Jul 28, 2020 3 min read

Albert John Lutuli became the first African – indeed the first person not an American or European – to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Interestingly, he received the 1960 peace prize but was not honored until 1961 because the Nobel Committee decided in 1960 that no one had actually met the peace-prize criteria Alfred Nobel originally established. In such instances, the prize can be reserved until the following year, and Lutuli was so honored.

Lutuli was honored for his leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) and its human rights struggles against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Lutuli, a Zulu chief, was elected to the Committee of the KwaZulu Provisional Division of the ANC in 1945 and later was elected the Division’s president, where he organized a series of non-violent protest campaigns against South Africa’s discrimination against blacks. In response the South African government stripped him of his Zulu chieftainship.

Undeterred, Lutuli was elected president-general of the ANC in 1952, where he envisioned leading the ANC in an orchestrated campaign of non-violent struggle against apartheid. Under his leadership the ANC adopted the famous “Freedom Charter,” which called for the peaceful establishment of a non-racial South Africa, as well as demanding a free education for all “irrespective of colour, race or nationality”; a living wage for all workers and land for the landless. After the charter was adopted the government again banned the ANC and arrested its top leaders, including Lutuli, who was held in custody for a year before the charges were dropped.

Four years later, in late 1961, Nelson Mandela of the Provincial ANC launched Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), which initiated a series of violent actions against apartheid, including bombings of civilian and military sites. Mandela subsequently overshadowed Lutuli (who opposed the violence), becoming famous for serving 27 years in prison and defiantly refusing to give up Umkhonto we Sizwe in return for early release.

But if Mandela became more famous, Lutuli was no less a willing martyr to the cause of freedom and his later life was marked by repeated bans on his political activity, arrests and imprisonment. Indeed, Lutuli was only able to attend his Nobel Prize ceremony because a ban on him traveling was lifted.

That ban was lifted grudgingly – in 1961 apartheid was still the reality in South Africa – and days before his ceremony the interior minister of South Africa’s government publicly stated that Lutuli did not deserve his Nobel prize.

To which the modest Lutuli replied, no doubt smiling, “Such is the magic of the [Nobel] peace prize ceremony that it has even managed to produce an issue on which I agree with the government of South Africa.”