Tutu tells of dad’s drunken tirades in book

ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu has spoken of the “hopeless despair” of seeing his father launch drunken “tirades” against his mother.

Tutu admitted if he dwelt on the childhood memories he felt himself “wanting to hurt my father back”.

In a new book, extracts of which have been published by The Guardian, Tutu draws on the anger he felt as a child to insist on the importance of people forgiving others for wrongdoing.

Recalling the strong feelings he held towards his father as he saw him lash out at his mother, Tutu, 82, wrote: “There were so many nights when I, as a young boy, had to watch helplessly as my father verbally and physically abused my mother.

“I can still recall the smell of alcohol, see the fear in my mother’s eyes and feel the hopeless despair that comes when we see people we love hurting each other in incomprehensible ways.

“If I dwell on those memories, I can feel myself wanting to hurt my father back, in the same ways he hurt my mother. . .”

In The Book of Forgiveness, Tutu admits he found it difficult to forgive his late father, despite knowing “he caused pain because he himself was in pain”, suggesting the memories of the abuse his mother suffered still caused him “fresh” grief.

However, he said he could not know for certain if, having experienced the “stresses and pressures” faced by his father, he might have behaved any differently if the two had “traded lives”.

If his father was still alive today he would forgive him because that is the only way “to heal the pain in my boyhood heart”, Tutu said in the book that he wrote jointly with his daughter Mpho.

There is a “great freedom” in seeking forgiveness and “great strength” in individuals admitting their own wrongdoing, he wrote.