The University of KwaZulu-Natal has launched an initiative to foster good governance through the memory and works of fervent liberation icons. Rev. Dr Allan Boesak recently spoke at the University’s annual Mzwandile Memorial Lecture, and The CIHA Blog is honored to post the text of his talk, in three parts. (Read Part 1 and Part 3)
Part 2 of “Brave, Just Men” – Luthuli, Mandela, and South Africa’s Jericho Road
by Allan Aubrey Boesak
In response [to Luthuli’s ambiguity over pacifism], we should first turn to what seems to be the core of the debate. The debate centers almost exclusively on the question whether Luthuli would have called himself a pacifist. Luthuli, like King, counted many pacifists among his circle of friends and supporters, but never joined a pacifist organization. Defenders of the 1961 MK decision insist he was not pacifist and therefore must have supported the decision and the violent struggle. More than once, Couper points to Luthuli’s declaration, “I am not a pacifist, I am a realist.”[i] Yet he comes to the conclusion that Luthuli, both as a struggle activist, a leader of the movement, and as a Christian, could never have chosen for violence. His nonviolent stance throughout was too consistent. “He did not, as an individual, nor as the ANC president general, ever advocate or justify violence prior to or after the 1961 decision to form MK, to which he had been party.”[ii]
But perhaps the issue here is not so much whether Luthuli would describe himself as a pacifist, strategic or not, trying to grasp “the moral high ground” over against Mandela and Tambo. Perhaps the question is not whether, with an eye on his international support base he felt compelled to follow Martin Luther King Jr.’s reticence as to perceptions of “self-righteousness.” Is, all these other considerations aside, the simple truth not that Luthuli’s understanding of the call of Christian discipleship on this issue was fundamental in his beliefs and actions? Couper concludes that Luthuli’s “strong Christian leanings… combined with his belief that a violent solution would be suicidal for oppressed and oppressors alike and the advent of new strategic opportunities afforded by his reception of the Nobel Peace Prize persuaded him against supporting the initiation of violence by MK.”[iii] Fundamentally it was these convictions, rather than politics, that caused the tensions between Luthuli and his movement and Luthuli and Mandela on this sensitive issue.[iv]
This brings Couper closer to Luthuli’s truth, I think. One cannot deny the fundamental convictions based on Luthuli’s understanding of the way of Jesus of Nazareth. That much is certainly true, and to me that sounds more in line with Luthuli’s consistent thinking and actions than to explain his nonviolence as more or less a political response to the demands of his domestic and international supporters, or in terms of his relationship with Martin King. Moreover, if one considers the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Luthuli had never met, with King working in the United States under a completely different set of circumstances, why would Luthuli be so much more concerned with King’s opinion of him than the opinion of his peers in South Africa and the movement he had led for so long despite his admiration for the American leader? And considering his banning that had made his leadership far more complicated and more difficult to exert, why would he hope for “more opportunities” for nonviolent action, which he could no longer lead and personally inspire with his presence, especially if he had to concede Mandela’s point about white intransigence over a protracted period of time? It was a point Luthuli himself had made repeatedly and in his statement in court Mandela quotes him in this regard.
Neither could it simply have been the utilitarian consideration whether nonviolence as a strategy “works”. It often does not work, and purely on political analysis, South Africa at the time, as well as later in the final phases of the struggle in the seventies and eighties, did not offer much in the way of evidence that it would work. At the same time there was not much evidence that violence as strategy for resistance in the South African situation “worked”. What fundamentally drove Luthuli was that nonviolence as a way of resistance and therefore as a strategy of struggle was indeed the way of Jesus of Nazareth; that politically and strategically it could indeed be very effective, and that it did offer the greater future for oppressed and oppressor alike, creating space for the reconciliation without which no revolution is really complete.
Luthuli himself had long had the sense to take into consideration that arguments for nonviolent struggle would become increasingly difficult to make in the face of the viciousness of apartheid oppression. And even though this did not make him choose for violence it does explain his insistence that he was not a “pacifist.” I understand this to mean that Luthuli was wary of making of pacifism an ideological platform as it so often is understood, bringing with it the moral entrapments he eschewed and knew were not helpful in the South African situation. Moreover, despite his holding on to his own convictions on this matter, and while he was always trying to persuade others to hold onto this view, which the ANC, he believed, had “never abandoned”, he was, under the circumstances, not prepared to force others to hold the beliefs he did. It may be that Luthuli hesitated to take a stance which resolutely, as a matter of doctrine and principle, and under all circumstances would condemn the use of violence, not so much for himself, but to create freedom of choice for others. Nonviolence, after all, is a philosophy no one can be coerced into; one has to freely, willingly, soberly and courageously embrace it, consciously opening oneself to the consequences it brings. It was the choice of discipleship, and as such it is always costly.
For himself, that he has said again and again, violence would never be acceptable, but he was willing to accept that for others, situations may arise in which they found themselves without options left. In that case, Luthuli would not be a partner, but he would remain a steadfast witness to another possibility. He could not follow them, but he would not condemn them – both as a realist about the South African situation and as a Christian driven by hope for the South African situation. Luthuli understood the reasons why some in South Africa would turn to violence. He knew very well, as he stated in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, that “in my country, South Africa, the spirit of peace is subject to some of the severest tensions known to men.”[v] Unforgettable is his pain-filled cry from the heart:
How long before the Union’s African people are seeking a new embodiment of new wishes? How long before, out of the depths they cry, ‘If the man of peace does not prevail, give us the men of blood?’[vi]
That is not a rallying call for the justification of violence. It is a cry of mourning for the hardness of heart in white South Africa, and the temptation for the people, in response to that hardness, to risk their soul in embracing what is closest to their oppressors’ hearts. In South Africa at the time, and at every stage of the struggle, one would be utterly irresponsible if one did not take that into consideration. If one wanted to lead credibly, a doctrinaire attitude, without consideration of our own historical context and the hugely hypocritical stance on this matter of the supporters and beneficiaries of apartheid at home and abroad, would not be helpful or add to one’s integrity in discussing the question of violence and the arguments against it. One could not simply, under such extreme duress and provocation, call oppressed people to nonviolent responses. That was already, and constantly, done by too many from within the comfort of their far-removed places of safety, protected privilege, and unthreatened wisdom. One had to persuade the masses who were risking their lives in a struggle that was nonviolent only from their side that even though violence was an option, nonviolence was the better, life-giving option.
Nelson Mandela’s famous statement before the court in his trial was a reasoned, scientific appeal, devoid of emotion, to understand the choice for violence. That is one reason why one should take this issue so seriously and respond to it with the same seriousness with which it was posed. But that was years after, in a rationale in his trial. In situations of extreme violent oppression such as South Africa was, and in the actual moment of confrontation, it was the appeal to violence that was the emotional appeal, far easier to make, calling upon those natural desires for revenge and retribution, those longings for “heroism” that always live just beneath the surface in all of us. In contrast, it was the appeal to nonviolence that had to be reasonable, well-considered, politically and philosophically responsible and persuasive. In such situations it is always the harder choice.
Violence appeals to the feelings and responses in the heated moment of confrontation, in which the consequences are almost always confined to, and justified by the immediate gratification of the need for retribution, for a response to oppression and the call of freedom. Nonviolence calls for the consideration of the possibility that one might be seen as weak, meekly crumbling before the violent onslaught, not willing to make the sacrifices necessary for victory. Nonviolence has to persuade people of a more distant, but infinitely more real victory than the immediate satisfaction of a victory written in blood. It has to persuade people to make the same sacrifices unrelieved by retribution; to believe in and hope for things not yet seen, but nonetheless essential for a peaceful, humane future. In my experience that is always the harder choice.
Mandela’s famous words, “an ideal for which I am prepared to die”, were meant as an expression of his willingness to give his life in the struggle for freedom and dignity, even if it has to be a violent struggle. And in the minds of many that makes him the struggle hero he has rightly become. But the choice for nonviolent struggle reveals one’s willingness to die for the same ideals, in the process of which, however, one is willing to lay down one’s life, but not willing to take the life of the other, hoping that on the other side of the revolution the room created by this sacrifice would be a possibility for reconciliation and shared freedom. This was not only Albert Luthuli’s choice, but the choice of the generation after 1976, that, especially during the eighties, despite the unavoidable violence that attends all struggles, mostly succeeded in turning the struggle into a wave of nonviolent, militant deliberateness that the apartheid edifice finally could not withstand. And that, I contend, was what Mandela knew when he stepped out of prison in 1990.
Couper makes the valuable point that Luthuli made a subtle but important distinction between “sympathy” and “support.” Sympathy or solidarity with Mandela and the others, he argues, “does not assume support or agreement with their methods.” He then continues, “Luthuli also made the same distinction between the ANC as an organization he led as president general and the “brave just men” who could not be blamed if their patience became exhausted.” That much, I think, is clear. The ANC that Luthuli led has indeed never, throughout its existence, abandoned the method of “a militant, nonviolent struggle.” The historical record, which Mandela would recall during his statement at trial, verified this. “However,” Luthuli continues, “in the face of the uncompromising white refusal to abandon a policy which denies the African and other oppressed South Africans their rightful heritage – freedom – no one can blame brave and just men from seeking justice by the use of violent methods…”That historic record would now be departed from, but not nullified.
Check back tomorrow for Part 3 of the talk.
[i] Op. cit., 170
[ii] Op. cit., 178
[iii] Op. cit., 177
[iv] Op. cit., 160: “His publicized views directly contradicted Mandela’s views found in MK’s manifesto.” These views “deeply disturbed many of his more militant colleagues.”
[v] Couper, op. cit., 219
[vi] Couper, op. cit., 182