South Africa’s Tutu: Anti-apartheid hero who never stopped fighting for ‘Rainbow Nation’

December 27 ------ Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached against the tyranny of white minority and never wavered in his fight for a fairer South Africa. “Like falling in love” is how Archbishop Desmond Tutu described voting in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, a remark that captured both his puckish humor and his profound emotions after decades fighting apartheid. Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate whose moral might permeated South African society during apartheid’s darkest hours and into the unchartered territory of new democracy, died on Sunday, December 26. He was 90.

The outspoken Tutu 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. He preached against the tyranny of white minority and even after its end, he never wavered in his fight for a fairer South Africa, calling the black political elite to account with as much feistiness as he had the white Afrikaners. In his final years, he regretted that his dream of a “Rainbow Nation” had not yet come true. On the global stage, the human rights activist spoke out across a range of topics, from Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to gay rights, climate change and assisted death – issues that cemented Tutu’s broad appeal.

Tutu “was a prophet and priest, a man of words and action”, said the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the symbolic head of Tutu’s Anglican Communion. British billionaire Richard Branson called him “a brave leader, a mischievous delight, a profound thinker, and a dear friend.” Just five feet five inches (1.7 meters) tall and with an infectious giggle, Tutu was a moral giant who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent struggle against apartheid. He used his high-profile role in the Anglican Church to highlight the plight of black South Africans. Asked on his retirement as Archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 if he had any regrets, Tutu said: “The struggle tended to make one abrasive and more than a touch self-righteous. I hope that people will forgive me any hurts I may have caused them.”

Talking and travelling tirelessly throughout the 1980s, Tutu became the face of the anti-apartheid movement abroad while many of the leaders of the rebel African National Congress (ANC), such as Nelson Mandela, were behind bars. “Our land is burning and bleeding and so I call on the international community to apply punitive sanctions against this government,” he said in 1986. Even as governments ignored the call, he helped rouse grassroots campaigns around the world that fought for an end to apartheid through economic and cultural boycotts. Former hardline white president P.W. Botha asked Tutu in a letter in March 1988 whether he was working for the kingdom of God or for the kingdom promised by the then-outlawed and now ruling ANC.

Graveside orations

Among his most painful tasks was delivering graveside orations for Black people who had died violently during the struggle against white domination. “We are tired of coming to funerals, of making speeches week after week. It is time to stop the waste of human lives,” he once said. Tutu said his stance on apartheid was moral rather than political. “It’s easier to be a Christian in South Africa than anywhere else, because the moral issues are so clear in this country,” he once told Reuters.

In February 1990, Tutu led Nelson Mandela on to a balcony at Cape Town’s City Hall overlooking a square where the ANC talisman made his first public address after 27 years in prison. He was at Mandela’s side four years later when he was sworn in as the country’s first black president. “Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humor, Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless,” is how Mandela, who died in December 2013, described his friend. While Mandela introduced South Africa to democracy, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that laid bare the terrible truths of the war against white rule. Some of the heartrending testimony moved him publicly to tears.

Tutu married Nomalizo Leah Shenxane in 1955. They had four children and several grandchildren, and homes in Cape Town and Soweto township near Johannesburg.

Source: rappler.com