JULY 19 2007 – Struggle stalwart Mr Ahmed Kathrada remembered the important role that Chief Albert Luthuli played in creating peace at an event organised by the Nelson Mandela Foundation today, on the occasion of Mr Nelson Mandela’s 89th birthday.
“In two days’ time we will be commemorating 40 years of the death of Chief Albert Luthuli,” noted Mr Kathrada.
“Chief was a man of exceptional foresight, courage, dignity, compassion and generosity of spirit,” he remembered. “Chief was a man of unswerving principles. … They are the principles of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa.”
Mr Kathrada, himself an ANC leader and political prisoner, and who knew Chief Luthuli personally, said, “It was for this that he was banned from public gatherings and confined to the small village of Groutville. It was for these principles that in 1956 he was arrested with 155 others and charged with High Treason,” he added.
Mr Kathrada said Chief Luthuli’s principles were recognised at home and abroad. He was awarded the Isithwalandwe Award – the ANC’s highest honour – at the Congress of the People in 1955, and won the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize, “the very first on the African Continent to be so honoured”. (Chief Luthuli only actually travelled to Oslo to accept the award in 1961.)
Mr Kathrada also spoke of his longtime friend Mr Nelson Mandela, who “emerged from 27 years with the spirit of the Freedom Charter still cast in stone”. He said South Africans had responded warmly to Mr Mandela’s ability to forgive, and that he had personally played a huge role in the peaceful transition to democracy.
“We will always remember to spread the legacy of these two great people,” Mr Kathrada said in closing