Desmond Tutu, who is died at the age of 90, brought about the most difficult time in South Africa’s tragic transition from apartheid to democracy. Throughout the turmoil and beyond, the devout Anglican was revered as a beacon of sincerity, conviction, integration and good morals.
Tutu was pushed into politics in the last decade of white supremacy for lack of other black leaders. Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress allies were in prison or slavery in the 1980’s, when it began to dawn on the white supremacist government that change was needed, by any means.
His actions were as spiritual as the principles. And his speech – a mixture of humor, humanity and anger – was as moving and effective at a political funeral in a football stadium as on a church altar.
In 1984, Tutu’s moral leadership and explicit condemnation of violence by any group made him a South African. second Nobel Peace Prize, after ANC leader Albert Luthuli in 1960. Two years later he was elected archbishop of Cape Town, a fish he used to intensify his opposition to the dictatorial regime PW Botha.
In 1994 it was Tutu who coined the term “Rainbow Nation”, which Mandela received to help bring a divided world together. But the “Arch”, as he came to be known, wasted no time in establishing his independent ideology in the new democracy, opposing the ANC in its early years of dominating its deceptive ways.
By 1999, when Mandela stepped down five years later, Tutu gained moral authority, leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the late 1990s. decades of human rights abuses. It then offered pardon to the perpetrators if their wrongdoing was seen as politically motivated. The committee will set an example for developing countries around the world.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on October 7 1931, in Klerksdorp in the Transvaal, and attended Johannesburg Bantu High School in Western Native Township. Her father was a teacher, and her mother was a housemaid. The young Tutu was shocked when a white man took off his hat one day as he was sweeping on someone else’s porch. The man was Trevor Huddleston, a British priest who later led Tutu to his summons. The beast in the US urged Tutu to accept theology.
After being trained as a teacher, he was ordained in 1961 and worked and studied in England for six years. He was appointed dean of Johannesburg in 1975, bishop of Lesotho the following year and general secretary of the South African Council of Churches from 1978 to 1985.
Disgusted by the ruling National Party led by Botha, he was repeatedly denied a passport and often accused by state radio of being a smart and evil politician. An experiment took place in his life. But few could resist her charm by meeting her face to face. In just a few minutes, his combination of humorous self-deprecation and well-known honesty can turn a dubious white audience into a greedy crowd. “I love being loved,” she said, admitting that this was a weakness.
“He looked good,” says John Allen, a historian – but it was all nonsense. “The one who was in the open was exactly the one who was in secret.”
Tutu asserted that this love affair had not thwarted his desire to express his unloving feelings. Instead, he combined it with a bold line of “provocations” – words that appeared in the small words of his sermon. God is not a Christian.
His support for global economic sanctions has not only angered the Botha government but also many of the white Christians he represents. Yet it only shows how he views the boycott and ban on foreign affairs as a last resort for non-violence.
Although he acknowledged the ANC’s supremacy in the fight against apartheid, he remained outside the organization – and angered the young priests who were part of his party by insisting that their role barred him from becoming a member of a political party. And when his adviser Huddleston wanted to attend an ANC conference, he was strongly told not to leave.
Tutu was ready to denounce the brutal tactics used by ANC supporters as they did with the white security police. When he intervened to save a suspected police officer from “tying a necklace” (death by tire burn) near Johannesburg in 1985, he told the group that it was wrong for the right-wing extremists to stand up to the level of their oppressors. Author Barney Mthombothi called Tutu “the closest thing to South Africa for a wise man”.
For the next ten years, as leader of the entire Anglican church in southern Africa, Tutu played a key role in defending his country’s path to democracy. At his home in Cape Town in 1990, it was Tutu who welcomed Mandela on the night before his release from prison — and he later called his people “God’s people.”
Every time a rainbow is dirty, Tutu speaks. When Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s deputy at the time, tried to block the release of the TRC’s five-part report on the ANC’s human rights abuses in slavery, Tutu said: “I have fought against violence. I did not do that to replace myself. in another. ” The article was properly published.
When he was TRC leader, Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer. After resigning from his archdiocese, he spent two years in Atlanta, combining further medical care with a visiting professor at Emory University before returning to South Africa in 2000. “I came home to sleep,” he said.
However, what followed was baseless, as he received various reasons.
Tutu condemned the invasion of Iraq in 2003, forced the White House and, nine years later, refused to share the podium with Tony Blair, who took the UK to war alongside George W Bush. He was furious with Robert Mugabe, saying that the president of Zimbabwe should be removed, with power if necessary.
Within the church, a man who since the early 1990s had pushed for the establishment of women developed a campaign to promote homosexuality – telling George Carey, his spiritual leader as Archbishop of Canterbury, that racial discrimination made him “ashamed to be Anglican.” religious well-being in favor of dying for terminally ill patients.
Tutu married Leah Nomalizo Shinxani in 1955; she has survived with her son and three daughters.
“Here was a man,” wrote Mandela in his autobiography, “who inspired the whole nation with his words and deeds, who revived the hopes of the people in the darkest times.
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