Through trial and brutality, Tutu’s moral compass held
The South Africa where Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 was much different from the one where he died Sunday at the age of 90. Long before apartheid became the official policy of the South African government in 1948, its brutal treatment of Black South Africans made it one of the world’s most explicitly racist countries.
Tutu, the Anglican archbishop, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and tireless advocate of nonviolence, played a major role in dismantling apartheid with the clarity, force and fearlessness of his conscience and the inspirational power of his oratory.
For most of Tutu’s life, the South African government didn’t want to recognize him or any Black person as a citizen, yet when he died, he was one of the world’s most revered citizens and moral beacons.
And most joyful.
Despite the seriousness of his life’s work, the suffering he ministered to and devoted his life to ending, an enduring image of him is his impish smile and cackling laugh. During the 1980s, the world’s most famous political prisoner was Nelson Mandela. Despite not being seen in public since the 1960s, Mandela was the embodiment of the Black South African liberation struggle, and his legend and stature grew the longer he was imprisoned. During that time, Tutu emerged as the most visible face and clearest voice of that growing movement. He urged countries to impose sanctions on South Africa and for corporations to disinvest from a government that treated its majority population as second- and third-class citizens.
While reminding everyone that the South African government was the greatest purveyor of violence in the country, his insistence that the freedom struggle be nonviolent never wavered. Nor did his extraordinary courage.
More than once, Tutu risked his life to rescue people from mobs, most notably in 1985, at the end of a funeral for four Black people, killed in political violence near Johannesburg. A Black man suspected of working with the white government was set upon by an angry crowd of Black protesters who were going to set him on fire when the 5-foot-4 Tutu, aided by another bishop, bulled his way into the crowd to pull the man to safety.
Accepting the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, Tutu, speaking of a 6-year-old Black boy shot and killed in the back by police and a white infant killed when Black rioters stoned the mother’s car, said: “Such deaths are two too many. These are part of the high cost of apartheid.”
Mandela spent his first night of freedom, after 27 years in prison, at Tutu’s home. In his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela described Tutu as “a man who had inspired an entire nation with his words and courage, who had revived the people’s hope during the darkest of times.”
Tutu understood that the goal of nonviolence is reconciliation, but like justice, reconciliation must be preceded by justice.
In 1995, then-president Mandela appointed Tutu chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose purpose was to hold apartheid’s architects, perpetrators and enablers accountable for its crimes and to create an accurate record of human rights violations committed by apartheid governments. Amnesty was offered to the guilty and compensation to the victims.
Tutu held Black government officials to the same moral standards to which he held white apartheid government officials. In 2011, referring to South African President Jacob Zuma, Tutu said, “Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me. You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government. You are disgraceful.”
Tutu’s moral compass never wavered, nor did his commitment to helping others. This past May, he came out of retirement to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and encourage other South Africans to do the same.
“All my life I have tried to do the right thing and, today, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is definitely the right thing to do. We have to do this together!”
For Desmond Tutu’s work for human rights, we will be forever grateful.