AL JAMA-AH Party is honored to have a woman of the caliber of Mrs Veli Luthuli, the youngest daughter in-law of Chief Albert Luthuli who served as the ANC’s President-General from 1952 until his death in 1967, as an active member of the party.
Ma Luthuli, (as fondly referred to in the party) is the widow of Chief Luthuli’s youngest son, Edgar Sibusiso Luthuli. She was born in 1947 in Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal from parents who were both teachers. During the turbulent apartheid years, the government gave her parents no choice as to where they would like to settle down as a family; instead, they were uprooted anytime to go teach in other areas even as far as in remote parts of Johannesburg.
“So, as a child, I attended several schools, sometimes not for a full year as it depended to which school the apartheid government posted my parents to. This was very unsettling but also an experience of getting to know schools in other cities and towns,” says Luthuli. She matriculated from the Inanda Girls Seminary Boarding School and pursued a BA Social Science degree at the University of Zululand (Now University of KwaZulu-Natal). After two years of studies, Ma Luthuli decided to choose the ‘call for marriage’ and together they raised five wonderful children.
In 1996 three years after her husband’s death, Luthuli was voted as the ANC’s ward councillor in. the KwaDukuza Local Municipality in Stanger where she served three terms and another five years as a PR councillor. In 2018 she joined the Al Jama-ah Party and served as as a PR councillor in the Inkosi Langalibalele Municipality in Estcourt.
Ma Luthuli is the President of Al Jama-ah’s Women’s League and plays an active role in creating employment and to eradicate poverty amongst villagers in Groutville. Groutville is a village rich in growing peanuts; with the assistance from Al Jama-ah, Ma Luthuli formed a co-opt of mainly unemployed women and established a peanut butter manufacturing factory. In September 2022 the Social Development Department’s office of the then Minister, arranged for a representative of the UN World Food Programme to visit the peanut butter project.
The project has since then expanded and packed into labelled jars for marketing. The cooperative hopes that the marketing of their product will reach beyond local, provincial and national levels.