This talk was given by Dr. Larry Shore at the Luthuli Museum on August 20th, 2024, on the occasion of the museum’s 20th anniversary.

America has always had a special relationship with South Africa. Americans saw South Africa through the lens of their own history. When people saw the pictures from Soweto and Gugelethu, it reminded them of Birmingham and Selma. The segregation signs of the Jim Crow South looked like Apartheid signs in South Africa. Things like segregated park benches, water fountains, and entrances to public buildings, all looked the same. As someone once said, “Apartheid was like Jim Crow on Steroids.”

Going back to the 19th century there had been various contacts between Americans and South Africans. Several American singing groups, like the Jubilee Singers, travelled to South Africa to popular acclaim.

Several American missionary societies went to South Africa. As you know very well here in Groutville, the Congregational Church and American Board Mission were very active in South Africa. This of course included the Congregational Church right here in Groutville that Chief Luthuli administered to.

You know the song “Hier Kom Die Alibama.” The Alabama was a ship of the Confederate navy during the American Civil War that took harbor in Cape Town to avoid the Union Navy ships in the South Atlantic.

John Dube, the founder of the ANC, also a Congregationalist, visited the US. He studied at Oberlin College in 1888. He later met and was influenced by Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Institute. They promoted self-reliance which Dube introduced in South Africa with the establishment of the Ohlange High School in Inanda.

Chief Luthuli visited the United States in 1948. He was Invited by the American Board and the North American Missionary Conference. He mostly spoke to youth groups. He wrote in his book, Let My People Go, that when he was in the North he felt much freer, certainly in the circles with whom he was spending time.

However, he wrote, he was very conscious of the color bar in the American South. It was like Apartheid in South Africa. He felt the vestiges of the American Civil War and Jim Crow laws. While in Atlanta he wanted to go to the movies, but his host did not want to take him because they did not want to support segregation.

Chief Luthuli saw the similarities to Apartheid in South Africa, but he also saw the differences. He saw the benefits of a democratic constitution- in the US you at least had a constitution that in theory supported democratic rights for everybody.

He knew the famous words of the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It turned out that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1776 these ringing words only actually applied to white men, but Chief Luthuli saw some of the early roots of the Civil Rights Movement to come and the efforts to live up to the promise of America to create a more perfect union. South Africa had nothing like this- a constitution to appeal to.

Chief Luthuli wrote about his visit “when Black Americans whom he met asked ‘Can we come over there to assist you?’ He would reply “it would be heartening if you could but for one thing the South African Government wouldn’t let you- certainly not with that motive. For another you’d find yourselves foreigners in the continent of your origin. But were glad of your interest, and in any case, to the extent that you fight segregation here, you help indirectly. The more democratic America becomes, the better for those whom she influences. We need the interest of your churchmen too. There’s a tendency for your white missionaries among us to drift away- they sometimes get identified with the whites.”

Unfortunately, in 1948, Chief Luthuli returned to a South Africa with the Nationalist Party election victory over wartime leader Jan Smuts and the United Party. Things were already bad in South Africa, but they were about to get much worse with the adoption of the full Apartheid blueprint of Dr. Verwoerd and the National Party.

Things were generally quiet in the US about South Africa in the 1950’s. Most Americans only knew about South Africa through reading Alan Paton’s novel Cry the Beloved Country. It was read in many high schools.

But Sharpeville, in March 1960, reverberated across the world including the United States. It put South Africa in the news. The Rivonia Trial was also covered and followed.

The Apartheid Government wanted to hang the Rivonia Trialists. There is evidence of the intervention of President John F. Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to warn the South African Government against this. One shudders to think what would have transpired in South Africa if they were all hung. Instead, they were sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island. Chief Luthuli was sent into internal exile here in Groutville.

American leaders heard of Chief Luthuli’s Nobel Peace Prize in 1960. So did the early leaders of the American Anti-Apartheid Movement. It was also noted at the United Nations in New York and contributed to the growth of the UN Anti-Apartheid Committee that played an important role for many years in bringing attention to and putting pressure on South Africa.

The bond and connections between the Civil Rights Movement in America and the Anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa was underlined in the relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Chief Albert Luthuli. They had mail exchanges with each other and some correspondence was hand carried.

Dr. King always saw the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in its broader context and stressed that “the struggle for freedom forms one long front crossing oceans and peoples.”

Despite the difficult struggles he faced in the United States, he spoke out against racism and war beyond the national borders, and he regularly showed particular concern about the situation in South Africa.

For him, there was not only the bond between Black Americans and Africa, but the additional connection of non-violent civil disobedience, in the form of Satyagraha, which was born in South Africa under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and moved to India to help achieve the independence of that country. It continued in South Africa in the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s, before it was taken up by Dr. King in the United States.

Dr. King wrote in an article “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community”:

“Among the moral imperatives of our time, we are challenged to work all over the world with unshakeable determination to wipe out the last vestiges of racism.…Racism is no mere American phenomenon. Its vicious grasp knows no geographical boundaries. In fact, racism and its perennial ally -economic exploitation- provide the key to understanding most of the international complications of this generation.

 He continued… “the classic example of organized and institutionalized racism is the Union of South Africa. Its national policy and practice are the incarnation of the doctrine of white supremacy in the midst of a population which is overwhelmingly Black. But the tragedy of South Africa is virtually made possible by the economic policies of the United States and Great Britain, two countries which profess to be the moral bastions of our Western world.”

Dr. King sought to build “an international alliance of peoples of all nations against racism” and to promote non-violent action to quarantine the regime in Pretoria.

Most important, Chief Luthuli and Dr. King cosigned a declaration put out by the American Committee on Africa in 1963 calling attention to what was going on in South Africa under National Party rule. It was the first major public call to isolate and put pressure on South Africa through actions like sanctions and divestment.

It was an important start in mobilizing world sentiment to back those in South Africa who were struggling to achieve equality. Black South Africans took heart in learning that they were not alone, and many white supremacists in South Africa saw hints for the first time how isolated they were going to become in future years.

This joint statement was signed by many prominent Americans and promoted in a public campaign for sanctions against South Africa. The document read in part “as an alternative to a race war there exists another alternative- and the only solution which represents sanity- a transition to a society based upon equality for all without regard to color.

Any solution founded on justice is unattainable until the Government of South Africa is forced by pressures, both internal and external, to come to terms with the demands of the non-white majority. The apartheid republic is a reality today only because the peoples and governments of the world have been unwilling to place her in quarantine.

Don`t trade or invest in South Africa; Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until an effective international quarantine of apartheid is established.”

Dr. King brought attention to the situation in South Africa and Chief Luthuli in several public forums. He was the first important American leader to publicly, and consistently, speak about South Africa. (His words are particularly interesting considering what later came to pass in South Africa with the end of Apartheid and the establishment of a Democratic South Africa.)

On his way to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964 Dr. King stopped over in London where he gave a speech on South Africa.

He said… “In our struggle for freedom and justice in the United States, which has also been so long and arduous, we feel a powerful sense of identification with those in the far more deadly struggle for freedom in South Africa. We know how Africans there, and their friends of other races, strove for half a century to win their freedom by non-violent methods. We have honored Chief Luthuli for his leadership, and we know how this non-violence was only met by increasing violence from the state, increasing repression, culminating in the shootings of Sharpeville and all that has happened since.

… Clearly there is much in Mississippi and Alabama to remind South Africans of their own country, yet even in Mississippi we can organize to register Negro voters, we can speak to the press, we can in short organize the people in non-violent action. But in South Africa even the mildest form of non-violent resistance meets with years of imprisonment, and leaders over many years have been restricted and silenced and imprisoned. We can understand how in that situation people felt so desperate that they turned to other methods, such as sabotage.

…Though we in the Civil Rights Movement still have a long and difficult struggle in our own country, increasingly we are recognizing our power as voters; already we have made our feelings clear to the President; increasingly we intend to influence American policy towards South Africa in the Congress and the United Nations.”

In a speech at Hunter College in New York on Human Rights Day, December 10th, 1965, Dr. King said: “Africa has been depicted for more than a century as the home of black cannibals and ignorant primitives. Despite volumes of facts controverting this picture the stereotype persists in books, motion pictures, and other media of communication.

Africa does have spectacular savages and brutes today, but they are not black. They are the sophisticated white rulers of South Africa who profess to be cultured, religious and civilized, but whose conduct and philosophy stamp them unmistakably as modern-day barbarians.

… In this period when the American Negro is giving moral leadership and inspiration to his own nation, he must find the resources to aid his suffering brothers in his ancestral homeland. Nor is this aid a one-way street. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States has derived immense inspiration from the successful struggles of those Africans who have attained freedom in their own nations. The fact that black men govern states, are building democratic institutions, sit in world tribunals, and participate in global decision-making gives every Negro a needed sense of dignity.

…Civilization has come a long way, it has far still to go, and it cannot afford to be set back by resolute wicked men. Negroes were dispersed over thousands of miles and over many continents yet today they have found each other again. Negro and white have been separated for centuries by evil men and evil myths. But they have found each other. The powerful unity of Negro with Negro and white with Negro is stronger than the most potent and entrenched racism. The whole human race will benefit when it ends the abomination that has diminished the stature of man for too long. This is the task to which we are called by the suffering in South Africa and our response should be swift and unstinting. Out of this struggle will come the glorious reality of the family of man.”

Despite the similarities in the struggle against racism in South Africa and the US, it is important to take note of the differences which resonate today. In South Africa black people were a majority and oppressed in the land of their ancestors. In America, blacks were in a minority who had been brough there in a most brutal fashion by slave ships. They remain a minority whereas in South Africa, blacks are in the majority.

Robert Kennedy (American Senator and brother of President John F. Kennedy) learnt a lot from his meeting with Chief Luthuli. He visited with Chief Luthuli here in this house in Groutville on June 8th, 1966.

Their meeting influenced his thinking in general and his presidential campaign in 1968. It expanded his understanding of US foreign policy, race relations, and Africa in general. Senator Edward Kennedy speaking about his brother’s meeting with Chief Luthuli said “he described him as one of the inspiring figures of our time…my brother felt that presence about him. It wasn’t a long meeting, but it was one of those rare moments where greatness is revealed. Luthuli was always in his mind.”

By 1966 Robert Kennedy really understood how US policy towards South Africa was caught up in larger Cold War issues. He was one of the first American political leaders to publicly question the existing Cold War philosophy that if you were Anti-Communist, and on America’s side in the Cold War, the US would not pressure you very much, even if it contradicted fundamental American values about democracy, freedom and the rule of law.

And the South African government played that game very consciously. As we know, they passed a law called the Suppression of Communism Act, and they used it against anyone who they said was a Communist. But they used it for anyone who was Anti-Apartheid. Some of the most prominent Liberals, who were Anti-Communist, were arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act.

And that’s what the Apartheid government said to the Americans for decades. ‘You might not like our policies, but we’ll protect the sea route around the Cape, we will prevent Soviet incursion into Southern Africa, and if you need, we will help you gather intelligence.’ And they liked to say to the Americans ‘don’t lecture us, look at your own racial problems!’

 Robert Kennedy said that it is not good enough just to be Anti-Communist and take America’s side in the Cold War.  America must also stand up for something positive about American values about human rights and democracy.

He was one of the first politicians in the 1960s to begin to think and talk this way and it affected his thinking about South Africa, Post-Colonial Africa in general, and the War in Vietnam. Chief Luthuli was the first important African leader Robert Kennedy met.

A few months after he came back from South Africa Robert Kennedy wrote an article for Look Magazine. The article was called “Suppose God is Black?” The title came from an answer he gave to a student during his talk at Stellenbosch University. The student had tried to quote the bible in support of white supremacy.

The Look Magazine article was important because it was the first time any major American political figure, particularly someone in Congress, had written such an article about what was going on in South Africa- a place that he had visited. Robert Kennedy wrote about Chief Luthuli in the article-

“For five years, until our visit, the half million people of Soweto had no direct word from their leader, the banned Albert Luthuli. My wife and I had helicoptered down the valley of 1000 hills at dawn to see him at Groutville, about 44 miles inland from Durban.

He is a most impressive man, with a marvelously lined face, strong yet kind. My eyes first went to the white goatee, so familiar in his pictures, but then, quickly, the smile took over, illuminating his whole presence, eyes, dancing and sparkling. At the mention of Apartheid, however, his eyes went hurt and hard. To talk privately, we walked out under the trees and through the fields. ‘What are they doing to my country to my countrymen,’ he sighed. ‘Can’t they see that men of all races can work together- and that the alternative is a terrible disaster for us all?’

… I gave him a portable record player and some records of excerpts of President Kennedy speeches. He played President Kennedy’s Civil Rights speech of June 11, 1963, and we all listened in silence.

… As I left the old chief, I thought of the lines from Shakespeare “His life was gentle, and the elements/So mix’d in him that nature might stand up/And say to all the world, “This was a man!”

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Larry Shore is a Wits alumni with a major in Political Science. While at Wits he was active in NUSAS. He is a professor and documentary filmmaker in the Department of Film & Media Studies at Hunter College in New York City. He has an MA Degree in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Communications from Stanford University. He was active in the American Anti-Apartheid Movement and in 1990 he co-founded the South African-American Organization.  

He is the Producer and Co-Director of “RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope.” The film was shown twice at Wits and has been screened extensively in the US and South Africa. He is currently working on a new documentary on the South African and American Anti-Apartheid Movements in the 1980s.