parliamentary seats in the April 1953 elections. The judiciary was another instrument of domination; in addition to the December 1952 convictions of ANC leaders, the state convicted fifteen Defiance Campaign leaders in Port Elizabeth in 1953 of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act.20
Luthuli condemned the National Party’s “fascist dictatorship” and the “anti-Defiance Acts,” which evoked the “unfortunate Medieval Dark Ages.” Lamenting the apartheid “chain of bondage” that left Africans “prisoners in their own castle,” he nevertheless celebrated the significant domestic and international support for the Defiance Campaign’s fight for democracy and the “fundamental human rights of freedom of speech, association and movement,” which would achieve “racial harmony in the Union,” bringing South Africa into modern civilization.21 He felt that only an inclusive African nationalism, expressed by a broad ANC-led multiracial coalition, could defeat apartheid and create a postapartheid, inclusive, egalitarian, equitable, and democratic South Africa. In sharp contrast to National Party leaders, who cast apartheid as the solution to the supposed problem of multiracial societies and an international model for other racially mixed countries, Luthuli reconciled the seemingly oppositional political claims of national unity and racial diversity. “I personally believe that here in South Africa, with all our diversities of color and race, we will show the world a new pattern of democracy. . . . We can build a homogeneous South Africa on the basis not of colour but of human values.”22 His inclusive nationalism asserted the primacy of African claims based on their indigenous status, their numerical majority, and the longevity of their struggle. But unlike the Lembedist exclusive African nationalism of the 1940s, Luthuli did not present whites and other racial groups as foreigners, but as permanently settled South Africans.
Luthuli’s previous coordination with Natal Indian Congress (NIC) president G. M. Naicker, vice president J. N. Singh, and future NIC vice president Ismail Meer during the Defiance Campaign lessened lingering post–Durban Riots African-Indian tensions.23 As ANC president, Luthuli built “a political alliance based on a common, genuine spirit of friendship between our respective communities.” He organized a mass rally of several thousand people in Durban to protest the lack of educational facilities and opportunities for African and Indian children before police tossed him in jail.24 Undeterred, Luthuli presided over an ANC-NIC joint meeting in Durban to protest the Public Safety Bill and the Criminal Law Amendment Bill.25 Luthuli and Naicker issued a joint ANC-NIC protest statement from the “voteless and democratic peoples of South Africa,” who condemned Nationalist Party apartheid policies, and the ANC invited the NIC to join a planned stay-at-home during the national elections in April 1953, utilizing the same nonviolent principles used recently by bus boycotters in Johannesburg.26 Amidst government threats to repatriate Indian-descended South Africans back to India, Luthuli often addressed NIC conferences, expertly critiquing the Natives Land Acts, the Urban Areas Act, and the Group Areas Act as the primary cause, respectively, of the chronic landlessness, lack of urban property, and general insecurity of Africans in South Africa, which he compared to Nazi Germany. Naicker followed the call of Luthuli, “our President-General,” to commemorate June 26, 1953—the third anniversary of the murder of peacefully striking Africans by government forces, and the first anniversary of the Defiance Campaign—as Freedom Day, and urged all NIC branches to participate.27 This day became a sacred day of service and rededicated commitment to the freedom struggle in South Africa.28
New ANC president Luthuli gives the “Africa” sign to delegates at the December 1953 ANC national conference in Queenstown. Luthuli attended this conference despite his banning orders. (Bailey’s African History Archives, photograph by Bob Gosani)
In May 1953, the regime banned Luthuli, claiming that his political activities promoted “feelings of hostility in the Union of South Africa between the European inhabitants and the non-European section of the inhabitants of the Union.”29 The ban confined Luthuli to Groutville and the surrounding Stanger district and prohibited him from entering major South African cities, attending political meetings or public gatherings (defined as five or more people together in the same space), making speeches, and visiting ANC branches. With Special Branch police increasing their raids of Luthuli’s house in search of “subversive” documents, Minister of Native Affairs Hendrik Verwoerd denounced him in Parliament as a dangerous radical championing equal rights, and Prime Minister Malan called the ANC a terrorist group “on the pattern of the Mau Mau” in Kenya.30 South African authorities lamented that Luthuli, previously regarded as a “good Native[,] . . . had now been bought by the Indians and was definitely under Communist influence.”31
Escalating state and popular violence marked the 1950s. Luthuli and others advocating Gandhian nonviolent civil disobedience clashed with younger militants willing to consider armed self-defense in debates that surged to the fore during the Defiance Campaign. On November 9, 1952, the lay minister Luthuli delivered a sermon titled “Christian Life: A Constant Venture,” the basis for his manifesto “The Road to Freedom Is Via the Cross,” which compared apartheid South Africa to Nazi Germany and affirmed nonviolent struggle.32 Luthuli could not know that this very day would become known as Black Sunday, when police fired on ANC supporters praying with Defiance Campaigners in East London’s Duncan Village. Africans responded by burning government facilities; in the chaos, a few whites died, but militarized police killed two hundred–plus Duncan Villagers, according to estimates.33 The carnage raised doubts within the ANC about the efficacy of civil disobedience. The Criminal Law Amendment and Public Safety Act expanded government powers to crush antiapartheid dissent. Mandela, Sisulu, Mda, and the ANC Executive discussed armed self-defense and critiqued what seemed to be a “useless” nonviolent strategy, but for the time being they decided “it was politically wise” to maintain a nonviolent posture.34 Pivotal ANC leader Govan Mbeki encountered Mpondoland Africans who argued to him that whites’ superior firepower had facilitated their nineteenth-century conquests over Africans, who would not regain their independence until they had sufficient arms. Thus, the Defiance Campaign’s nonviolent tactics would not overthrow the state, but only “tickle the beard of the Boers.”35 In 1953, Sisulu embarked on a months-long tour of Romania, the Soviet Union, and China, whose armed struggle was inspirational to some South Africans, raising the possibility of armed self-defense with Chinese and Soviet officials.36 Sisulu later told Luthuli of other “revolutionary” stirrings, prompting the president-general to later admit that “non-Whites” appeared “ready at any time to change the non-violent aspect of our movement, to violence.”37 Luthuli made public assurances that “we do not mean to use violence in furtherance of our cause.”38 But beyond the public glare, he was also articulating militant thoughts. In a 1953 letter to his friend ANC leader Z. K. Matthews, Luthuli confided that he hankered to “fight for freedom” as American abolitionists once did, evoking the 1859 revolt of John Brown (and his black freedom fighters), who in killing slaveholders on the eve of the U.S. Civil War advanced the Law of the Israelites (Hebrews 9:22): “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.”39
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