Historic Luthuli-Kennedy meeting to be immortalised
Plans have been revealed for bronze statues to commemorate the historic meeting of Chief Albert Luthuli and Senator Robert F Kennedy.
|||Durban - Plans have been revealed for bronze statues to commemorate the historic meeting of Chief Albert Luthuli and Senator Robert F Kennedy.
Minister of Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, made the announcement on Tuesday at the Luthuli Museum in Groutville.
The minister and members of the Luthuli and Kennedy families were there to mark the 50th anniversary of the meeting at Luthuli’s home, now the site of the museum.
The two leaders met on June 8, 1966.
The statues were expected to be completed by next year’s anniversary, said Mthethwa.
Earlier, the eldest daughters of the two leaders - Albertina Luthuli and Kerry Kennedy - laid a wreath at Luthuli’s grave at the Groutville Congregational Church.
Mthethwa, speaking on the last day of Africa Month, referred to Luthuli as a “colossus”, and said the ANC president represented humanity’s best qualities.
Mthethwa said that South Africa’s fight for freedom from the clutches of apartheid, in 1994, was attained through national and global efforts, all merged in a quest and belief in human dignity, freedom, and an equitable and just society.
He said international solidarity had helped the people of South Africa triumph against the “evil” of apartheid.
“The struggle for freedom in South Africa became the struggle for humanity the world over,” said Mthethwa.
Albertina said that Kennedy’s visit to South Africa, then “the pariah of the world”, was a fact-finding mission on which he not only sought talks with the oppressive government, but more importantly, to hear what the oppressed majority themselves and their banished leader, Luthuli, had to say.
Kennedy, president of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, said that while she was growing up, the Kennedy family living room had been dominated by a large picture of her father with Luthuli.
She said her father had described meeting Luthuli as a spiritual experience, because in the banned president of the ANC he had met a deeply committed, spiritual and wise man.
“That encounter informed his understanding of apartheid and South Africa, but not only in this country but race relations in our own country and around the world. It inspired his activism,” Kerry said.
US ambassador, Patrick Gaspard, said Kennedy’s visit was not only an act of defiance against the apartheid government, but a defiance of accepted American government policies.
“In his journals, Senator Kennedy noted that when he looked at Chief Luthuli he saw eyes that danced with the kind of charisma that drew him in, but he also said that Chief Luthuli’s eyes hardened when he spoke of the circumstances his people were being made to suffer under,” Gaspard said.
IFP leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a guest speaker at the event, regaled the audience with stories of his time spent under Luthuli’s mentorship, referring to him as an inspiration.
Daily News