INTRODUCTION

Desmond Mpilo Tutu dedicated his life to the non-violent fight against apartheid, a peaceful transition of South African society to a future of democracy and equality after the end of the regime of segregation. The search for truth and the commitment to reconciliation between white and Black South Africans were central to his work.

THE STORY

Desmond Tutu (*1931)

Forgiveness and Reconciliation – Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the fight against apartheid in South Africa

“Forgiveness is the only way out of the trap,
where injustice holds us imprisoned.”

Formative years

Desmond Tutu was born on 7 October 1933 in the town of Klerksdorp, Transvaal. At that time South Africa was already on the way to becoming a state based on injustice with statutory segregation. Tutu’s early life was marked by the racial inequalities of apartheid as he belonged to a group denied basic respect by the ruling minority because of the colour of their skin.

This experience of humiliation and exclusion had a profound effect on him as is shown by a childhood memory of an encounter with a white vicar who greeted his mother in a completely normal way in the street. For Desmond Tutu this personal gesture was so exceptional that decades later, he described this event as a defining moment. Above all, this degradation could not have been a matter of nature,  nor could it have been God’s will, if a white priest was able to rise above these forms of exclusion. And this experience later led to the realisation that the Christian faith can be a powerful tool for overcoming inequality.

Desmond Tutu had a complex relationship with his father Zachariah Tutu who was headmaster of a school for Black children in Klerksdorp. The relationship was strained by his father’s heavy drinking and violent behaviour towards Desmond Tutu’s mother Aleatha while he was too weak to protect her. It was very difficult for Desmond Tutu especially as his father could also be really kind and caring. Later in life Desmond Tutu realised that his father was sometimes very hurt and overworked and suffered his whole life. At the age of 87 Desmond Tutu would have loved to tell his father, who had passed away many years previously, that he forgave him. The memory of the feeling of being helpless stayed with him for many years.[1]

In 1945 the family moved to Sophiatown, a town north-west of Johannesburg. His father had become the headmaster of a high school for Black pupils which Desmond then attended. He was now fourteen years old and had tuberculosis, a sickness from which he recovered very slowly. After this experience he wanted to study medicine.

In Sophiatown he also met Father Trevor Huddleson (1913-1998), a British Anglican Bishop who worked as a missionary in the townships and became involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1950s.[2] Huddleston did not only introduce Desmond Tutu to English literature but also provided him with a large number of books while he was ill and also had a great influence on his religious development. The Tutu family had become members of the Anglican Church in 1943 and after he recovered from tuberculosis Desmond became a server at Father Huddleston’s services. When the apartheid laws were introduced in the early fifties, Father Huddleston called for passive resistance against the regime and in the following years he was a key figure in initiating the international boycott of South African goods.[3] Huddleston was the first white person to receive the Isitwalandwe award, the highest honour bestowed by the African National Congress (ANC) for exceptional service to the liberation struggle. He argued that apartheid was not merely a political policy but a heresy and a fundamental violation of Christian values.[4] Desmond Tutu also said that his peaceful fight for equality, justice and reconciliation was based on Christian values.

Desmond Tutu was, however, not able to study medicine. His family could not afford to pay the expensive university fees. Instead, he followed in his father’s footsteps and studied to be a teacher. From 1954 he taught at the high school he used to attend in Sophiatown and in 1955 he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was an inspiring teacher who encouraged his pupils to do well at school and overcome the fight against social injustice.[5]

But from the early 1950s apartheid with its segregation laws was present in all spheres of life, including education. The Bantu Education Act  of 1953 [6] was a cornerstone apartheid law in South Africa designed to enforce racial segregation and inequality in schooling. It created a separate, inferior curriculum for Black students, deliberately restricting them to manual labour and lower-level positions. It denied Black people access to the same educational opportunities and resources enjoyed by white South Africans. Desmond Tutu worked as a teacher for three years under these difficult conditions but in 1956 he resigned from his position as a high school teacher as a protest against the inferior curriculum for Black students designed to limit their educational opportunities. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 stopped Desmond Tutu’s efforts to provide equitable education to Black South African students and thus give them the opportunity to improve their lives, increase their self-confidence and the courage to demand equality.

The fight against apartheid

Father Trevor Huddleston was a profound role model, mentor, and early inspiration for Desmond Tutu, playing a pivotal role in Tutu’s decision to enter the priesthood. In 1958 Desmond Tutu was admitted to St. Peter’s Theological College in Johannesburg whose principal at that time was Trevor Huddleston.  In 1960 Desmond Tutu was ordained there as a priest.[7] Huddleston helped Desmond Tutu receive a bursary and scholarship to study at King’s College, London from 1962 to 1966 where he completed a Master of Theology degree. The years he spent in London living outside the restrictions of South African apartheid helped shape his anti-apartheid philosophy. In London white people regarded him as an equal and he was treated with respect. There was still racism in public life in the UK but in the multi-ethnic capital of the Commonwealth Desmond Tutu experienced equal legal status and respect irrespective of the colour of someone’s skin. Over the course of these four years, Desmond Tutu developed his vision of a new “Rainbow Nation of South Africa”, a nation characterised by peaceful coexistence and mutual respect among its various ethnic groups.

Following his return from London Desmond Tutu taught at the Federal Theological Seminary in Alice, a town in the Eastern Cape he also campaigned for the peaceful abolition of apartheid and a non-violent transition to a free, democratic society based on equality whilst lecturing in theology at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.  Due to the fact that Desmond Tutu always advocated non-violence and his links to the Anglican Church in Europe, Desmond Tutu – who was never himself a member of the ANC and also condemned violence by opponents of apartheid – was a difficult target for the regime to attack. He increasingly became the “voice of the voiceless”[8] in South Africa and, alongside the imprisoned ANC leader Nelson Mandela, became a symbolic figure in the struggle against racial segregation. The two men had a long-standing friendship. Tutu had always campaigned for Mandela’s release[9].

After six years in South Africa Desmond Tutu returned to London in 1972 where, from 1972 to 1975, he served as the Associate Director for the Theological Education Fund (TEF) of the World Council of Churches (WCC). This enabled him to raise the fight against apartheid in South Africa to an international level. In 1975 he returned to South Africa where he became the first Black South African to be appointed as the Anglican Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. In 1978 Desmond Tutu became the first Black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC). This position entailed a great deal of foreign travel which Desmond Tutu used to push for an international economic boycott of the apartheid regime.[10]

Nobel Peace Prize

“I would not have received the Nobel Peace Prize if I were not against all forms of oppression, injustice, and violence,

and had not been committed to a non-violent struggle for a free, democratic and just South Africa”.[11]

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984 significantly elevated his international profile, transforming him into a globally recognized symbol of the non-violent struggle against apartheid. Desmond Tutu’s acceptance speech for the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize is remembered as a powerful and evocative condemnation of South Africa’s apartheid regime.[12] As a key figure in the nonviolent struggle for human rights, his address served to rally global conscience against institutionalised racism. At the same time he warned that South Africa faced a perpetual spiral of violence and revenge if the apartheid regime did not end.

Desmond Tutu’s international lectures and advocacy were central to making the world aware of the brutality of apartheid, transforming him into a global voice for justice and bringing significant international pressure on the South African government which, during the Cold War, was supported by many states in the west.

His firm commitment to non-violent protest and his, at times, outspoken criticism of some ANC tactics made him more acceptable to Western governments and after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even the South African government could no longer ignore Desmond Tutu who, in 1986, was elected as Archbishop of Capetown (until 1996). His firm commitment to a non-violent end to apartheid was a cornerstone of his activism and served to mobilise a growing segment of the white population against the South African regime and he increasingly became a central figure of resistance and civil disobedience for the Black population.

On 1 February 1990 President Frederik Willem de Klerk (who was born in 1936) announced the end of apartheid. Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), the Leader of the ANC, who in 1964 had been sentenced to life imprisonment, was already free. The East-West Conflict had come to an end and South Africa was becoming increasingly isolated and facing economic problems and the high costs of maintaining the suppression of the majority of the population. Like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu had always been a staunch advocate for reconciliation and  demanded equal rights for all South Africans. Both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were instrumental in the peaceful transition from apartheid to a multiracial democracy in South Africa. Towards the end of his Nobel Prize lecture in 1984, he appealed to the world:

“Unless we work assiduously so that all of God’s children, our brothers and sisters, members of our one human family, all will enjoy basic human rights, the right to a fulfilled life, the right of movement, of work, the freedom to be fully human, with a humanity measured by nothing less than the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself, then we are on the road inexorably to self-destruction, we are not far from global suicide; and yet it could be so different.”[13]

These words did not only refer to the human rights situation in South Africa in the 1980s but are and will remain global issues of peace, justice and humanity.

South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) was established in 1996 by Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa from 1994 to 1997, to investigate gross human rights violations committed during the apartheid era. The Commission, which was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was established to help heal the nation and contribute to peaceful transition from the violence of apartheid to a democracy based on the principle of equality. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was heavily influenced by Chile’s National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation established in 1990 which documented human rights abuses committed during the military dictatorship from 1973 -1990 under dictator Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006).

The fate of murdered and disappeared individuals was to be uncovered. Moreover measures were proposed to prevent the repetition of human rights violations. The Commission did not differentiate between crimes committed by the regime and acts of violence carried out by members of the ANC liberation movement.

On 29 October 1998, after almost three years’ work, Desmond Tutu formally presented the almost 4,500-page long report, 1,000 pages of which contained the names of victims of the apartheid regime. The Commission was not a tribunal. Its primary purpose was to uncover the historical truth and document gross human rights violations committed since March 1960. The TRC was empowered to grant amnesty to perpetrators of politically motivated crimes on condition that they made a full and truthful disclosure of their actions. The provision for amnesty in exchange for admissions of guilt was deeply controversial, creating a tense balance between justice and reconciliation. There was no general amnesty. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), placed the rights, healing, and dignity of victims and their families at the absolute centre of the Commission’s work. He argued that forgiveness, not revenge, was the only way to move forward. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a vital catalyst for a peaceful transition to a new, democratic society. South Africa’s reconciliation process remains an incomplete, ongoing project. While the end of apartheid established a democratic framework, the process is hindered by extreme wealth disparities. Economic progress for Black South Africans has advanced only very slightly in the past two decades. Not many have ever received compensation or reparations and amnesties have been heavily criticised.[14]

Desmond Tutu was a pivotal moral force in preventing South Africa from descending into cyclical violence and retribution following the fall of apartheid. His unwavering belief in human rights and the power of forgiveness was indeed a cornerstone of his life’s work.

The formal laws of apartheid in South Africa were overcome and replaced by a democratic constitution guaranteeing legal equality. There are still huge economic and social disparities, there are high crime rates and the wounds caused by apartheid are unhealed. The concept of the “Rainbow Nation” has increasingly been viewed by many Black South Africans as an unfulfilled promise.

The African National Congress (ANC) has been the ruling party of South Africa since the country’s first multiracial democratic election in 1994, and Nelson Mandela served as its first Black president from 1994 to 1999.

After 24 years in government the African National Congress (ANC) leadership is facing severe criticism.  Desmond Tutu was indeed one of the most prominent and vocal moral critics of the ANC. He had a  bitter clash with Nelson Mandela’s successor, former President Thabo Mbeki, President 1999-2008, (born 18 June 1942) regarding dictator Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe (born in 1942, president from 1987-2017). Archbishop Desmond Tutu heavily criticized South African President Thabo Mbeki over his “quiet diplomacy” approach toward former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Tutu actively condemned Mugabe’s authoritarian rule, human rights abuses, and the economic destruction of Zimbabwe, and frequently urged Mbeki to take a firmer, public stance against the regime. Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered a stinging critique of the ANC government in 2004. He accused the administration under President Thabo Mbeki of abandoning the poor, warning that South Africa was “sitting on a powder keg” of poverty and enriching a small Black  elite.

Jacob Zuma (born in 1942) followed Thabo Mbeki as President of South Africa, although there was a brief interim presidency between them. In 2018 he stepped down following numerous accusations of corruption and personal enrichment. The South African government, led by the African National Congress, effectively denied entry visas to the Dalai Lama on three occasions between 2008 and 2013, also on the occasion of Desmond Tutu’s 80^th birthday in 2011. Not only Desmond Tutu believed that the South African government was heavily pressured by its diplomatic and economic ties to China.[15] Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “I am ashamed to call this lickspittle bunch my government”. He publicly stated that he felt no longer represented by the South African government, specifically the ruling ANC.[16] Tutu warned the ruling party: “We will pray, as we prayed for the downfall of the apartheid government, we will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us.”

When the Dalai Lama faced entry visa delays and denials for South Africa, his representatives and the Office of Tibet issued statements condemning the actions. The Office of the Dalai Lama consistently affirmed that the Dalai Lama travels all over the world and stands for peace and freedom. His office highlighted that the government was “profoundly disrespectful” and that Pretoria found it “inconvenient” to grant his visas. His Holiness decided to cancel his visit to South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s commitment to human rights, equality, and justice was rooted in the deepest conviction which he advocated unconditionally.

Author: Dr. Christian Ritz

Translation: Patricia van den Brink

Contact: info@fritz-bauer-forum.de

Links

http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/
(Official website of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission)

https://www.sahistory.org.za/
(SAHO – South African History Online. Non-Profit Organisation)

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/home
(Politicsweb – News and background from South Africa)

http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/
(Website of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg)

http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/
(Website of the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre, with links to archives and document collections)

https://www.nelsonmandela.org/
(Homepage of the Nelson Mandela Foundation)

http://www.tutufoundationuk.org/
(Homepage of the British Tutu Foundation)

http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/
(Website of the US-based Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation)

http://www.bpb.de/politik/hintergrund-aktuell/279012/bericht-der-wahrheitskommission
(Federal Agency for Civic Education on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa)

https://web.archive.org/web/20070213032334/http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,10,1763
(Desmond Tutu’s speech to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, containing fundamental criticism of the ANC government’s policies, with further links to Desmond Tutu’s speeches)

Footnotes