Tutu, Desmond Mpilo

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Desmond Mpilo Tutu

BORN: October 10, 1931 • Klerksdorp, South Africa

South African religious leader; politician; writer

As an archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Desmond Mpilo Tutu was one of the foremost opponents of the apartheid policies of that country's government in the 1970s and 1980s. Apartheid means "apartness" in the Afrikaans language, which is one of the official languages of South Africa. The word is most often used to refer to the former government policy of racial separation and discrimination directed against non-Europeans in the country. Discrimination is unfair treatment to a person or group because of perceived or real differences. At the time of Tutu's birth, this discrimination had been going on in South Africa since the region had become a Dutch colony in the seventeenth century. It continued after South Africa achieved independence as a nation in 1910. In 1948 apartheid became the official policy of the white South African government.

"Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour, Desmond Tutu's voice will always be the voice of the voiceless."

—Nelson Mandela as quoted on the University of the Witwatersrand Web site.

Under apartheid each person was assigned to a specific racial group: white, black, "coloured" (of mixed race), and Asian. Laws were passed to separate the races, with each assigned separate living areas and public facilities such as parks, restrooms, and beaches. A separate educational system was set up to ensure that blacks could not receive an education equal to that of whites. Travel for non-Europeans was severely restricted. Interracial marriage, or marriage between two people of different races, was strictly forbidden. Blacks had no representation in the nation's parliament, and only whites enjoyed full civil rights. The police had broad powers to arrest and imprison anyone who protested the government's policies.

Eventually the world community spoke out against apartheid. The policy officially ended in South Africa in 1990–91, when the laws were repealed and blacks were finally given an equal voice in the nation's government. One of the major figures who helped bring about this change was Desmond Tutu.

Birth and early life

Desmond Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in the South African mining town of Klerksdorp. His father, Zachariah, was a schoolteacher. His mother, Aletta, was a domestic servant. Tutu's earliest recollections of discrimination date to his childhood, when white children regularly shouted racial insults at him and other black children. He saw firsthand the harsh results of government discrimination among the mine workers, who labored for low wages and typically lived in shacks with no running water or sanitary facilities. Tutu also felt the effects of discrimination at school, where, for example, the government provided free meals for white children, who often threw them away because they preferred the food that their mothers had packed for them. The black children, whose families lived in poverty, often went through the trash bins to scavenge the discarded food.

In 1943 Tutu's family moved to Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, where Tutu enrolled in Johannesburg Bantu High School. (The Bantu are an African tribe.) In the city Tutu met Father Trevor Huddleston, a white priest who was an outspoken critic of racial discrimination. During this period Tutu contracted tuberculosis, an infectious disease that affects the lungs, and spent nearly twenty months in a hospital. Huddleston visited him nearly every day and would prove to be a major influence on Tutu's own opposition to apartheid. Apartheid became official after the 1948 election victories of the National Party, a political party whose members had run for office on a promise to separate the races.

Following his recovery Tutu enrolled in the school of medicine at Witwatersrand University, with the goal of becoming a doctor. He was forced to leave the university, however, because he and his family did not have enough money to pay tuition. He then enrolled at the Pretoria Bantu Normal College to train as a teacher and earned his diploma in 1953. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree from the University of Johannesburg in 1954. For the next three years he worked as a high school teacher in Johannesburg and in Krugersdorp. In 1955 he married Leah Nomalizo Shenxane, with whom he eventually had four children.

Tutu resigned from his teaching jobs in 1957 after the government revealed its Bantu Education Act, a plan to institute a new educational system for blacks that would be inferior to that provided for whites. At this point Tutu felt a calling from God and came to believe that he could best serve his people as a priest. He began to study theology (religion) with the Community of the Resurrection, the Anglican community in Johannesburg of which Father Huddleston was a member. The Anglicans are a sect, or branch, of Christianity.

Career in the Anglican Church

After being ordained, or officially made, an Anglican priest in 1961, Tutu worked in a number of small parishes (religious communities) first in South Africa, then in England. While working in England he earned a bachelor's degree in divinity in 1965 and a master's degree in theology in 1966, both from King's College in London. He then took a position in England with the Theological Education Fund, which required him to travel throughout Africa and Asia to award scholarship money from the World Council of Churches. During these years he also spent time in South Africa lecturing on theology. By the 1970s resistance to South African apartheid was growing, and in 1975 Tutu decided to return to his country permanently to help with the struggle for freedom from discrimination.

Tutu continued to rise in the Anglican Church. In 1975 he was appointed dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg, the first black ever to hold that position. In 1976 he became a bishop in Lesotho, a small country about the size of the U.S. state of Maryland that is entirely surrounded by South Africa. At the time the small nation was dominated by its larger neighbor so thoroughly that it was virtually a part of South Africa. Because of this it was one of the "homelands" designated by the South African government as a place where blacks could live. Throughout the late 1970s Tutu used his position to try to ease some of the racial tension that threatened both Lesotho and Soweto, a black township just outside Johannesburg. In trying to serve as a peacemaker, he took part in discussions with many different people about the racial problems dividing the country.

Opponent of apartheid

On June 16, 1976, a key event in the history of apartheid took place when a riot erupted in the Soweto township. A number of high school students protested the government's new policy requiring that classes at the schools be taught in the Afrikaans language. Afrikaans was the language of the Dutch settlers who had initiated the discrimination against black Africans, and the students rebelled against the idea of having to take classes taught in the language of their oppressors. Police arrived and responded with tear gas and gunfire. As the rioting spread, a number of government buildings were set ablaze. In the weeks that followed, protestors and government security forces clashed on numerous occasions. By the time the rioting ended, five hundred people were dead, most of them from gunshot wounds. Thousands were arrested, and thousands more fled the country.

The Soweto riots were a turning point in Tutu's life. Although he continued to call for peaceful protest and change, he became more militant in his outlook. He concluded that only intense pressure would force the government to change its policies. He resolved to use his influence and visibility to initiate talks between blacks and the government, and for the next fifteen years he spoke out publicly and forcefully against apartheid. In 1978 he became the first black secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, an organization of churches with thirteen million members collectively, 80 percent of whom were black. Tutu used his position on the council to promote antigovernment protest. In response, the government repeatedly harassed Tutu and other Council of Churches members, often charging them with small crimes they had not committed.

In 1979 Tutu challenged the government over a law called the Group Areas Act. The act gave the government the authority to forcibly move blacks from South African cities to tribal homelands. Throughout the 1980s some 3.5 million people were relocated by the government, a process that denied blacks access to better-paying jobs in the cities and left them to work on low-quality farmland. Tutu openly protested the act, comparing it to laws hostile to Jews that were passed by the Nazi leadership in Germany during the 1930s before World War II (1938–45).

In the fall of 1979 Tutu took part in a television interview in Denmark, during which he proposed that Denmark stop buying coal from South Africa as a way to protest apartheid. This was the first time that anyone had ever proposed using economic measures to try to force the South African government to change its policies. Over the next decade, people, organizations, and governments throughout the world began to boycott (refuse to buy) South African products. In the United States and other countries, many universities, local and state governments, and labor unions decided not only to stop investing funds in South African companies and companies that did business with South Africa, but also to withdraw funds that were already invested. During this period South African currency lost half of its value on the world market. In order to curb some of the unrest, the South African government allowed blacks to form labor unions for the first time.

Tutu's efforts to end apartheid were met with continued harassment. The South African government took away his passport, a move that often preceded imprisonment. Without his passport, Tutu could leave the country only with the government's permission. In 1982 he was denied permission to travel to the United States to accept an honorary degree from Columbia University in New York. In response the president of the university personally traveled to South Africa to present Tutu with the degree.

In 1984 Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which helped to further publicize his efforts. In the words of the commission that selected him, as quoted on the Nobelprize.org Web site, the prize was given "not only as a gesture of support to him and to the South African Council of Churches of which he is leader, but also to all individuals and groups in South Africa who, with their concern for human dignity, fraternity and democracy, incite the admiration of the world." Tutu used the recognition to draw more attention to the injustices committed by the South African government. He was eventually allowed to travel to the United States, where he addressed a congressional committee and urged the country to join the fight against racism. Thousands of Americans answered his call by holding protests at South African embassies in the United States.

Tutu continued to call for peaceful solutions to South Africa's racial problems, but tensions kept building. On several occasions protests erupted into violence, and hundreds of people were killed. In response to the violence, the South African president declared a state of emergency, which deprived black citizens of what few rights they had. Among the activities that were outlawed were funeral marches to cemeteries, which the government believed could turn into riots. On one occasion armed government security guards surrounded the funeral of a young woman who had been killed in the rioting. Tutu personally appeared to conduct the funeral service and to keep tempers from rising.

In September 1986 Tutu was elected as the archbishop of Cape Town and the primate, or leader, of the Anglican Church for all of southern Africa. He continued to pressure the governments of other nations to condemn South African apartheid and to impose economic penalties. Meanwhile, the state of emergency was maintained. The government continued to ban more activities, such as the signing of petitions calling for the release of the thousands of political prisoners being held, many of whom were minors (people under age 18). Even wearing shirts with slogans opposing the confinement of the prisoners was outlawed. Nevertheless, Tutu and many of his followers defied some of these laws.

Success

By the early 1990s South Africa had become an outcast among the nations of the world, and economic pressures on the government were threatening to destroy the country. It was during this decade that apartheid crumbled. This is largely because of the leadership of Tutu and other important South African figures, such as Nelson Mandela (1918–), who had been imprisoned for twenty-six years. At last, a new government, led by F. W. de Klerk (1936–), abolished South Africa's racist policies. The country's black majority, able to vote for the first time, elected Mandela as South Africa's first democratically-elected president in 1994. Tutu's dream had become a reality.

In the years that followed, Tutu continued to speak against human rights abuses throughout the world, such as those in the African nation of Zimbabwe and the Asian nation of Burma (Myanmar). In 1995 he was appointed chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This body was formed to investigate claims of human rights abuses under the nation's apartheid system. In 1996 Tutu retired from his position as archbishop of Cape Town to devote his energies to the work of the commission. In 1998 he stepped down as commission chair to accept a position teaching theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2002 he accepted a job as a visiting professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His name reappeared in the news that same year when he expressed his intense opposition to the invasion of Iraq planned by the United States and Great Britain.