Just twenty years ago South Africa was ruled by a minority white only government who enforced the principles of the apartheid system. The country’s nearly 30 million blacks, 70% of the people, did not have the vote; could be arrested if they did not have identification; suffered strict segregation in public areas; saw their children being educated only to be labourers and suffered a policy of forced removal to wastelands the government called ‘homelands’. Not surprisingly many were living in abject poverty. All opposition was repressed: in 1960 69 blacks were killed and 190 wounded during the Sharpeville protests; in 1964 Nelson Mandela and others were sent to prison for life for campaigning against apartheid; in 1976 at least 660 young people died in the Soweto uprising; and from then on there was constant intimidation, arrests, and worse. But after years of suffering, apartheid collapsed. In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and in 1994 became the president of South Africa, a democratic republic where all had the vote. Apartheid was utterly defeated.
And at the heart of the victory over apartheid stands the church, led by the Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was he who wrote to the South African presidents, Vorster and Botha, warning them of violence if apartheid did not end; it was he who would plunge into angry street crowds to plead for calm, often saving many lives; it was he who preached at the funerals of those not saved from the violence, attended by thousands; it was he who campaigned for international companies to disinvest from South Africa and later, to the fury of the government, called for economic sanctions; it was he who in September 1989 led a march of 30,000 which convinced the country’s new leader de Klerk there had to be change; and so it was to his house that Nelson Mandela first came when released from prison; and it was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who said the final prayer at the inauguration when Mandela became president. Not only was he at the heart of the war against apartheid, he was also at the heart of the peace, presiding over the distinctly Christian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
which offered amnesty to those who confessed to human rights violations during apartheid. For any Christian leader dealing with an oppressive government, there is much to learn from this ebullient, emotional and deeply spiritual Christian.
Men or prayer are men of action
There is no doubt about his spirituality. As a young Christian, Desmond Tutu was impacted by a group of English missionary monks, the Community of the Resurrection, who gave him a sense of his own worth as a black man and above all taught him how to live the spiritual life. It was rooted in prayer, meditation, and the Eucharist and the routine was rigorous as his staff discovered when he became Archbishop of Cape Town. His alarm clock was set for 4.00 a.m. and he would have an hour for private prayer; he would then exercise and shower, and by 6.00 a.m. he was in his study for more devotional reading. At 7.30 a.m. he recited Morning Prayer with other clergy and at 8.00 a.m. there was the daily Eucharist where all staff were expected to be present. Prayer continued to punctuate his busy day. At one o’clock he went to the chapel for half an hour of private prayer, and again in the early evening for prayer with his clergy, followed again by personal prayer. Just before going to bed at about ten or eleven, the last prayers of the monastic order, Compline, were said. Tutu also fasts: every Friday till supper, and during Lent everyday till Easter. He would have a quiet day every month, and once a year a seven day silent retreat. Tutu would not compromise regarding his prayer routine. Once when African National Congress (ANC) leaders Oliver Tambo and Thambo Mbeki joined him to go to a breakfast meeting in London, Tutu insisted that the Eucharist must come first. Tutu the man of action was first Tutu the man of silence and prayer: a good lesson for all Christian leaders.
Ministry will mean personal sacrifice
Tutu’s willingness to be sacrificial in his prayer life is reflected in his willingness to accept the cost of being a Christian in the rest of his life. A bright child who wasn’t able to train as a medical doctor for lack of funds, Tutu and Leah his wife, trained as teachers, and in their early twenties both enjoyed their jobs, and were reasonably comfortable with the salary. But then in 1955 the apartheid government introduced ‘Bantu education’ a system where black children only received the most basic schooling, because their role in the country was to be cheap labour. To teach in such a system would be to affirm these racist values, and though the decision was costly, Desmond Tutu and his wife both resigned as teachers, later he wrote, ‘I just felt I couldn’t be part of this…I’m not going to be a collaborator in this nefarious scheme.’ He then trained as a priest, and his first home for his wife and three children was nothing like the house he enjoyed as a teacher: it was a converted garage with two rooms. Impressed by his intellect and aware of the need for African leaders, one of the monks from the Community of the Resurrection, Anthony Stubbs, arranged for Tutu to do further study at Kings University London where he thrived. But there was the sacrifice of being apart from his family. Later as Tutu’s ministry as a preacher and teacher developed, this sacrifice continued. Twice Tutu had to move his family against their wishes. In 1972 Tutu was back in London as a director of a Theological Fund. He was happy as he got to see a lot of Africa (48 visits to 25 countries in three years), and his family were happy putting down roots in Bromley, a leafy London suburb. It was a job for life. He had no need to move back to apartheid South Africa. But in 1974 he was invited to become the Dean of Johannesburg Cathedral. He sensed the call of God and despite the strain this put on his marriage, he went. This was the sacrificial way. Again his wife put down roots in Soweto (near to Johannesburg) and again found it very difficult when her husband was elected as the Archbishop of Cape Town – over a thousand kilometers away. As well as all this moving, as Tutu’s fame as a Christian leader and opponent to apartheid increased - in the late 70’s and 80’s he was better known than Mandela – so too did the constant travelling and threats on his life. His own view of death threats had humour: ‘I am doing God’s work, so he jolly well better look after me!’ Tutu the leader then, was a man who would choose the sacrificial path.
A brave voice that never belonged to a political party but shook a nation
Desmond Tutu is above all a Christian pastor whose first duty is to preach the Bible, administer Holy Communion and visit the sick and dying. He never believed that religious people should be politicians, saying that ‘….Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus and Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran’ proved the point. So strong was his belief over this that when Archbishop of Cape Town he banned all his priests from joining a political party. Yet, because of his Christian faith, he absolutely believed the church had a duty to speak out against injustice. He completely rejected as false the notion that Christians should have no concern with the issues facing society which were political. Once in a three hour speech to government officials who were questioning the church’s role in politics, Tutu passionately defended his right to speak out. He said the incarnation showed that ‘God…took the whole of human life seriously...Our God cares that children starve in resettlement camps…the God we worship does care that people die mysteriously in detention...I might add that if God did not care about these and similar matters, I would not worship him for he would be a totally useless God. Mercifully, he is not such a God.’ And it was on strictly theological grounds that Tutu denounced apartheid. ‘The central work of Jesus was to effect reconciliation between God and us and also between man and man. Consequently from a theological and scriptural base I will demonstrate that apartheid…is evil…unchristian and unbiblical.’ So rooted in the Scriptures, especially Amos and other minor prophets, and the church’s tradition of challenging wickedness, Tutu’s was a brave voice confronting the white rulers of South Africa. He denounced separate education, and became like an Old Testament prophet when he saw the impact of the government forcibly removing black people to ‘homelands’. He visited one of these settlements and met a little girl whose widowed mother had no support. She told him they borrowed food, Tutu then asked, ‘What happens if you can’t borrow food?’ Her reply was, ‘We drink water to fill our stomachs’. Tutu was broken by this answer and began a campaign of righteous anger against government policy. Such was his fury that he likened these forced removals to the Nazis ‘final solution’ for the Jews. ‘It is not gas chambers we are talking about. But if you remove people…and you dump them in the middle of nowhere…are you not as guilty as if you had pulled a trigger?’ The white government hated his criticisms, but the world respected his outspokenness and in 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize which he
said he accepted for the ‘mothers who sit a railway stations to try to eke out an existence selling potatoes…for fathers sitting in a single sex hostel…for the 3.5 million of our people who have been uprooted and dumped as if you were rubbish.’
Though Tutu was angry in his denunciations of apartheid, his campaign was always full of hope and optimism because of his Christian faith and sense of church history. In 1980 he told a famous BBC journalist, John Humphreys, that Nelson Mandela, then languishing in prison, would be the president of South Africa in five to ten years. Humphreys thought he was being optimistic. ‘Brother’ replied Tutu, ‘The Christian faith is hopelessly optimistic because it’s based on the faith of a guy who died on a Friday and everybody said it was utterly and completely hopeless – ignominious defeat. And Sunday He rose.’ His sense of church history gave him further confidence that oppressive governments that oppose the church were doomed. This is what he told the South African Council of Churches in 1982
‘You (the government) are mere mortals. You are not gods. Many like yourselves tried to take on the church in the past when they too thought they were unassailable. Nero thought so, Hitler thought so, Mussolini thought so, so did Idi Amin and Bokassa . Where are they today? They bit the dust quite comprehensively. You, like they if you don’t repent and mend your ways, will end up as the flotsam and jetsam of history…but the church of God will continue.’
These were brave words to say to a government that had no qualms about eliminating its enemies, but they have proved true. The church of God in South Africa has continued; apartheid has ‘bit the dust quite comprehensively’, and its then leader, Pik Botha, has been found guilty of moving the government into ‘criminality.’ Tutu then was a brave voice speaking out against apartheid and now passes on the baton to other Christian leaders who, rooted in the same Scriptures, and belonging to the same church, need to challenge unjust rulers who oppose Christianity and warn them they will be the ‘flotsam and jetsam of history’ if they do not repent.
Among the people, pastor to all
A gifted communicator in six languages, Desmond Tutu is tactile, warm, full of laughter, very much a pastor. Whenever he heard of violence, Tutu would cancel his engagements and go to the affected area to pray and weep with the people. Once he found hundreds of bruised and bloodied protesters had taken refuge in his cathedral in Cape Town and his first instinct was to be a pastor and encourage them: ‘Say to yourselves, ‘God loves me, In your heart, God love me, God loves me…I am of infinite value to God…God created me for freedom….Now, straighten up your shoulders…like people who are born for freedom. Lovely, lovely, lovely.’ Sometimes the situation was very tense and often Tutu managed to bring calm to avert further death. Once after conducting the funeral of four young people shot by police in the Dudeza township Tutu’s team came across a frenzied crowd attacking a man accused of being an informer. They had overturned his car and set it alight, and had doused him with petrol and were going to throw him on to the burning vehicle. Tutu waded into this storm and with the bloodied man clinging to his legs, with tears pleaded with the crowd and got the man to the safety of his car. They then beat on the top of the car, asking why they could not kill the informer. Tutu bluntly said he was their leader and he would not allow them to use the same methods as the ‘system’ that had killed their friends. One of the tensest moments in South Africa’s history was when the popular black leader Chris Hani was murdered by a white fanatic. The 120,000 gathered for his funeral were seething with hate and if their leaders had given the orders civil war would have been unleashed. Tutu’s handling of the situation was masterly. Instead of preaching revenge, which is what non Christian leaders often do, he preached hope – ‘We demand democracy and freedom. When? (‘Now!’). We are the rainbow people of God! We are unstoppable! We are moving to freedom and nobody can stop us (Whistles and cheers). For God is on our side’ And then he got the tens of thousands to raise their hands to chant together ‘We will be free! (We will be free!).
Here then is something else for Christian leaders to learn from Tutu’s life: to be among the people, to be with them when they are suffering, and to point them to the higher law of love and the greater hope of the resurrection.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation – ‘a proper confrontation’
In the run up to the handover of power to the blacks South Africa was a country scarred by human right atrocities. Not surprisingly there were diametrically opposed views on this subject. Thabo Mbeki of the ANC, speaking for many blacks, bluntly said that the new government should ‘catch the b******s and hang them’ . The whites on the other hand said there should be a general amnesty, and their army generals made it clear to Nelson Mandela that if there was any threat of trials regarding the work of the security forces then he could forget peaceful elections. In other words there would be a full scale civil war. Into this extremely sensitive conundrum stepped Desmond Tutu with a distinctly Christian answer. The state should hold out the offer of forgiveness, but Tutu insisted there could not be true reconciliation, ‘without a proper confrontation’. This meant that those responsible for human rights atrocities had to first confess in a court like setting; then the state would administer forgiveness; and finally if possible, there should be some restitution. As he said to the political leaders, ‘Let us go the Christian way…’, and that is what happened. After the election of 1994 a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ was set up to investigate ‘gross violation of human rights – killing, abduction, torture, and severe ill treatment’ from 1960 – 1990.’ The Commission was authorized to hear from victims and survivors, and also from the accused, and if they came forward grant amnesty. A deadline was set after which if the accused did not come forward, they would face normal prosecution.
The task was truly monumental – and without precedent in modern history. And the man chosen to lead the Commission, which employed over 300 staff, was Desmond Tutu. Leading from the front he brought his customary energy and humour to the job. And his emotion: once when hearing from an elderly man how he was hung upside down and spun around Tutu put his head in his hands and shook with tears. He also brought a very distinctive Christian feel to the proceedings. Some in the government wanted them to be religiously neutral, but Tutu ignored this. He insisted on wearing the purple cloth of a Christian bishop and was not able to just keep silence as some wanted at the beginning of meetings to show respect for victims. Tutu without any shyness prayed to God for help. The driving concern of the Commission was also distinctly Christian. It was not to implement vengeance, so often the cry in other countries, but ‘restorative justice’ where ‘the central concern is not retribution or punishment but the healing of breaches…the restoration of broken relationships.’ Throughout Tutu kept the emphasis on forgiveness and would high-light stories of those like Babalwa Mhlauli whose father was murdered. She told the Commission, ‘We do want to forgive, but we do not know whom to forgive.’ Or there was the story of an old black lady meeting the Afrikaner who had killed her husband and sons. For restitution this is what she asked: ‘I love to cook, but now I have nobody to cook for. So all I ask if that you come to my home once a month so I can cook a meal for you.’ As the hearings were televised, all of South Africa heard these moving testimonies.
While the final 2,700 page report published by the Commission in 1998 had its critics, nevertheless it largely achieved what it set out to do: to bring some measure of healing to the country’s past. And crucial to this achievement was Desmond Tutu, as his senior assistant acknowledged: ‘I don’t think the Commission could have survived without the presence and person and leadership of Desmond Tutu.’ Here is the final lesson for Christians: to be involved in this ‘proper confrontation’ involved in true reconciliation, not to leave issues festering in secret, but to encourage confession and forgiveness, and to have the courage to believe that this distinctly Christian approach is not just valid for the church, but for all of society.
Conclusion – much to learn
A man of prayer, but extremely active; a man of personal sacrifice, who rose to great fulfillment; a man whose voice shook a nation, but who eschewed party politics; a man who spent hours alone, but was always among his people; and a man who believed in reconciliation, through ‘proper confrontation’, Christians have much to learn from Desmond Tutu. His faith in Jesus Christ propelled him to challenge a system he called evil and unbiblical; campaign successfully for its overthrow; and then bring some measure of reconciliation to its wounded people. Perhaps more than any other figure in recent history he has shown how a Christian can belong a hundred per cent to Christ and His church, and unashamedly bring the values of Christ to all of society. May readers of this article pray that God would rise up many Desmond Tutus for the church and the country of Iran.
The source for the information of Desmond Tutu in this article is from his authorized biography, ‘Rabble Rouser For Peace’ by John Allen.
And at the heart of the victory over apartheid stands the church, led by the Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was he who wrote to the South African presidents, Vorster and Botha, warning them of violence if apartheid did not end; it was he who would plunge into angry street crowds to plead for calm, often saving many lives; it was he who preached at the funerals of those not saved from the violence, attended by thousands; it was he who campaigned for international companies to disinvest from South Africa and later, to the fury of the government, called for economic sanctions; it was he who in September 1989 led a march of 30,000 which convinced the country’s new leader de Klerk there had to be change; and so it was to his house that Nelson Mandela first came when released from prison; and it was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who said the final prayer at the inauguration when Mandela became president. Not only was he at the heart of the war against apartheid, he was also at the heart of the peace, presiding over the distinctly Christian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
which offered amnesty to those who confessed to human rights violations during apartheid. For any Christian leader dealing with an oppressive government, there is much to learn from this ebullient, emotional and deeply spiritual Christian.
Men or prayer are men of action
There is no doubt about his spirituality. As a young Christian, Desmond Tutu was impacted by a group of English missionary monks, the Community of the Resurrection, who gave him a sense of his own worth as a black man and above all taught him how to live the spiritual life. It was rooted in prayer, meditation, and the Eucharist and the routine was rigorous as his staff discovered when he became Archbishop of Cape Town. His alarm clock was set for 4.00 a.m. and he would have an hour for private prayer; he would then exercise and shower, and by 6.00 a.m. he was in his study for more devotional reading. At 7.30 a.m. he recited Morning Prayer with other clergy and at 8.00 a.m. there was the daily Eucharist where all staff were expected to be present. Prayer continued to punctuate his busy day. At one o’clock he went to the chapel for half an hour of private prayer, and again in the early evening for prayer with his clergy, followed again by personal prayer. Just before going to bed at about ten or eleven, the last prayers of the monastic order, Compline, were said. Tutu also fasts: every Friday till supper, and during Lent everyday till Easter. He would have a quiet day every month, and once a year a seven day silent retreat. Tutu would not compromise regarding his prayer routine. Once when African National Congress (ANC) leaders Oliver Tambo and Thambo Mbeki joined him to go to a breakfast meeting in London, Tutu insisted that the Eucharist must come first. Tutu the man of action was first Tutu the man of silence and prayer: a good lesson for all Christian leaders.
Ministry will mean personal sacrifice
Tutu’s willingness to be sacrificial in his prayer life is reflected in his willingness to accept the cost of being a Christian in the rest of his life. A bright child who wasn’t able to train as a medical doctor for lack of funds, Tutu and Leah his wife, trained as teachers, and in their early twenties both enjoyed their jobs, and were reasonably comfortable with the salary. But then in 1955 the apartheid government introduced ‘Bantu education’ a system where black children only received the most basic schooling, because their role in the country was to be cheap labour. To teach in such a system would be to affirm these racist values, and though the decision was costly, Desmond Tutu and his wife both resigned as teachers, later he wrote, ‘I just felt I couldn’t be part of this…I’m not going to be a collaborator in this nefarious scheme.’ He then trained as a priest, and his first home for his wife and three children was nothing like the house he enjoyed as a teacher: it was a converted garage with two rooms. Impressed by his intellect and aware of the need for African leaders, one of the monks from the Community of the Resurrection, Anthony Stubbs, arranged for Tutu to do further study at Kings University London where he thrived. But there was the sacrifice of being apart from his family. Later as Tutu’s ministry as a preacher and teacher developed, this sacrifice continued. Twice Tutu had to move his family against their wishes. In 1972 Tutu was back in London as a director of a Theological Fund. He was happy as he got to see a lot of Africa (48 visits to 25 countries in three years), and his family were happy putting down roots in Bromley, a leafy London suburb. It was a job for life. He had no need to move back to apartheid South Africa. But in 1974 he was invited to become the Dean of Johannesburg Cathedral. He sensed the call of God and despite the strain this put on his marriage, he went. This was the sacrificial way. Again his wife put down roots in Soweto (near to Johannesburg) and again found it very difficult when her husband was elected as the Archbishop of Cape Town – over a thousand kilometers away. As well as all this moving, as Tutu’s fame as a Christian leader and opponent to apartheid increased - in the late 70’s and 80’s he was better known than Mandela – so too did the constant travelling and threats on his life. His own view of death threats had humour: ‘I am doing God’s work, so he jolly well better look after me!’ Tutu the leader then, was a man who would choose the sacrificial path.
A brave voice that never belonged to a political party but shook a nation
Desmond Tutu is above all a Christian pastor whose first duty is to preach the Bible, administer Holy Communion and visit the sick and dying. He never believed that religious people should be politicians, saying that ‘….Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus and Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran’ proved the point. So strong was his belief over this that when Archbishop of Cape Town he banned all his priests from joining a political party. Yet, because of his Christian faith, he absolutely believed the church had a duty to speak out against injustice. He completely rejected as false the notion that Christians should have no concern with the issues facing society which were political. Once in a three hour speech to government officials who were questioning the church’s role in politics, Tutu passionately defended his right to speak out. He said the incarnation showed that ‘God…took the whole of human life seriously...Our God cares that children starve in resettlement camps…the God we worship does care that people die mysteriously in detention...I might add that if God did not care about these and similar matters, I would not worship him for he would be a totally useless God. Mercifully, he is not such a God.’ And it was on strictly theological grounds that Tutu denounced apartheid. ‘The central work of Jesus was to effect reconciliation between God and us and also between man and man. Consequently from a theological and scriptural base I will demonstrate that apartheid…is evil…unchristian and unbiblical.’ So rooted in the Scriptures, especially Amos and other minor prophets, and the church’s tradition of challenging wickedness, Tutu’s was a brave voice confronting the white rulers of South Africa. He denounced separate education, and became like an Old Testament prophet when he saw the impact of the government forcibly removing black people to ‘homelands’. He visited one of these settlements and met a little girl whose widowed mother had no support. She told him they borrowed food, Tutu then asked, ‘What happens if you can’t borrow food?’ Her reply was, ‘We drink water to fill our stomachs’. Tutu was broken by this answer and began a campaign of righteous anger against government policy. Such was his fury that he likened these forced removals to the Nazis ‘final solution’ for the Jews. ‘It is not gas chambers we are talking about. But if you remove people…and you dump them in the middle of nowhere…are you not as guilty as if you had pulled a trigger?’ The white government hated his criticisms, but the world respected his outspokenness and in 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize which he
said he accepted for the ‘mothers who sit a railway stations to try to eke out an existence selling potatoes…for fathers sitting in a single sex hostel…for the 3.5 million of our people who have been uprooted and dumped as if you were rubbish.’
Though Tutu was angry in his denunciations of apartheid, his campaign was always full of hope and optimism because of his Christian faith and sense of church history. In 1980 he told a famous BBC journalist, John Humphreys, that Nelson Mandela, then languishing in prison, would be the president of South Africa in five to ten years. Humphreys thought he was being optimistic. ‘Brother’ replied Tutu, ‘The Christian faith is hopelessly optimistic because it’s based on the faith of a guy who died on a Friday and everybody said it was utterly and completely hopeless – ignominious defeat. And Sunday He rose.’ His sense of church history gave him further confidence that oppressive governments that oppose the church were doomed. This is what he told the South African Council of Churches in 1982
‘You (the government) are mere mortals. You are not gods. Many like yourselves tried to take on the church in the past when they too thought they were unassailable. Nero thought so, Hitler thought so, Mussolini thought so, so did Idi Amin and Bokassa . Where are they today? They bit the dust quite comprehensively. You, like they if you don’t repent and mend your ways, will end up as the flotsam and jetsam of history…but the church of God will continue.’
These were brave words to say to a government that had no qualms about eliminating its enemies, but they have proved true. The church of God in South Africa has continued; apartheid has ‘bit the dust quite comprehensively’, and its then leader, Pik Botha, has been found guilty of moving the government into ‘criminality.’ Tutu then was a brave voice speaking out against apartheid and now passes on the baton to other Christian leaders who, rooted in the same Scriptures, and belonging to the same church, need to challenge unjust rulers who oppose Christianity and warn them they will be the ‘flotsam and jetsam of history’ if they do not repent.
Among the people, pastor to all
A gifted communicator in six languages, Desmond Tutu is tactile, warm, full of laughter, very much a pastor. Whenever he heard of violence, Tutu would cancel his engagements and go to the affected area to pray and weep with the people. Once he found hundreds of bruised and bloodied protesters had taken refuge in his cathedral in Cape Town and his first instinct was to be a pastor and encourage them: ‘Say to yourselves, ‘God loves me, In your heart, God love me, God loves me…I am of infinite value to God…God created me for freedom….Now, straighten up your shoulders…like people who are born for freedom. Lovely, lovely, lovely.’ Sometimes the situation was very tense and often Tutu managed to bring calm to avert further death. Once after conducting the funeral of four young people shot by police in the Dudeza township Tutu’s team came across a frenzied crowd attacking a man accused of being an informer. They had overturned his car and set it alight, and had doused him with petrol and were going to throw him on to the burning vehicle. Tutu waded into this storm and with the bloodied man clinging to his legs, with tears pleaded with the crowd and got the man to the safety of his car. They then beat on the top of the car, asking why they could not kill the informer. Tutu bluntly said he was their leader and he would not allow them to use the same methods as the ‘system’ that had killed their friends. One of the tensest moments in South Africa’s history was when the popular black leader Chris Hani was murdered by a white fanatic. The 120,000 gathered for his funeral were seething with hate and if their leaders had given the orders civil war would have been unleashed. Tutu’s handling of the situation was masterly. Instead of preaching revenge, which is what non Christian leaders often do, he preached hope – ‘We demand democracy and freedom. When? (‘Now!’). We are the rainbow people of God! We are unstoppable! We are moving to freedom and nobody can stop us (Whistles and cheers). For God is on our side’ And then he got the tens of thousands to raise their hands to chant together ‘We will be free! (We will be free!).
Here then is something else for Christian leaders to learn from Tutu’s life: to be among the people, to be with them when they are suffering, and to point them to the higher law of love and the greater hope of the resurrection.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation – ‘a proper confrontation’
In the run up to the handover of power to the blacks South Africa was a country scarred by human right atrocities. Not surprisingly there were diametrically opposed views on this subject. Thabo Mbeki of the ANC, speaking for many blacks, bluntly said that the new government should ‘catch the b******s and hang them’ . The whites on the other hand said there should be a general amnesty, and their army generals made it clear to Nelson Mandela that if there was any threat of trials regarding the work of the security forces then he could forget peaceful elections. In other words there would be a full scale civil war. Into this extremely sensitive conundrum stepped Desmond Tutu with a distinctly Christian answer. The state should hold out the offer of forgiveness, but Tutu insisted there could not be true reconciliation, ‘without a proper confrontation’. This meant that those responsible for human rights atrocities had to first confess in a court like setting; then the state would administer forgiveness; and finally if possible, there should be some restitution. As he said to the political leaders, ‘Let us go the Christian way…’, and that is what happened. After the election of 1994 a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ was set up to investigate ‘gross violation of human rights – killing, abduction, torture, and severe ill treatment’ from 1960 – 1990.’ The Commission was authorized to hear from victims and survivors, and also from the accused, and if they came forward grant amnesty. A deadline was set after which if the accused did not come forward, they would face normal prosecution.
The task was truly monumental – and without precedent in modern history. And the man chosen to lead the Commission, which employed over 300 staff, was Desmond Tutu. Leading from the front he brought his customary energy and humour to the job. And his emotion: once when hearing from an elderly man how he was hung upside down and spun around Tutu put his head in his hands and shook with tears. He also brought a very distinctive Christian feel to the proceedings. Some in the government wanted them to be religiously neutral, but Tutu ignored this. He insisted on wearing the purple cloth of a Christian bishop and was not able to just keep silence as some wanted at the beginning of meetings to show respect for victims. Tutu without any shyness prayed to God for help. The driving concern of the Commission was also distinctly Christian. It was not to implement vengeance, so often the cry in other countries, but ‘restorative justice’ where ‘the central concern is not retribution or punishment but the healing of breaches…the restoration of broken relationships.’ Throughout Tutu kept the emphasis on forgiveness and would high-light stories of those like Babalwa Mhlauli whose father was murdered. She told the Commission, ‘We do want to forgive, but we do not know whom to forgive.’ Or there was the story of an old black lady meeting the Afrikaner who had killed her husband and sons. For restitution this is what she asked: ‘I love to cook, but now I have nobody to cook for. So all I ask if that you come to my home once a month so I can cook a meal for you.’ As the hearings were televised, all of South Africa heard these moving testimonies.
While the final 2,700 page report published by the Commission in 1998 had its critics, nevertheless it largely achieved what it set out to do: to bring some measure of healing to the country’s past. And crucial to this achievement was Desmond Tutu, as his senior assistant acknowledged: ‘I don’t think the Commission could have survived without the presence and person and leadership of Desmond Tutu.’ Here is the final lesson for Christians: to be involved in this ‘proper confrontation’ involved in true reconciliation, not to leave issues festering in secret, but to encourage confession and forgiveness, and to have the courage to believe that this distinctly Christian approach is not just valid for the church, but for all of society.
Conclusion – much to learn
A man of prayer, but extremely active; a man of personal sacrifice, who rose to great fulfillment; a man whose voice shook a nation, but who eschewed party politics; a man who spent hours alone, but was always among his people; and a man who believed in reconciliation, through ‘proper confrontation’, Christians have much to learn from Desmond Tutu. His faith in Jesus Christ propelled him to challenge a system he called evil and unbiblical; campaign successfully for its overthrow; and then bring some measure of reconciliation to its wounded people. Perhaps more than any other figure in recent history he has shown how a Christian can belong a hundred per cent to Christ and His church, and unashamedly bring the values of Christ to all of society. May readers of this article pray that God would rise up many Desmond Tutus for the church and the country of Iran.
The source for the information of Desmond Tutu in this article is from his authorized biography, ‘Rabble Rouser For Peace’ by John Allen.
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