Having worked as Albert Luthuli's personal secretary, probably in the 1940s, as he had been one for John Dube in the 1930s, Jordan Kush Ngubane's political and psychological portrait of the former Zulu Chief is without a doubt is the most comprehensive and penetrative appraisal of a New African intellectual by another New African intellectual: "He was never an original thinker; but he used his brains exceptionally well. I never even regarded him as brilliant. But he was wise, consistent to purpose, conscientious and reliable. I was often impatient with his habit of thinking slowly and of being rigid in some of his ideas. He laughed at my impatience and attributed my flexibility to the fact that I was a townsman whereas he came from the country. Some of his political judgments were naive----a fact he always criticised in himself, even publicly. He made up for this by respecting profoundly and without reservation the judgments of many who knew better. He was generous in his judgment of men----reven his bitterest enemies. A confessed conservative, I often found my freedom to pick his mind on his secret ambitions sometimes inhibited by what looked very much like his guardedness in his approach to the realistic [illegible words] in situations of uncertainty. And then, one of the things Luthuli dreaded was to commit his innermost thoughts to paper" ("Unpublished Autobiography", in the Gwendolyn Carter and Thomas Karis Documents, Melville J. Herskovitz Africana Library, Northwestern University). Although this judgment is extraordinary for its insightfulness, it is nevertheless fraught with profound ironies. Its historical contextualization is in order. By the time Jordan Ngubane wrote this appraisal in the early 1960s, following the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, and continuing in exile after 1963, they already had a falling-out in the 1950s because it was Ngubane himself was 'rigid' and inflexible about the possible close relationship between Communism and African Nationalism in the South African political struggle. This seemingly irreconcilable political differences between them expains why in his autobiography of 1963, Let My People Go, not even once does Albert Luthuli mention Jordan Ngubane.  This lack of mention is all the more astonishing because it was Jordan Ngubane with H. I. E. Dhlomo and other members of the Youth League who engineered the overthrow of A. W. G. Champion as President-General of the (Natal) African National Congress in 1950, and his replacement by Luthuli. These two great intellectuals went even further: immediately following the debacle of the national leadership of Dr. James Moroka, in the aftermath of the Defiance Campaign of 1952, it was they who positioned Albert Luthuli to be elected President-General of the ANC. In that turbulent decade of the 1950s, which has become the most fascinating for South Africans in the twentieth-century, Luthuli seems to have been a brilliant strategist. The ANC was banned in 1960 while still under his leadership. Not only was Luthuli a consummate strategist, he was also person of deep convictions, as indicated by his resignation of the Zulu Chieftancy, the price he paid rather than support the governments apartheid policies. The autobiography does not  betray Luthuli to have been an unoriginal thinker that Ngubane takes him to be.  The sharpness of his intellect is also evident in a major essay he wrote defining the historical responsibilities of the New African intellectuals and political leaders in the era of modernity: "We must accept, therefore, as a fact that our emergent African is a product of a people already significantly progressing along the road of civilisation, however slow and inconspicious their progress might have been. . . . The problem is not to get him [New African] to accept and follow this civilisation, but to discern the mere veneer of it and its substance. The urgent task of African leaders is not so much to get Africans to embrace western culture as it is to stop him from indiscriminately becoming westernised when he should be building a modern African way of life which would be a synthesis of the best in the cultures represented in South Africa---Western, Eastern and African culture---so that ultimately he may make a distinctive variant to the broad South African way of life. . . . The fact of the emergence of the African into the modern scenewill be recognised more by the contribution the Africanis able to make to the cultural and industrial life of the country or nation. His total effective contribution in these respects will beneficially influence his status in the country and in the world" ("The Emergent African", Ilanga lase Natal, May 16, 23, 1953). Those who had made or were making this historical project, Luthuli named the following among others: Solomon T. Plaatje, Walter Rubusana, Jordan Ngubane, Z. K. Matthews, Benedict Vilakazi, S. K. E. Mqhayi, H. I. E. & R. R. R. Dhlomo. Perhaps it was this all-encompassing historical vision that profoundly impressed H. I. E. Dhlomo in his appraisal of him: "Judged by accepted and common standards, Chief Luthuli is an outstanding South african and leader of the people. . . . Albert John Luthuli had humble beginnings. His name means dust. Like many others in those days he was trained as a teacher, one of two or three professions then open to Africans. This was at Adams College. . . . Before leaving the teaching profession, Luthuli became a leader in the field. He was elected General Secretary, and, again, President of the National Africans Teachers Union. With others he founded the Zulu Cultural Society which did unique work in the field of tribal culture and history. He had a high reputation as a musician. . . . Chief Luthuli's life is an example of the tragedy, contradictions and waste of human life inherent in our [racial and apartheid] system. . . . An intellectual with an analytic, objective mind, plunged into the rough and tumble of militant politics" ("Pen Portrait of Today: Chief A. J. Luthuli", Ilanga lase Natal, September 6, 1952). That Chief Albert Luthuli has left an indelible in South African political and intellectual history, is confirmed by the late Oliver Tambo, the President General of the ANC during the Exile Period, who had this to say of him, on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the South African Communist Party in 1981: " This process of building the unity of all progressive and democratic forces in South Africa through united and unified action received a particularly powerful impetus from the outstanding leadership of Isitwalandwe Chief Albert J. Luthuli, as President General of the ANC" ("The ANC and the SACP", in Oliver Tambo Speaks: Preparing For Power, George Braziller, New York, 1988).