added: “By comparison, the African revolution has swept across threequarters of the continent in less than a decade. Its final completion is withl i sight of our own generation. “By comparison with Europe, our African revolution—to our credit—is proving to be orderly, quick and comparatively bloodless.” Mr Luthuli said Africa had a single goal—the achievement of its own independence. The one aim was a united Africa in which the standards of liberty were constantly expanding. “This goal . . . carries the only real promise of peace in Africa,” he said. “This is Africa’s age—the dawn of her fulfilment.” Africa should see the present as a chance to reassure the world that her aspiration lay “not in overthrowing white domination by a black caste, but to build a non-raqial democracy.”