Albert Lutuli (1898-21 July 1967) was President of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967, succeeding James Moroka and preceding Oliver Tambo.
Biography[]
Albert Lutuli was born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia in 1898, and he studied at Adams College and stayed there to train teachers. He became Secretary of the African Teachers' Association in 1928, but left in 1936, when he was elected chief of his people in Groutville, Natal. His effort to revive the economic fortunes of his own and other black people directed his attention to the African National Congress, which he joined in 1945. President of the Natal branch of the ANC from 1950, the government withdrew him from his chieftainship in 1952, whereupon he was elected president-general of the ANC. A committed Christian, he managed to extend the ANC's membership while maintaining the principle of non-violence. His willingness to cooperate with whites (particularly from the South African Communist Party), Indians, and coloreds led to conflict with the ANC's more radical members, who broke away under Robert Sobukwe to form the Pan Africanist Congress. In 1961, he became the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the money from which he used to buy farms for political exiles in Swaziland. He died in 1967, and Oliver Tambo succeeded him as ANC president.