Albert Luthuli
1898-1967 20th century
Stubborn patience before a door that will not open.
Who was Albert Luthuli?
A teacher and Methodist lay preacher in Natal who became chief of his Zulu clan, he led the resistance to apartheid along a line of nonviolence and lost his chieftainship for it. Confined for years under banning orders, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961; historians still debate what he privately accepted when his movement turned to sabotage. His faith and his action were never two separate things.
In their own words
The road to freedom is via the cross.
Who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door?
It is inevitable that in working for freedom some individuals and some families must take the lead and suffer.