Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Anglican cleric and a powerful force for nonviolence in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, died on last Sunday (26) at the age of 90.
He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997. In 2013, he underwent tests for a persistent infection. Then on, he was hospitalised on several occasions to treat infections associated with his cancer treatment. So the cause of his death was complications from cancer, according to Roger Friedman, spokesman for the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust.
Tutu was a spellbinding preacher. He used his pulpit and spirited oratory to help bring down apartheid in South Africa, the country’s official policy of racial segregation, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. His outspokenness, good humor, inspiring message and conscientious work in civil and human rights made him a revered leader during the struggle to end apartheid. Because of this, he was considered the nation’s conscience by both Black and White, an enduring testament to his faith and spirit of reconciliation in a divided nation.
For six decades, Tutu - known affectionately as “the Arch” - was one of the primary voices in South Africa. After apartheid ended in the early ‘90s and the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela became president of the country, he was named chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Tutu had celebrated his 90th birthday on October 7 this year with a rare public appearance, attending a special thanksgiving service at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town.
Condolences
On the death of the archbishop, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement: “The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,”
President Ramaphosa called him “a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”
The Nelson Mandela foundation called Tutu’s loss “immeasurable.”
“He was larger than life, and for so many in South Africa and around the world his life has been a blessing,” the foundation said in a statement. “His contributions to struggles against injustice, locally and globally, are matched only by the depth of his thinking about the making of liberatory futures for human societies.”
Former US President Barack Obama called Tutu a “mentor, a friend, and a moral compass.”
In his statement he said: “Archbishop Tutu was grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere. He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement, “(He) will be remembered for his spiritual leadership and irrepressible good humour.”
The current archbishop of Cape Town and metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Thabo Makgoba, said, “Desmond Tutu’s legacy is moral strength, moral courage and clarity,” He said in his statement: “He felt with the people. In public and alone, he cried because he felt people’s pain. And he laughed - no, not just laughed, he cackled with delight when he shared their joy.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby called Tutu “a prophet and priest, a man of words and action - one who embodied the hope and joy that were the foundations of his life.”
“Even in our profound sorrow we give thanks for a life so well lived,” he said.
Steven Gish, the author of a biography on Tutu, had told to Al Jazeera: “He was South Africa’s Martin Luther King – a Christian clergyman who worked, non-violently, for racial justice and equality. He never hated his oppressors and always believed in dialogue and appealing to people’s moral conscience.”
Poor life
Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, a town in South Africa’s Transvaal province. His father, Zachariah, was a teacher and taught at a Methodist school, while his mother was a domestic worker. The young Tutu was baptized a Methodist, but the entire family later joined the Anglican Church. When he was 12, the family moved to Johannesburg, where his mother found work as a cook in a school for the blind.
Tutu’s ambition was to become a doctor, because in his childhood days he had a bout of tuberculosis, which put him in the hospital for more than a year. This was where he intended to become a doctor. He even qualified for medical school. But his parents couldn’t afford the fees to sustain the education there. So he chose to become a teacher, especially because the Government was giving scholarships for people who wanted to become teachers.
He first studied at the Pretoria Bantu Normal College and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Africa, and entered the teaching profession. He taught high school for three years, but then he was horrified to see racial discrimination on Black students, especially the state of Black South African schools. He was more horrified when the Bantu Education Act was passed in 1953 that racially segregated the nation’s education system. To protest this, he resigned from his teaching profession. But, not long after, the Bishop of Johannesburg agreed to accept Tutu for the priesthood. Tutu later said it was because he was a Black man with a university education, a rarity in the 1950s. However, this resulted in taking up his new vocation.
By then he was married to Nomalizo Leah Shenxane, a major influence in his life; the couple celebrated 60 years of marriage by publicly renewing their wedding vows in July 2015. They have four children: a son, Trevor Thamsanqa Tutu, and three daughters, Theresa Thandeka Tutu, Naomi Nontombi Tutu and Mpho Tutu van Furth, as well as seven grandchildren.
Tumultuous time
Next, Tutu turned to the ministry in the church, because he thought it could provide “a likely means of service.” Thereafter, he studied at St. Peter’s Theological College in Johannesburg and was ordained an Anglican priest at St. Mary’s Cathedral in December 1961. To become a priest, Tutu was influenced by Bishop Trevor Huddleston and other anti-apartheid white clergymen.
The 1960s and 1970s were tumultuous times in South Africa. In March 1960, 69 people were killed in the Sharpeville Massacre, when South African police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. And next, Nelson Mandela, who was then a firebrand leading an armed wing of the African National Congress, was arrested, tried and, in 1964, sentenced to life in prison. And also, in the early ‘70s, the Government forced millions of Black people to settle in what were called “homelands.”
In spite of all these, Tutu continued his service as a priest. After serving in local churches, he went to England for religious education, where he earned a bachelor of divinity degree and a master’s in theology from King’s College in London. After returning to South Africa, he became a lecturer, especially a visiting professor at Emory University in Atlanta for two years and later became a lecturer at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And from 1972 to 1975, he served as associate director of the Theological Education Fund, travelling widely in Asia and Africa and administering scholarships for the World Council of Churches.
In 1975, he was appointed dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg and consecrated bishop of Lesotho the next year. In 1978, he became the first Black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, and began to establish the organisation as a major force in the movement against apartheid. From 1985 to 1986, he was the bishop of Johannesburg, and from 1986 to 1996, he was the archbishop of Cape Town, the most senior position in southern Africa’s Anglican hierarchy, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position.
“Never pick up a gun”
Tutu gained renown for a May 1976 letter he wrote to the Prime Minister, warning of emerging unrest. A month later Soweto exploded in violence, and more than 600 died in the uprising. All these terrorist acts enraged Tutu. He vehemently spoke out against it. But the oppressive White minority Government didn’t care about his voice. They continuously detained Black people, and established onerous laws. As the Government became increasingly oppressive, Tutu became increasingly outspoken. But he never encouraged people to take weapons against enemies.
“I will never tell someone to pick up a gun,” he once said in an interview “But I will pray for the man who picks up the gun, pray that he will be less cruel than he might otherwise have been, because he is a member of the community. We are going to have to decide: If this civil war escalates, what is our ministry going to be?”
However, politics were inherent in his religious teachings. He said in one of his parables: “We had the land, and they had the Bible. Then they said, ‘Let us pray,’ and we closed our eyes. When we opened them again, they had the land and we had the Bible. Maybe we got the better end of the deal.”
Serving for Black people
Under Bishop Tutu’s leadership, the South African Council of Churches established scholarships for Black youths and organised self-help programs in Black townships. There were also more controversial programs: Lawyers were hired to represent Black defendants on trial under the security laws, and support was provided for the families of those detained without trial. And as Bishop, he also spoke out against the establishment of tribal “homelands” and used the council as a platform to urge foreign investors to pull out of South Africa.
In 1988, two years after being named Archbishop of Cape Town, Tutu was arrested while taking an anti-apartheid petition to South Africa’s Parliament. But the tide was turning. The next year, Tutu led a 20,000-person march in Cape Town. Also in 1989, a new President, F.W. de Klerk, started easing apartheid laws. Finally, on February 11, 1990, Mandela was released from prison after 27 years.
Four years later, in 1994, Mandela would be elected President. At the time Tutu said that introducing Mandela as the country’s new President was the greatest moment of his life.
“I actually said to God, I don’t mind if I die now,” he had told to CNN.
A voice for humanity
Tutu was a humanist, and always came forward to rescue people. When anti-apartheid activists began targeting for death purported government collaborators, Archbishop Tutu several times waded into angry mobs of demonstrators to rescue alleged informers. “If you do this again,” he once scolded a crowd in nearby Kwa Thema after the murder of another alleged informer, “I will find it difficult to speak out for our liberation. We must be able, at the end of the day, to walk with our heads held high. Freedom must come, but freedom must come in the right way.”
And when Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe started to rule his country as a dictator, Tutu looked down upon him and criticised South Africa for being too soft on him.
He was instrumental in calming down the political violence that engulfed Kenya after the disputed 2007 election. There, he brokered a power-sharing deal between rival leaders Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga.
The next year, he travelled to the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders had launched reunification talks. At that time he encouraged people from both camps to back the mediation process.
He vehemently denounced the Israeli attacks on Palestinian territories. He repeatedly compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to South Africa during the apartheid regime. He also condemned the America led military invasion in Iraq. He asked former US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to admit they had erred with their “immoral” war in Iraq. There, he said that George W. Bush and Tony Blair should be “made to answer” at the International Criminal Court for their actions around the Iraq war. He also called for President Barack Obama to apologise for the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In 2007, he joined a newly formed group of mature statesmen, called The Elders, with former US President Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson and others. That same year, he led the group on its first mission to Darfur in Sudan.
Awards
Desmond Tutu is a person who won the most prestigious awards in the world. In 2009, former US President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of America’s highest civilian honours. Then, in 2012, he was awarded a $1 million grant by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for “his lifelong commitment to speaking truth to power.” The following year, he received the Templeton Prize for his “life-long work in advancing spiritual principles such as love and forgiveness which has helped to liberate people around the world.”
Most notably among the awards was 1984 Nobel Peace Prize which he won following the footsteps of his countryman, Albert Lutuli, who received the prize in 1960.
He was awarded more than 100 honorary doctorates as well.
Books
Archbishop Tutu was the author of many books, including collections of his sermons and addresses, illustrated children’s books such as “Desmond and the Very Mean Word” (2012), and forward-looking works about South Africa like “God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time” (2004), “Made for Goodness” (2010) which he wrote with his daughter Mpho, “No Future Without Forgiveness” (1999) and “God Is Not a Christian” (2011).
South Africa has produced some great humanists to the world. Desmond Mpilo Tutu would have been a person some day that people around the world would quote for the example of humanity same as Nelson Mandela.