I cut my political teeth on two issues – the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and the campaign against the evil that was Apartheid in South Africa. Both were formative for me in so many fundamental ways – primarily for the issues and challenges that were raised which were neither easy or straightforward.
Both were also pivotal in offering insight into the nature of political struggle and into the lives of those associated with such struggle. One of the key figures who brought his own very distinctive style and analysis to the Soth African struggle was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who sadly left us this week.
Tutu became a towering figure in the freedom struggle carrying the message of the evil roots, fierce brutality, and human consequences of the racism that was Apartheid. He became an international icon for one key strand of that struggle – a moral titan constantly insisting on tolerance, equality, justice, and a complete end to discrimination of any sort.
That very status as moral authority gave him unparalleled access and prestige largely unmatched nationally, regionally, or internationally. He was blessed with an infectious humour, a frequently mischievous manner and tone as well as by an innate humanity which he used to great effect.
Yet he remained a ferocious critic and focal point of opposition to the Apartheid regime and to its business and political justifiers and defenders worldwide. Tutu made extensive use of his status to criticise the post-Apartheid regime (suggesting it could become ‘a powder keg’) in South Africa especially that led by Jacob Zuma.
In return, many supporters of Zuma, characterised Tutu as a ‘stooge for white people’, particularly in his role in chairing South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His humanity as well as his determination in this impossible role is expertly captured in Country Of My Skull by journalist Antjie Krog (a work that brilliantly and harrowingly describes the reality of struggle).
Like all those involved, Desmond Tutu made many enemies locally and internationally especially when comparing Apartheid to ‘Stalinism’ or ‘nazism’ at the United Nations in 1988. Controversially, he strongly supported the various campaigns for sanctions branding those who opposed them as racist.
Inevitably, this earned him the opprobrium of many western leaders including those in the US and the UK (he famously locked horns with Margaret Thatcher in his role as head of the South African Council of Churches). He also advocated unequivocal non-violence which earned him strong condemnation from those supporting physical force (as did his face-to-face meetings with representatives of the South African regime).
Later in life, he also supported the struggle for LGBT rights in an often very hostile context.
When he campaigned in Ireland, his non-violence did not go down well with physical force republicans and which resulted in multiple very difficult public meetings for many of us.
Like so many other anti-Apartheid campaigners, Tutu was never in doubt that liberation would come for black South Africans. Like his friend and mentor Father Trevor Huddleston (with whom I had the immense privilege of campaigning) he insisted with certainty that Apartheid would fall ‘like a deck of cards’.
Desmond Tutu’s anger and often his rage against discrimination and injustice is eloquently illustrated in his 1984 Nobel Prize lecture. In his lecture, he spoke of universal values with direct resonance for Malta and its treatment of migrants today.
‘When will we learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized.’
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has only been partially silenced by death.