His compassion was born of his very strong sense of justice and courage
The Arch did not talk of the “Rainbow Nation” because it had been accomplished. Rather, “Rainbow Nation” is an aspirational phrase towards which Archbishop Desmond Tutu would have willed the recalcitrant South African society. For lasting peace depends on reconciliation, something that needs conscious and deliberate activism, and that is why the more common phrase of social cohesion does not do it.
Not long ago, the world joined the Tutu family and South Africa to honour and celebrate his 90th birthday. It was a glorious celebration at St George’s Cathedral where, together with his dear wife of more than 60 years, Aunt Leah, the Archbishop was a joyous and venerable presence. In that celebration, we could not imagine that fewer than 12 weeks later the same cathedral would be hosting his funeral.
His departure closes the curtain on the live performance of an incredible actor of the human life obligation according to Micah: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
After the very busy few weeks of the national Tutu frenzy that marked the departure of this diminutive prelate, it’s a good time to reflect on the Archbishop and what he has been to us in his life.
Tutu is the premier of my predecessors as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. I look back with amazement in considering his role together with Father Aelred Stubbs (editor and publisher of Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like) in enabling my theological and ministerial training at the ecumenical Federal Theological Seminary. This was to help answer the burning question for me at the time: “What does it mean to be created in the image of God if you are black in apartheid South Africa?”
I cannot remember when I first met Tutu, but none could forget his bold statement to Prime Minister BJ Vorster in May 1976, warning that “unless something drastic is done very soon bloodshed and violence is going to happen in South Africa almost inevitably”. This caught the attention of our small core group of political activists that included Biko. Tutu’s message became even more relevant when, a month later, the student uprising began.
What he did in writing that public letter in 1976 had a freshness and a novelty about it. The previous year, he had become the first black priest to be Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Johannesburg – thus becoming the most senior priest after the bishop in the Diocese of Johannesburg.
Biko and those of us working with him were so impressed by Father Tutu that it was a no-brainer for me to call on him to bury Biko in 1977 after he was brutally murdered in security police detention.
At the funeral, Tutu insisted on preaching in the local isiXhosa language while we were making a case for English to accommodate all the other people who had braved the police harassment, travelling from afar. He said to me something like: “I want the people of this place, who are mourning the direct loss of this life, to hear what God has to say to them through my message.” But he heard me and mixed the languages in his sermon.
In his nine decades of life, Tutu was radical. He had a radical freshness and a newness in how he unpacked and interpreted common-sense things, such as he did with the age-old concept of ubuntu-botho (person), which he incorporated into his theology and the praxis of his public engagement. In this vein, he would often pronounce undeniable truths in a startling manner.
What Tutu has said and done has sustained this startling effect because of its disarming veracity – “God is not a Christian!” So startling, yet so very true! “If I got to heaven and found that God was homophobic, I would turn my back from heaven!” How disarming for a church that believes that God is set to condemn gay people to eternal damnation? “Justice, like freedom, is indivisible!” he would say, noting that you cannot have one standard of justice or freedom for one group and a different one for another.
This informed his position on the Israeli-Palestinian question. Most Western countries that otherwise warmed to his voice and instructive humour found his stand on justice over Palestine as not so welcome or appreciated. He said: “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.”
In that context, he supported sanctions against Israel, similarly to what he did against apartheid South Africa, saying that: “In South Africa, we could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the apartheid regime.”
And his position was well articulated when he said: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killings of Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”
As the new and first black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Tutu became the only official black resident of the lush, whites-only suburb of Cape Town, Bishopscourt. In terms of South Africa’s apartheid Group Areas Act that designated residential areas according to race, the election of a black archbishop, with the right and requirement to reside at Bishopscourt, was a prickly matter, and government talked of removing him.
He remained at Bishopscourt on sufferance rather than with approval. Then he went on to do the unthinkable – he invited black kids from the townships to come and frolic in the swimming pool at Bishopscourt! It was an extravagantly generous act, irksomely goading the apartheid regime!
In the 30 December sermon that I preached at the Desmond Tutu memorial service at St Alban’s Cathedral in Pretoria, I identified three motivating factors in the Archbishop’s energy for social justice anywhere in the world. These were:
1. Tutu had a deep sense of vocation; a sense
of being called to what he was doing; 2. An acute consciousness of the One who had called him – God, the source of his vocation; and
3. Tutu was alive to the relationship with the One who called him, and this informed his social justice spirituality – the framework of his relationship with God, with a rhythm of meditative listening and a life of worshipful thanksgiving.
Much has been written and said about Tutu. In that context, I shall not say more about his courageous pronouncements to the apartheid government and the democratic government of our time.
Tutu was a compassionate leader, and his compassion was born of his very strong sense of justice. His sense of justice was practical. When I was a young priest in Cape Town, I was detained by the security police. This was in the wake of the hand grenade release by a guerrilla whom police were trying to apprehend in Gugulethu township.
This was down the street from our home, and the police believed that I had helped the man escape.
They detained me on the opening morning of the synod of the Diocese of Cape Town. After the opening Eucharist, the Archbishop demanded that the police release me and told them the synod would not proceed before I was released to come and participate. He pressured them so much that I was let go to attend.
For the Arch, peace, justice and reconciliation are common ingredients for building a united South Africa. South Africans cannot simply cohere without the conditions that divide them being actively dealt with and addressed to reconcile for peace.
The Church, South Africa and the world are poorer without Tutu, but we are much richer for his legacy. Our faithful attention to his inspiring work and example; and taking up those things he had set his heart to have fulfilled will bring some comfort to Mama Leah Tutu and their family.
To use his frequent words of blessing: “May God bless us richly!”
May his blessed soul rest in eternal peace and rise in the glory of his Lord!