In 2001, I was the only journalist, as far as I knew, who interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I struggled to place the interview in international publications, because it was a few weeks after 9/11, but I did get it published in South African newspapers. I am sharing here, unedited, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu turns 70 on Sunday. In a rare interview, with Ryland Fisher, he reflects on his life.
THERE are many sides to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. There is the self-deprecating wit and the infectious laugh, which is what most people see nowadays. But there is also the serious side to Tutu, the side which inspired and infuriated so many during the dark days of apartheid.
Contrary to popular belief today, Tutu was not universally loved during the struggle years. He was loathed by many whites, who saw him as a troublemaker, and he often incensed the anti-apartheid “comrades” with his strong moral stance on many issues.
But as he celebrates his seventh birthday today (Sunday), it is as one of the most loved South Africans still alive.
Tutu said he intended to have several birthday celebrations over the next few days.
“On the fifth, which is two days before my birthday, my successor, (Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane) has invited me and Leah to a meeting of the bishops in Bloemfontein. We will be having a dinner celebration there. We will probably have a family bash on the day itself in Soweto. Then we travel down to Cape Town by train.
“There is a concert in St George’s Cathedral on October 10 and on October 14, which is Leah’s 68th birthday, we will have a joint celebration in Bishops Court. The Archbishop (Ndungane) is giving a little party there.”
Speaking to Tutu about the highlights in his life is easy. There are so many for this Klerksdorp-born son of a school teacher and a domestic worker: winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, becoming the first black Archbishop in the Anglican Church, his leadership of the South African Council of Churches and his chairmanship of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, among others.
But the highlight he savours most is when he was told that he was a father for the first time.
“That was one of the most magical moments in my life. It made me feel so like God,” said Tutu in an interview this week.
He also singled out the release of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratic elections and “perhaps being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”.
“At that particular time in the history of our country it was such an incredible thing.”
Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize was also what made him feel most hopeful, in the apartheid days, that South Africa would change for the better.
“When I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, I knew that God was going to help focus the attention of the world a little more on our situation. (Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize) gave notice to the perpetrators of injustice that the world was watching. It was encouraging our people that their cause was just.
“It opened doors. The minute it was announced I got a call from the White House. We were in New York at the time and I had been trying to see Ronald Reagan, but he did not want to see me. Then suddenly the doors were being flung open.’”
Asked about the low points of his life, Tutu again chooses something personal.
“You know when your child doesn’t go in the direction in which you were hoping. The pain of that is severe,” he said, with obvious reference to his son, Trevor, who has hit the headlines several times for the wrong reasons in the past few years. Tutu also has three daughters and several grandchildren.
But Tutu also bore the pain of being involved in the struggle and “shared in the anguish of so many who were being made to suffer so totally unnecessarily”.
“It was painful when you visited some of apartheid’s stamping grounds, the Bantustan homelands, and saw people who had been uprooted.
“It was also painful when you were in places where there was violence and you had to visit in the aftermath of that violence, looking at the devastation.”
Tutu becomes almost tearful when he recalls another devastating aspect during the struggle years, this time on the part of the so-called comrades.
“ When our people were using the necklace (killing of people by burning a tyre around their neck) and we saw our children dancing around a burning corpse, you just shuddered and said: ‘What has happened to us that we could sink so low that our children could actually exalt in this?’
“I was addressing a funeral on the East Rand, soon after a necklacing had happened in Thokoza. I didn’t know what to say to register my abhorrence and I said if we didn’t stop using that method I would take my children and my family and leave the county that I love. I did not mean it literally but I was just trying to say how appalled I was.”
His time with the TRC is coming to an end at the end of December when the commission is supposed to hand their final reports to the government.
For Tutu, there were many highlights and many low points during his term as chairman of the TRC.
“One of the highlights for me was at the first hearing in East London, when someone who had suffered quite extensively, as it happened a white person, spoke so very warmly about forgiving.
“ Another highlight would be the Bisho hearing where the former head of the Ciskei Defence Force greatly incensed people, not so much with what he was saying but how he was saying it. The hall was packed with the loved ones of victims of that massacre, and the tension was very high. After this army officer had spoken the tension shot even higher. Then four officers came up and said they had given the orders for the soldiers to shoot and you thought the place was going to go up in flames.
Then this man turned to the audience and said: ‘Please forgive us’ and, totally unexpected, the place erupted in thunderous applause. You would have thought that the opposite reaction should have been the appropriate one, given how the people were feeling. It was an incredible moment.
“The low point for me must be the sadness at non-participation by white people by and large. Despite all the statements that we made, they still claimed that the TRC was a witch-hunt against whites and it was set up to be biased in favour of the ANC. The quite extraordinarily ungenerous attitude of many whites in the face of the magnanimity that was coming largely from black people was disappointing.
“Many on white side missed a golden opportunity of being able to account for the past in which they were involved, whether voluntary or involuntary. They were part of a horrendous system that had visited untold suffering on their fellow South Africans who happened to be black.
“They may not all have supported apartheid but they benefited and were collaborators, willingly or unwillingly. There was a great failure on the part of the white leadership because, on the whole, they did not do what they alone could have done which was to have said to their fellow whites: ‘Hey, let us recognise just how lucky we have been.’
“The history around us in the world, the Bosnia’s, the Middle East, the Northern Ireland, just show what we were saved from. When you think riots are happening, not in South Africa, but in Britain, and children are escorted by soldiers, not in South Africa, but in Northern Ireland.
“When you see the awful carnage that is happening in the Middle East, with suicide bombers and the retaliation that happens there, we have been spared that. Had one prominent white leader said to the community: ‘We have been exceedingly fortunate and let us translate our gratitude into a generosity,’ it would have made a difference.”
Asked if there was anything he still wanted to achieve with his life, Tutu said: “I want to be able to help people develop the good that is in all of them to the fullest possible extent and to make them know that we are made for reaching out for the stars.
“Sometimes our kids think that the people who have achieved were born with silver spoons in their mouths. It will probably be a good thing if we could just remind them how many came from poor circumstances. There are very few of my contemporaries who would say that they came from a home that had running water and electricity.
“Circumstances were not conducive to achievements, but they have achieved. I wish to be able to make people believe that you are a masterpiece in the making. You are really special. And that while material circumstances are important, they are not as important as who you are, the kind of person you are.”
During the apartheid days, when Nelson Mandela was still in prison and the ANC banned, did he ever think that South Africans would once day have their freedom?
“Yes, I never doubted that it would happen one day. The thing that did surprise me is the speed in which it happened. Once it started, there was no stopping.
“The pieces sort of fell in place much more quickly than I had thought. I didn’t even think that I would be around to see it. Although I had been making predictions in 1984, when I would say in 10 years time we would have a democratic country, but that was also a kind of whistling in the dark. It was meant to keep up our spirits and boost our morale. That was one of the things that we needed to do, to say to our people: ‘Don’t give up, don’t despair’.
“And the people were tremendous. They were remarkable in the resilience that they showed.”
Tutu attributes the speed with which apartheid ended to events happening in the world at the time.
“There is a nice passage in the bible where someone speaks about ‘in the fullness of time when things are just right. Not a moment too soon, not a moment too late’. We would not have seen the same speed, even perhaps the same kind of transformation, if all these things had not happened in the world at the time, for instance if the Berlin Wall had not fallen.
“We might have eventually arrived at it, but I think it would have been a great deal more tardy. (Former president FW) De Klerk would have found it very difficult to persuade his people that it was right to release Nelson Mandela. It was right at the time because he couldn’t with any credibility claim that they were still the bastion against Soviet expansionism, when there was no Soviet expansionism to deal with. It was crucial that Gorbachev happened when he did.
“I think it was largely that and the new leadership in the world that that was demanding a greater space for the observance of human rights, freedom and democracy. Things gained a momentum. But you also need to have the right people in the right place. Had (former president) PW (Botha) remained, maybe he too would have also been bowled over and stampeded by the force of events, but he would have been a more unlikely agent than De Klerk, although he too had the kind of anticipants that had not held up a lot of promise.”
Tutu said he had several periods of depression during the apartheid years.
“Remember in 1977, when you had (the killing of Steve) Biko and you had all of these things, including the bannings (of several organisations and newspapers).
“In those days it really seemed that those guys were the top dogs and they were going to remain ensconced in power until kingdom come. We realised that we were in for a long haul. Also, the outside world was by and large supportive of apartheid, apart from the Scandinavian countries that continued to give us wonderful support.
“The powerful were not on our side, and it was awful but also it was thrilling to see and experience the support one was getting from ordinary people, when the Margaret Thatchers and Ronald Reagans of this world were against us.
“But we did have remarkable support. In 1988 when we were celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday. That turnout of nearly quarter of a million, especially young people at Hyde Park Corner, was fantastic.
“Yet there were times when you felt saddened and like you were hitting your head against a stone wall. I remember going to see Maggie Thatcher in 1987. I was trying to get her to see our point of view about sanctions and she was saying that she was quite firmly set against sanctions. Of course, she then had the Falklands war and she was one of the first to call for sanctions against Argentina.”
Tutu said he did not always want to become a priest. In fact, he had wanted to become a doctor and had been accepted at Wits Medical School.
“I didn’t take up my place, because my parents didn’t have money and I didn’t have a bursary. I became a teacher. I taught high school for four years and really enjoyed teaching. But then (former president Hendrick) Verwoerd introduced Bantu education, and I felt I couldn’t collaborate in this so-called ‘gutter education’. I didn’t have too many options. I resigned as a teacher and the only thing that I could do was to train for the priesthood.
“I was fortunate to have been accepted. It has been fantastic. It has had many moments of sadness but very many high points and has been really tremendously fulfilling.
“I have to pay a very warm tribute to my wife, Leah. She has been incredibly supportive. Many people will not easily believe it, but she is far more radical politically than I am. I mean, compared to her I’m a softie.”
Tutu said the most impressive political leader he has met was former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere because of “his extraordinary humanity and transparent intelligence”.
“Tanzania is a strange country. It is poor, but I have never seen people so at peace with themselves. They have an incredible dignity about them. Nyerere clearly influenced the ethos of that nation in a remarkable kind of way.”
Asked if there was anything about the situation in South Africa today that concerned him, Tutu said that his greatest longing would be “for us to recapture the spirit of altruism, which was such a shining characteristic of the struggle.
“During the time of the struggle, it was almost uncanny. Many young people were ready to undergo some of the most awful experiences. They didn’t mind teargas, dogs, quirts, being arrested, tortured and even killed. You can almost say they had a kind of bravado. But when you said to them: ‘Look, you could get killed’, they would say: ‘Well, I don’t mind if it means that the condition of our people is going to be changed, and changed for the better.’
“I wish we could recover that.”
Tutu is clearly upset about what has happened in the United States and concerned that the response of the United States “will not find itself being in the same league of awfulness as the outrage that provoked it”.
“One can understand the calls for revenge and retribution. But then you first have to ask: ‘Revenge against whom?’ The perpetrators, those who masterminded the attacks, should be brought to justice, but it must be justice that operates under the rule of law. It mustn’t just be suspicion; there must be hard evidence.
“One of the things that has made these attacks so horrendous, is that it has involved innocent civilians. If you are going to have a strike, say against Afghanistan, innocent civilians are going to suffer. That can’t be right, and one has to be highly critical of the terms that are used. How can one talk about collateral damage, when you are talking about mothers, sister and fathers?
“Yes, inflict damage on whichever target is chosen, but what is the point, because all it will do is deepen the resentment that people have, the sense of grievance and this will be the best recruiter for the next suicide bombers.
“One hopes that the people of the United States, who are great people, a great nation of very generous people, should realise that their greatness should not be measured by economic or military strength? It should be measured by their moral greatness.
“If they can remember Nagasaki and Hiroshima. If they can remember little girls running naked, aflame from napalm bombs. If they can remember Nicaragua, remember and realise what we realised here in South Africa, that true security will never come from the barrel of a gun and that without forgiveness there is no future.”
Tutu said he has been “less busy” the past year in South Africa than he had been the previous two years in the United States.
“I have been travelling. I still get asked to speak here and there. I have done a fair amount of pulbic speaking but not as much as I used to.”
Asked what he was doing with his spare time, he said: “I try to read a little bit, sleep and pray a bit more.”
Asked about his health (he is suffering from prostate cancer), he said he was feeling “a lot better”.
And did he have a message for South Africa and the world on the occasion of his 70th birthday?
“It’s great to be alive. Enjoy life, enjoy it, live it to the full man.”
