Desmond Tutu

gigatos | June 10, 2022

Post Views: 11

Summary

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (b. 7 October 1931, Klerksdorp, North West Province, South Africa – d. 26 December 2021, Cape Town, South Africa) was an Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and an activist against apartheid in South Africa. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases the first black African to hold this office. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.

In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Also read, biographies – Wang Zhen (inventor)

Childhood: 1931-1950

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on 7 October 1931 in Klerksdorp, north-west South Africa. His mother, Allen Dorothea Mavoertsek Mathlare, was born into a Motswana family in Boksburg. His father, Zachariah Zelilo Tutu grew up in Gcuwa, Eastern Cape. At home, the couple spoke Xhosa. After marrying in Boksburg, they moved to Klerksdorp in the late 1950s, living in the town”s ”native location”, or black residential area, since renamed Makoetend. Zachariah worked as the principal of a Methodist elementary school, and the family lived in the adobe teacher”s house in the Methodist mission yard.

The Tutus were poor. Desmond Tutu, when telling the story of his family, said that “although we were not rich, we were not poor”. Tutu had an older sister, Sylvia Funeka, who called him “Mpilo” (their firstborn, Sipho, died in infancy. He was followed by a sister, Gloria Lindiwe. Tutu was ill from birth, he had polio which led to atrophy of his right hand. At one point he was hospitalized with severe burns.

Tutu had a close relationship with his father although he was angry with his father for drinking too much and sometimes beating his wife. The Tutu family were originally Methodists and Desmond Tutu was baptised into the Methodist Church in June 1932. The family later changed denominations, first to the African Methodist Episcopal Church and then to the Church of England.

In 1936, the family moved to Tshing, where Zachariah became principal of a Methodist school. There Tutu began his primary education, learned Afrikaans and became a minister of St Francis Anglican Church. He developed a love of reading, particularly enjoying comics and European fairy tales. In Tshing, his parents had a third son, Tamsanqa, who also died in infancy. Around 1941, Tutu”s mother moved to Witwatersrand to work as a cook at the Institute for the Blind Ezenzeleni in Johannesburg. Tutu joined her in the city and they lived in Roodepoort West. In Johannesburg, Tutu attended a Methodist primary school before transferring to the Siedan Boarding School, part of St Agnes Mission. Pursuing his interest in Christianity, at the age of 12 he was confirmed at St Mary”s Church in Roodepoort.

Tutu entered Johannesburg Bantu High School in 1945, where he excelled academically. There, he joined the school”s rugby teams, developing a love for the sport. Outside of school, he earned money selling oranges and as an aid to white golfers. To avoid the expense of a daily train commute to school, he briefly lived with a family closer to Johannesburg before moving back in with his parents when they moved to Munsieville. He then returned to Johannesburg and moved into an Anglican boarding house near King Christ Church in Sophiatown. He became a minister at the church and came under the influence of its minister, Trevor Huddleston; biographer Shirley du Boulay later suggested that Huddleston had “the greatest influence” on Tutu”s life. In 1947, Tutu contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for 18 months, during which time he was visited regularly by Huddleston. In hospital, he underwent a circumcision to mark his transition to manhood. He returned to school in 1949 and sat his national exams in late 1950.

Faculty and teaching career: 1951-1955

Although Tutu was admitted to study medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand, his parents could not afford the tuition fees. Instead, he turned to teaching, winning a government scholarship in 1951 to start a course at a Pretoria Bantu College, a teacher training institution. There, he served as treasurer of the Students” Representative Council, helped organise the Literacy and Drama Society and chaired the Cultural and Debating Society. It was during a debating event that he first met the lawyer – and future President of South Africa – Nelson Mandela, whom he did not see again until 1990. At college, Tutu earned his teaching degree after being supported to take exams by activist Robert Sobukwe. Tutu also took five correspondence courses offered by the University of South Africa (UNISA), graduating in the same class as Robert Mugabe, the future leader of Zimbabwe.

In 1954, he began teaching English at Madibane High School; the following year, he transferred to Krugersdorp High School, where he taught English and history. He began courting Nomalizo Leah Shenxane, a friend of his sister Gloria, who was studying to become a primary school teacher. They were legally married in Krugersdorp in June 1955, and then married according to the Roman Catholic wedding ceremony at the Church of Mary Queen of Apostles; although Anglican, Tutu agreed to the ceremony because of Leah”s Roman Catholic faith. The newlyweds lived at Tutu”s parental home before renting their own home six months later. Their first child, Trevor, was born in April 1956; then a daughter, Thandeka, appeared 16 months later. The couple worshipped at St. Paul”s Church, where Tutu volunteered to teach Sunday School, then to be assistant choir director, church counselor, lay preacher and subdeacon.During the same period, outside of church, he volunteered as an administrator for a local football team.

Also read, biographies – Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Joining the clergy: 1956-1966

In 1953, South Africa”s white minority National Party government introduced the Bantu Education Act to promote the apartheid system of racial segregation and white domination. Disagreeing with this law, Tutu and his wife left the chair. With Huddleston”s support, Tutu chose to become an Anglican priest. Tutu was admitted to St Peter”s Theological College in Rosettenville, Johannesburg in 1956. The college was residential and Tutu lived there while his wife moved to Sekhukhuneland to train as a nurse while their children lived with her parents in Munsieville. In August 1960, his wife gave birth to another daughter, Naomi.

At college, Tutu studied the Bible, Anglican doctrine, church history and Christian ethics, earning a bachelor”s degree in theology and winning the annual Archbishop”s Essay Prize.The college”s principal, Godfrey Pawson, wrote that Tutu “has exceptional knowledge and intelligence and is very industrious. At the same time, he shows no arrogance, fits in with any group and is popular… He has obvious gifts to be a leader. “During his college years, anti-apartheid activism intensified, and there were also crackdowns on such activism, such as the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.Tutu and his colleagues did not engage in anti-apartheid activism.R

In December 1960, Edward Paget ordained Tutu as an Anglican priest at St. Mary”s Cathedral in Johannesburg. Tutu was then appointed assistant priest in St Alban”s Parish, Benoni, where he joined his wife and children. Here he earned two-thirds of what his white counterparts received. In 1962, Tutu was transferred to St Philip”s Church in Thokoza, where he was put in charge of the congregation and developed a passion for pastoral work. Many in South Africa”s white-dominated Anglican community felt the need to have more indigenous Africans in positions of ecclesiastical authority; to help with this desire, Aelfred Stubbs suggested that Tutu train as a theology professor at King”s College London (KCL). Funding was provided from the International Missionary Council”s Theological Education Fund (TEF) and the government agreed to allow Tutus to move to the UK. Tutu moved to London in September 1962.

At KCL”s theology department, Tutu studied under theologians such as Dennis Nineham, Christopher Evans, Sydney Evans, Geoffrey Parrinder and Eric Mascall. In London, Tutu”s family members felt liberated, living a life free from Apartheid South Africa; Tutu later remarked that “there was racism in England, but we were not exposed to it.” He was also impressed by the freedom of expression available in the country, particularly that of Speakers” Corner. His family moved into a flat behind St Martyr Alban”s Church in Golders Green, where Tutu served Sunday services. It was in that apartment that a daughter, Mpho Andrea Tutu, was born to him. Tutu was academically successful, and his tutors suggested he take additional courses to graduate with an honors degree, which helped him study Hebrew as well. Upon graduation Tutu received his diploma from Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall.

Tutu then secured a TEF scholarship to study for a master”s degree; he studied for this degree from October 1965 until September 1966, when he completed his thesis on Islam in West Africa. During this period, the family moved to Surrey, where Tutu worked as an assistant priest at St Mary”s Church. In that village, he encouraged cooperation between his Anglican parishioners and the local Roman Catholic and Methodist communities. Tutu”s time in London helped him to let go of feelings of racial inferiority to whites.

Also read, biographies – Alfred Hitchcock

Teaching in South Africa and Lesotho: 1966-1972

In 1966, Tutu and his family moved to East Jerusalem, where for two months he studied Arabic and Greek at St George”s College. They then returned to South Africa, settling in Alice, Eastern Cape, in 1967. The Federal Theological Seminary (Fedsem) had recently been set up to unite training institutions from different Christian denominations. At Fedsem, Tutu was hired to teach doctrine, Old Testament and Greek; Leah became his library assistant. Tutu was the first black member of the Seminary staff,. The Fedsem campus allowed a level of racial diversity that was rare in South Africa at the time. The Tutus sent their children to a private boarding school in Swaziland, thus keeping them out of the Bantu education curriculum in South Africa.

Tutu joined a pan-Protestant group, the Church Unity Commission, was a delegate to Anglican-Catholic conversations and began publishing in academic journals. He also became Anglican chaplain of Fort Hare University. In an unusual move for the time, Tutu invited both students and lay people to become Eucharistic ministers. He joined student delegations to meetings of the Anglican Students Federation and the University Christian Movement and supported the Black Consciousness Movement that had emerged in South African student circles since the 1960s – although Tutu did not share their view on avoiding collaboration with whites. In August 1968, he gave a sermon comparing the situation in South Africa to that in the Eastern Bloc, comparing the anti-apartheid protests to the recent Prague Spring. In September, Fort Hare students staged a protest against the policies of the university administration; after being surrounded by police with dogs, Tutu joined the crowd to pray with the protesters. This was the first time he witnessed state power used to suppress dissent.

In January 1970, Tutu left the seminary for a teaching post at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) in Lesotho. This allowed him to live closer to his children and gave him twice the salary he earned at Fedsem. He and his wife moved to the UBLS campus; most of his colleagues were white expatriates from the US or UK. In addition to his teaching position, he also became the college”s Anglican chaplain and director of two student residences. In Lesotho, he joined the executive board of the Lesotho Ecumenical Association and served as an external examiner for both Fedsem and the University of Rhodos. He returned to South Africa several times, including to visit his father shortly before his death in February 1971.

Director for Africa at TEF: 1972-1975

TEF offered Tutu a job as Africa Director, a position that required a move to England. Tutu agreed, although initially the South African authorities refused him permission to leave. The authorities viewed him with suspicion after the student protests at Fort Hare and were also unsympathetic to the TEF leadership because he had condemned Apartheid as un-Christian. After Tutu insisted that accepting this position would be good publicity for South Africa, the authorities relented. In March 1972, he returned to Britain. The TEF headquarters were in Bromley, and the Tutu family settled in Grove Park, where Tutu became honorary curator of St Augustine”s Church.

Tutu”s position involved grants to theological training institutions and students. For this he visited countries in Africa in the early 1970s and wrote accounts of his experiences. In Zaire, he lamented, for example, widespread corruption and poverty and complained that “the military regime of Mobutu Sese Seko… is extremely troublesome for a black man in South Africa”. In Nigeria, he expressed concern about Igbo resentment following the crushing of the Republic of Biafra. In 1972, he travelled through East Africa, where he was impressed by Jomo Kenyatta”s Kenyan government and witnessed Idi Amin”s expulsion of Ugandan Asians.

In the early 1970s, Tutu”s theology changed because of his experiences in Africa and his discovery of liberation theology. He was also drawn to black theology, attending a 1973 conference on the subject at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. There, he presented a paper in which he asserted that “black theology is an engaged theology, not a detached, academic theology. It is a theology on an instinctive level, one that addresses the real concerns, the life and death issues of the black man.” He said his paper was not an attempt to demonstrate the academic respectability of black theology, but rather to make “a simple, perhaps strident, statement about a reality. Black theology is. No permission is required for it to appear … Frankly, it”s past time we waited for the white man to give us permission to do our thing. Whether or not he accepts the intellectual respectability of our work is largely irrelevant. We”ll carry on regardless (of his opinion).” In attempting to fuse black theology derived from African-American theology with African theology, Tutu”s approach contrasted with that of those African theologians, such as John Mbiti, who viewed black theology as foreign, imported and irrelevant to Africa.

Also read, biographies – Leo Africanus

Dean of Johannesburg and Bishop of Lesotho: 1975-1978

In 1975, Tutu was nominated to be the new Bishop of Johannesburg, but lost to Timothy Bavin. Bavin suggested Tutu take the position he vacated, that of dean of St Mary”s Cathedral in Johannesburg. In March 1975, Tutu was elected to this position – the fourth highest in South Africa”s Anglican hierarchy – becoming the first black man to do so. His appointment made headlines in South Africa. Tutu was officially installed as dean in August 1975. The cathedral was packed for the event. Moving to the city, Tutu lived not in the official dean”s residence in the white suburb of Houghton, but in a house on a street in the largely impoverished black township of Orlando West in Soweto. Although majority white, the cathedral congregation was racially mixed, which gave Tutu hope that a racially equal and desegregated future was possible for South Africa. He encountered some resistance to his attempts to modernize the liturgies used by the congregation, including his attempts to replace male pronouns with gender-neutral ones.

Tutu has used his position to speak out on social issues, publicly advocating an international economic boycott of South Africa due to apartheid. He has met with Black Consciousness and Soweto leaders and sided with anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela when she opposed the 1967 Terrorism Act Tutu held a 24-hour vigil at the cathedral for racial harmony and prayed for activists detained under the Terrorism Act. In May 1976, he wrote to Prime Minister BJ Vorster, warning that if the government maintained apartheid then the country would erupt in racial violence. Six weeks later, the Soweto Uprising broke out and black youth clashed with police. Over ten months, at least 660 people were killed, most of them younger than 24. Tutu was angered by what he saw as a lack of ownership on the part of white South Africans; he raised the issue in his sermon on Sunday, saying white silence was “deafening” and asking whether he would have shown the same nonchalance if the young people killed had been white.

After seven months as dean, Tutu has been nominated as a candidate for Bishop of Lesotho. Although Tutu said he did not want the post, in March 1976 he was elected to the position. He reluctantly accepted the position. This decision upset some members of his congregation who felt he had used their parish as a place from which to advance his career. In July, Bill Burnett anointed Tutu as bishop at St. Mary”s Cathedral. In August, Tutu was enthroned as Bishop of Lesotho in a ceremony at St Mary and St James Cathedral in Maseru. The ceremony was attended by thousands of people, including King Moshoeshoe II and Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan. Travelling through his largely rural diocese, Tutu learned Sesotho. He appointed Philip Mokuku as the first dean of the diocese and placed great emphasis on continuing education for Basotho clergy. He befriended the royal family, although his relationship with Jonathan”s government was strained. In September 1977 he returned to South Africa to speak at the Eastern Cape funeral of Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness activist who had been killed by police. At the funeral, Tutu said that Black Consciousness was “a movement through which God, through Steve, sought to awaken in the black person a sense of his intrinsic worth and value as a child of God”.

General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches: 1978-1985

After John Rees resigned as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Tutu was among the nominees to take his place. John Thorne was eventually elected to the post, but he resigned after just three months. Tutu was nominated again, this time being selected. At the urging of the episcopal synod Tutu agreed to accept the position. His decision angered many Anglicans in Lesotho, who felt Tutu was abandoning them. Tutu took over the leadership of the SACC in March 1978. He returned to Johannesburg – where the SACC was headquartered – and the Tutus returned to their former home in Orlando West, which had now been purchased for them by an anonymous donor. Leah got a job as assistant director of the Institute of Race Relations.

SACC was one of the only Christian institutions in South Africa where black people had majority representation and Tutu was their first black leader. He introduced for SACC staff a programme of daily prayers, regular Bible study, monthly Eucharist and silence breaks. He also developed a new style of leadership, appointing senior staff who were capable of initiative, delegating much of the detailed work of SACC to them and keeping in touch with them through meetings and memos. Many of the staff called Tutu “Baba” (father). He determined that SACC would become one of the most visible human rights advocacy organisations in South Africa. His efforts won him international recognition; in 1978, King”s College London elected him a Fellow, while the University of Kent and the General Theological Seminary awarded him honorary doctorates. In 1979 Harvard University also awarded him a doctorate.

As leader of SACC, Tutu has dedicated much of his time to fundraising for the organisation”s projects. While Tutu was in charge of SACC, it was discovered that one of its division directors had embezzled funds. In 1981, a government commission investigated the matter. Tutu testified before the commission. During his testimony he condemned Apartheid as “evil” and “un-Christian”. When the Eloff report was published, Tutu criticized it, focusing in particular on the absence of any theologians on its board. In 1981, Tutu also became rector of St Augustine”s Church in Orlando West in Soweto. The following year, he published a collection of his sermons and speeches, Crying in the Wilderness: The Struggle for Justice in South Africa. Another volume, Hope and Suffering, appeared in 1984.

Tutu testified on behalf of a captured cell of Umkhonto we Sizwe, an armed anti-apartheid group with links to the banned African National Congress (ANC) at the time. He said that while he was committed to non-violence and censured those who used violence, he could understand why black Africans would become violent when their non-violent tactics failed to overthrow Apartheid. In an earlier speech, he expressed the view that an armed struggle against the South African government had little chance of succeeding, but he also accused Western nations of hypocrisy for condemning armed liberation groups in South Africa while praising similar organisations that operated in Europe during the Second World War. Tutu also signed a petition calling for the release of ANC activist Nelson Mandela, which led to a correspondence between the two.

After Tutu told Danish journalists that he supported an international economic boycott against South Africa, he was called before two government ministers in 1979b to be reprimanded in October 1979. In March 1980, the government confiscated his passport, raising his international profile, and he received condemnation of the gesture from the US State Department. In 1980, SACC pledged to support civil disobedience against Apartheid. After Thorne was arrested in May, Tutu and Joe Wing led a protest march, during which they were arrested, jailed overnight and fined. Afterwards, a meeting was held between 20 church leaders, including Tutu, Prime Minister PW Botha and seven government ministers. At this meeting in August, clerical leaders unsuccessfully called on the government to end Apartheid. Some clerics saw this dialogue as futile, but Tutu disagreed, noting that “Moses repeatedly went to Pharaoh to secure the release of the Israelites”.

In January 1981, the government returned Tutu”s passport. In March, he embarked on a five-week tour of Europe and North America, meeting politicians including UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and addressing the UN Special Committee against Apartheid. In England, he met Robert Runcie and gave a sermon at Westminster Abbey, while in Rome he met Pope John Paul II. On his return to South Africa, Botha again ordered the confiscation of his passport, preventing Tutu from personally collecting some of the honorary degrees he had received. His passport was returned 17 months later. In September 1982, Tutu addressed the Triennial Convention of the Episcopal Church in New Orleans before traveling to Kentucky to see his daughter Naomi, who lived there with her American husband. Tutu became popular in the US, where he was often compared to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, although white conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell criticised him as an alleged communist sympathiser.

Tutu has angered much of the South African press and the white minority, especially conservative whites who supported Apartheid. Pro-government media such as The Citizen and the South African Broadcasting Corporation criticized him, often focusing on how his middle-class lifestyle contrasted with the poverty of the blacks he claimed to represent. He received hate mail as well as death threats from far-right white groups such as Wit Wolwe. Although he remained close to prominent white liberals such as Helen Suzman, his angry anti-government rhetoric also alienated many white liberals who believed Apartheid could be gradually reformed; among the white liberals who publicly criticised Tutu were Alan Paton and Bill Burnett.

By the 1980s, Tutu had become a leading representative for many black South Africans, with a status rivalled only by Nelson Mandela. In August 1983, he became the coordinator of the new anti-apartheid United Democratic Front (UDF). In 1984, Tutu took a sabbatical and for three months was employed at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York. He was invited to address the United Nations Security Council, later meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus and the Africa subcommittees of the House of Representatives and Senate. He was also invited to the White House, where he unsuccessfully urged President Ronald Reagan to change his approach to South Africa. He was concerned that Reagan had a warmer relationship with the South African government than his predecessor Jimmy Carter, describing Reagan”s government as “an unmitigated disaster for us blacks”. Tutu later described Reagan as “an outright racist”.

In New York, Tutu was informed that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; he had previously been nominated in 1981, 1982 and 1983. The Nobel Prize selection committee wanted to recognise a South African and thought Tutu would be a less controversial choice than Mandela or Mangosuthu Buthelezi. In December, Tutu attended the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo, but that was prevented by a bomb threat. He shared the $192,000 prize with his family, SACC staff and a scholarship fund for South Africans in exile. He was the second South African to receive the prize, after Albert Luthuli in 1960. South Africa”s government and media either downplayed or criticised the award, while the Organisation of African Unity hailed it as proof of Apartheid”s imminent demise.

The mid-1980s saw increasing clashes between black youths and the security services, leading to rising death tolls; Tutu was invited to speak at many of their funerals. At one funeral he intervened to stop the crowd from killing a black man accused of being a government informer. Tutu drew the ire of some black groups in South Africa by speaking out against the torture and killing of those suspected of collaborating with the government. For these activists, Tutu”s calls for non-violence were seen as an obstacle to revolution. When Tutu accompanied US politician Ted Kennedy on the latter”s visit to South Africa in January 1985, he was upset that protesters from the Azanian People”s Organisation (AZAPO) – who regarded Kennedy as an agent of US capitalism and imperialism – disrupted the programme.

Amid the violence, the ANC called on black South Africans to make the country “ungovernable”, and during that period foreign companies scaled back investment in the country. In July 1985, Botha declared a state of emergency in 36 magisterial constituencies, suspending civil liberties and granting additional powers to the security services; Tutu”s offer to mediate between the government and black leadership organisations was rejected by the authorities. He continued to protest; in April 1985, Tutu led a small clergy march through Johannesburg to protest the arrest of Geoff Moselane. In October 1985, he supported the National Initiative for Reconciliation”s proposal that people refrain from work and engage in a day of prayer, fasting and mourning. He also proposed a national strike against Apartheid, infuriating trade unions whom he had not consulted on such an idea.

Tutu continued to promote his cause abroad. In May 1985, he embarked on a tour of the USA where he gave a series of speeches and in October 1985 he addressed the political committee of the United Nations General Assembly, urging the international community to impose sanctions on South Africa if Apartheid was not abolished within six months. Tutu then travelled to Britain where he met Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He also set up a Bishop Tutu Scholarship Fund to provide financial assistance to South African students living in exile. He returned to the US in May 1986, and in August 1986 visited Japan, China and Jamaica to continue his advocacy of sanctioning South Africa. With most anti-apartheid activists imprisoned, Mandela referred to Tutu as “public enemy number one to the powers that be”.

Also read, biographies – Nicholas II of Russia

Archbishop of Cape Town: 1986-1994

After Philip Russell announced his retirement as Archbishop of Cape Town in February 1986, the Black Solidarity Group formulated a plan to appoint Tutu as his replacement. At the time of the meeting, Tutu was in Atlanta, Georgia, receiving the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize. Nonviolent Peace Prize. Tutu won a two-thirds majority of both clergy and laity and the decision was then ratified unanimously by the synod of bishops. Tutu was the first black man to hold the position. Some white Anglicans left the church in protest. More than 1300 people attended the installation ceremony at St. George”s Cathedral in Cape Town on 7 September 1986. The guest list sparked a media frenzy. Guests included Coretta Scott King, Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder, Senator Edward Kennedy, Bishop Trevor Huddleston and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie. At the time, it was thought that the guest list was deliberately designed to anger the government. A message from the Johannesburg Red Cross Society helped raise tensions, warning of a plot to assassinate Tutu. But the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the involvement of the British ambassador contributed to a successful event.

After the ceremony, Tutu held an outdoor Eucharist for 10,000 people in Goodwood, where he invited Albertina Sisulu and Allan Boesak to give speeches.

As Archbishop, Tutu moved to his official residence at Bishopscourt. He did so illegally, because he did not seek official permission to live in what was in the eyes of the state a “white zone” He obtained money from the church to renovate that house and installed a children”s playground in its grounds, opening it and the Bishopscourt swimming pool to members of his diocese. He invited the English priest Francis Cull to set up the Institute of Christian Spirituality at Bishopscourt, the latter moving into a building on the property. Such projects spent an increasing share of the Anglican Church”s budget and Tutu sought to increase this budget by soliciting donations from countries overseas. Some Anglicans have criticised such spending by Tutu.

His work as archbishop, together with his political activism and regular trips abroad, meant a heavy workload, which he managed with the help of his director Njongonkulu Ndungane and the help of Michael Nuttall, who in 1989 was elected dean of the province. At church meetings, Tutu drew on traditional African customs by adopting a model of leadership built on consensus-building, trying to ensure that competing groups in the church reached a compromise and thus all votes would be unanimous rather than divided. He won approval for the ordination of women priests in the Anglican church after likening the exclusion of women from office to the Apartheid system of exclusion. He has also appointed gay priests to leadership positions and privately criticised the church”s insistence that gay priests remain celibate as impractical.

Along with Boesak and Stephen Naidoo, Tutu became one of the church leaders involved in mediating conflicts between black protesters and security forces; they worked, for example, to avoid confrontations at the 1987 funeral of Ashley Kriel of the ANC guerrillas. In February 1988, the government banned 17 black or multiracial organisations, including the UDF, and restricted the activities of trade unions. Church leaders organised a protest march and, after it was banned, set up the Committee for the Defence of Democracy. When the group”s rally was banned, Tutu, Boesak and Naidoo held a mass at St George”s Cathedral in Cape Town instead.

In March 1988, he took up the cause of the Sharpeville Six, who had been sentenced to death; being a principled opponent of capital punishment, he called for their lives to be spared. Tutu telephoned representatives of the American, British and German governments, urging them to press Botha on the issue, and met Botha personally at his home to discuss the matter. The two did not get on well and quarrelled. Botha accused Tutu of supporting the ANC”s armed campaign; Tutu said that while he did not support their use of violence, he supported the ANC”s goal of a democratic and non-racial South Africa. The death sentences of the six were eventually commuted.

In May 1988, the government launched a covert campaign against Tutu, organised in part by the Stratkom wing of the State Security Council. Security police printed leaflets and stickers with anti-Tutu slogans, while unemployed black men were paid to protest at the airport when he arrived. Traffic police arrested Leah and locked her in a cell when she was late renewing her driving licence. Although security police had staged assassination attempts on various Christian anti-apartheid leaders, they later claimed they never did this to Tutu, considering him too visible.

Tutu remained actively involved in acts of civil disobedience against the government; he was encouraged by the fact that many whites participated in these protests. In August 1989, he helped organize an “Ecumenical Mass of Defiance” at St. George”s Cathedral in Cape Town, and soon after joined protests on segregated beaches outside the capital. To mark the sixth anniversary of the founding of the UDF, he held a “testimonial service” at the cathedral and in September held a memorial in the church for those protesters who were killed in clashes with security forces. Later that month he organised a protest march through Cape Town, which the new president FW de Klerk endorsed; a multi-racial crowd of around 30,000 people attended the march. The fact that the march was allowed inspired similar demonstrations that took place across the country. In October, de Klerk met with Tutu, Boesak and Frank Chikane; Tutu was impressed that “we were listened to”. In 1994, another collection of Tutu”s writings, God”s Rainbow People, was published, and this was followed the following year by an African prayer book, a collection of prayers from across the continent, accompanied by the archbishop”s commentary.

In February 1990, de Klerk lifted the ban on political parties such as the ANC; Tutu called to congratulate him on the decision. De Klerk then announced Mandela”s release from prison; at the ANC”s request, Mandela and his wife stayed at Bishopscourt the first night after his release. Tutu and Mandela met for the first time in 35 years at Cape Town City Hall, where Mandela spoke from the balcony to the crowd. Tutu invited Mandela to attend an Anglican synod of bishops in February 1990, at which the latter described Tutu as “the archbishop of the people”. There, Tutu and the bishops called for an end to foreign sanctions once the transition to universal suffrage was “irreversible”, urged anti-apartheid groups to end armed struggle and ban Anglican clergy from belonging to political parties. Many clergy were upset that this latest proposal was imposed without consultation, but Tutu defended it, saying clergy affiliated to political parties would prove divisive, especially amid rising inter-party violence.

In March, violence broke out between ANC and Inkatha supporters in KwaZulu; Tutu cancelled a visit to the US to join the SACC delegation at talks between Mandela, de Klerk and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi in Ulundi. Church leaders urged Mandela and Buthelezi to hold a joint rally to de-escalate violence between their parties. Although Tutu”s relationship with Buthelezi had always been strained – mainly because of Tutu”s opposition to Buthelezi”s collaboration with the government”s Bantustan system – Tutu repeatedly visited Buthelezi to encourage involvement in the democratic process. As the ANC-Inkatha violence spread from KwaZulu into the Transvaal, Tutu visited affected localities and later met with victims of the Sebokeng and Boipatong massacres.

Like many other activists, Tutu believed there was a “third force” fuelling tensions between the ANC and Inkatha; it was later found that sectors of the intelligence agencies were supplying Inkatha with weapons to weaken the ANC”s negotiating position. Unlike some ANC figures, Tutu never accused de Klerk of personal complicity in this. In November 1990, Tutu organised a ”summit” at Bishopscourt, attended by church leaders as well as leaders of political groups such as the ANC, PAC and AZAPO, in which he encouraged them to call on their supporters to avoid violence and allow freedom. political campaign. After South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was assassinated, Tutu was a preacher at his funeral; despite his objections to Hani”s Marxism, Tutu admired him. In the midst of these events, Tutu felt physically exhausted and had a bad case of the blues. He took a four-month sabbatical at Emory University”s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tutu was excited by the prospect of introducing universal suffrage in South Africa through a negotiated transition rather than a civil war. He allowed his face to be used on posters encouraging South Africans to vote. When the multi-racial general election was held in April 1994, Tutu was visibly exuberant, telling reporters that “we are on cloud nine”. He voted in the town of Gugulethu in Cape Town. The ANC won the election and Mandela was declared president, leading a government of national unity. Tutu attended Mandela”s inauguration ceremony; he planned its religious component, insisting that Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu leaders attend the ceremony.

Tutu also turned his attention to events in other African countries. In 1987, he gave the keynote address to the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) in Lomé, Togo, calling on churches to support the oppressed in Africa. He said that “it pains us to acknowledge that there is less freedom and personal liberty in most of Africa now than there was during the much maligned colonial period”. There, he was elected president of the AACC, while José Belo was elected its secretary-general. They worked closely over the next decade. In 1989, they visited Zaire to encourage the country”s churches to distance themselves from Seko”s government. In 1994, he and Belo visited war-torn Liberia. There, they met Charles Taylor, but Tutu did not trust his ceasefire promise. In 1995, Mandela sent Tutu to Nigeria to meet with Nigerian military leader Sani Abacha and demand the release of jailed politicians Moshood Abiola and Olusegun Obasanjo. In July 1995, Tutu visited Rwanda a year after the genocide and preached to 10,000 people in Kigali. Drawing on his experiences in South Africa, he called for justice to be tempered with mercy for the Hutus who orchestrated the genocide. Tutu has also travelled to other parts of the world, for example spending March 1989 in Panama and Nicaragua.

Tutu also spoke about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tutu argued that Israel”s treatment of the Palestinians is reminiscent of Apartheid in South Africa. Referring to the Israeli-occupied territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, he said there were “deeply, deeply troubling” parallels with apartheid. He declared his support for the use of boycotts, loosening of investment and sanctions as a means of forcing Israel to change its policies, noting that this approach had been key to the success of the anti-apartheid struggle. At the same time, Tutu acknowledged Israel”s right to exist. In 1989 he visited the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Yasser Arafat, in Cairo, urging him to accept Israel”s existence. That same year, during a speech in New York, Tutu noted Israel”s “right to territorial integrity and fundamental security” but criticised Israel”s complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre and condemned Israel”s support for the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He expressed anger that Israel had supplied military equipment to the apartheid regime, wondering how the Jewish state could cooperate with a government that contained Nazi sympathisers. Tutu called for a Palestinian state and stressed that his criticism was directed at the Israeli government rather than the Jews. At the invitation of Palestinian Bishop Samir Kafity, he made a Christmas pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he delivered a sermon near Bethlehem calling for a two-state solution. On that 1989 trip, he also laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and delivered a sermon on the importance of forgiveness for the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Tutu”s calls for forgiveness for Holocaust perpetrators, along with his support for a Palestinian state, drew criticism from many Jewish groups around the world, including renowned Holocaust survivor and journalist Eli Wiesel, who said, “No one has the right to forgive except the dead themselves.” This was exacerbated by his attempts to evade accusations of anti-Semitism by comments such as “my dentist is a Dr Cohen”. During the same visit, Tutu reaffirmed that despite his criticism of Israel, the country has a right to exist.

Tutu also spoke about the Irish Question in Northern Ireland. At the Lambeth conference in 1988, he supported a resolution on the issue which condemned the use of violence by all sides; Tutu believed that since Irish republicans had the right to vote, they had not exhausted peaceful means of bringing about change and therefore should not resort to armed struggle. Three years later, he held a televised service from Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, where he called for negotiations between all factions. He visited Belfast in 1998 and again in 2001.

In October 1994, Tutu announced his intention to retire as Archbishop in 1996. Although retired archbishops normally return to the office of bishop, the other bishops have given him a new title: “archbishop emeritus”. A farewell ceremony was held at St George”s Cathedral in Cape Town in June 1996. The ceremony was attended by senior politicians such as Nelson Mandela and de Klerk. There, Mandela awarded Tutu the Order of Meritorious Service, South Africa”s highest honour. Tutu was succeeded as Archbishop of Ndungane.

In January 1997, Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer and travelled abroad for treatment. He publicly disclosed his diagnosis, hoping to encourage other men to get prostate exams. He faced recurrences of the disease in 1999 and 2006. Back in South Africa, he spent his time between homes in Orlando West in Soweto and the Milnerton area of Cape Town. In 2000, he opened an office in Cape Town. In June 2000, the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in Cape Town was launched and in 2003 launched an emerging leadership programme.

Aware that his presence in South Africa might overshadow Ndungane, Tutu agreed to go on a two-year visiting professorship at Emory University from 1998 to 2000. During that time he wrote a book about the TRC, No Future Without Forgiveness. In early 2002 he taught at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From January to May 2003 he taught at the University of North Carolina. In January 2004, he was a visiting professor on post-conflict societies at his alma mater, King”s College London. While in the United States, he joined a speaker recruitment agency and travelled extensively on contracts; this gave him financial independence in a way that his pension would not. In his speeches, he focused on South Africa”s transition from apartheid to universal suffrage, presenting it as a model for other nations to adopt. In the US, he thanked anti-apartheid activists for campaigning for sanctions, while also calling on American companies to invest in South Africa now.

Also read, biographies – George Harrison

Truth and Reconciliation Commission: 1996-1998

Tutu popularized the term “Rainbow Nation” as a metaphor for post-apartheid South Africa after 1994 under the ANC. He first used the metaphor in 1989, when he described a crowd at a multi-race protest as “God”s rainbow people”. Tutu advocated what liberation theologians call “critical solidarity”, offering support to pro-democracy forces while reserving the right to criticise his allies. He criticized Mandela on several points, such as his tendency to wear brightly colored Madiba shirts, which he considered inappropriate; Mandela offered the wry response that the remark was ironic coming from a man who wore dresses. More serious was Tutu”s criticism of Mandela”s maintenance of South Africa”s apartheid-era arms industry and the significant salary package adopted by newly-elected members of parliament. Mandela responded, calling Tutu a “populist” and saying he should have raised these issues in private rather than in public.

A key question facing the post-apartheid government was how it would respond to the various human rights abuses that had been committed in previous decades by both state and anti-apartheid activists. The National Party wanted a comprehensive amnesty package, while the ANC wanted trials of former state figures. Alex Boraine helped Mandela”s government draft legislation to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was approved by parliament in July 1995. Nuttall suggested Tutu become one of the seventeen commissioners of the TRC, and in September a synod of bishops formally nominated him for the position. Tutu proposed that the TRC adopt a three-pronged approach: the first being confession, with those responsible for human rights violations fully disclosing their activities; the second being forgiveness in the form of a legal amnesty from prosecution; and the third being restitution, with perpetrators making reparations to their victims.

Mandela appointed Tutu as president of the TRC and Alex Boraine as deputy. The commission was a significant undertaking, including over 300 staff, splitting into three committees and holding up to four hearings simultaneously. In the TRC, Tutu advocated “restorative justice”, a concept he considered characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence “in the spirit of ubuntu”. As head of the commission, Tutu had to deal with his various interpersonal problems, with much suspicion between those on his board who had been anti-apartheid activists and those who had supported the apartheid system. He admitted that “we were indeed like a bunch of primadonnas, often hypersensitive, often easily attacking each other from real or imagined humiliations”. Tutu opened meetings with prayers and often referred to Christian teachings when discussing the work of the TRC, frustrating some who saw him as incorporating too many religious elements into an expressly secular body.

The first hearing took place in April 1996. The hearings were publicly televised and had a considerable impact on South African society. He had very little control over the committee responsible for granting amnesty, instead he chaired the committee that heard accounts of human rights abuses committed by both anti-apartheid and apartheid figures. While listening to victims” testimonies, Tutu was sometimes overcome with emotion and wept during the hearings. He singled out those victims who had expressed forgiveness to those who had harmed them and used these individuals as a motivator. The ANC”s image has been tarnished by revelations that some of its activists have engaged in torture, attacks on civilians and other human rights abuses. The ANC sought to suppress part of the TRC”s final report, infuriating Tutu. He warned of the ANC”s “abuse of power”, saying that “yesterday”s oppressors can quite easily become today”s oppressors… We”ve seen it happen all over the world and we shouldn”t be surprised if it happens here.” Tutu presented the five-volume TRC report to Mandela at a public ceremony in Pretoria in October 1998. Tutu was ultimately pleased with the TRC”s achievement, believing it would help reconciliation in the long run, although he also acknowledged its shortcomings.

Social and international issues: 1999-2009

Post-apartheid, Tutu”s status as a gay rights activist kept him in the public eye. Tutu considered discrimination against homosexuals to be the equivalent of discrimination against black people and women, and his views on this are known through speeches and sermons. After reaffirming the church”s opposition to same-sex sexual acts at the 1998 Lambeth Bishops” Conference, Tutu wrote to George Carey declaring, “I am ashamed to be an Anglican.” He considered Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to be too sympathetic to conservatives who wanted to exclude various Anglican churches in the US and Canada from the Anglican Communion after they expressed a pro-LGBT rights stance. Tutu expressed the view that if these conservatives did not like the inclusiveness of the Anglican Communion, they always had the “freedom to leave”. In 2007, Tutu accused the church of being obsessed with homosexuality and said, “If God, as they say, is homophobic, I would not worship that God.” In 2011, he called on the Anglican Church in South Africa to accept and perform same-sex marriages.

Tutu also spoke in June 2003 about the need to fight the HIV pandemic

Tutu has maintained his interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and after the signing of the Oslo Accords he was invited to Tel Aviv to attend the Peres Center for Peace. He became increasingly frustrated following the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit, and in 2002 gave a widely publicised speech denouncing Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and calling for sanctions against Israel. Comparing the Israeli-Palestinian situation to that in South Africa, he said that “one reason we succeeded in South Africa that is lacking in the Middle East is the quality of leadership – leaders willing to make unpopular compromises, to go against their constituencies, because they have the wisdom to see that they could eventually make peace possible”. Tutu was appointed to lead a UN fact-finding mission to Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip to investigate the November 2006 incident in which IDF soldiers killed 19 civilians. Israeli officials expressed concern that the report would be biased against Israel. Tutu cancelled the trip in mid-December, saying Israel refused to grant him the necessary travel authorisation after more than a week of talks.

In 2003, Tutu was a researcher-in-residence at the University of North Florida. There, in February, he broke his normal rule not to join protests outside South Africa by taking part in a demonstration in New York against US plans to launch war in Iraq. He spoke on the phone to Condoleezza Rice, urging the US government not to go to war without a UN Security Council resolution. Tutu questioned why Iraq was singled out for alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction when countries in Europe, India and Pakistan also had many such devices. In 2004, he appeared in Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, an Off Broadway play in New York critical of US detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. In January 2005, he added his voice to the growing dissent against terror suspects held at Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo, saying that these detentions without trial were “completely unacceptable” and comparable to apartheid-era detentions. He also criticised the UK”s introduction of measures to detain terrorist subjects for 28 days without trial. In 2012, he called for US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried by the International Criminal Court for starting the war in Iraq.

Death

Tutu died of prostate cancer at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town on 26 December 2021, aged 90.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama released a statement calling him “a universal spirit” and saying that “Archbishop Tutu was shaped by the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also by concern for injustice everywhere. He never lost his sense of humour and his desire to find humanity in his opponents, and Michelle and I will miss him dearly.” President Joe Biden said Tutu”s legacy “will echo through the ages.” Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II also made statements on his death.

Tutu is the author of seven collections of sermons and other writings:

Sources