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Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died on December 26, was a tireless campaign for justice. Although he officially retired in the mid-1990s, he never gave up on those in power and hoped they would do better. As he said, “I’d like to shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.” Throughout his life, many opponents wanted the same thing. Fortunately, for South Africans of all ages, Arch, as he was affectionately known, never learned to be silent.
There was no voice like his, and his death reminds him that his task of bringing justice to a race-traumatized nation that he wanted to help heal is still unfinished. Tutu dedicated his life to non-racism, a unique South African phrase that described a utopian vision that goes beyond equality and spoke of a deep desire to connect with authenticity between race, ethnicity, class and gender distribution.
Today, non-racialism has been neglected in the country. At the moment, the hope that Tutu has taken is low. Over the last decade or so South Africans have lost their innocence and even the most ardent champions of race and economic justice find it difficult to demand much more than tolerance. For Tutu, of course, there was no room for such an anemic response to social justice. The excitement of ending the oppression came with tears and laughter and howls; love for people – “abantu” – was contagious.
Many people divide Tutu’s activism into two parts: his efforts to end apartheid (which is why he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, before the award lost its moral splendor); and his efforts to build a nation so that South Africans could embody the ideals of the Rainbow Nation spoke so eloquently of him and his friend and comrade Nelson Mandela. He was much admired for the former, and more debatable for the latter, though, of course, there was little difference between Tutu before and after the liberation of South Africa.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Tutu served as Secretary General of the Council of Churches in South Africa, occupying a crucial – and perhaps unique – place in the South African liberation movement. He was at the forefront of an era of marching and boycotting, but was also called upon to mourn at numerous funerals during the bloodiest times in the South African conflict.
These were difficult times and Tutu was often in the middle of a fight. It was during this time that the iconic image of Tutu was created. He was often “the lonely figure in his purple cassock”, negotiating with the police to express his grief to the mourners.
It was no surprise that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded. In his acceptance speech, he questioned whether “oppression dehumanizes the oppressed as much, if not more, than the oppressor.” The oppressed and the oppressed “need each other to be truly free, to be human. We can only be human beings in solidarity, in the community, in the community, in peace. ”
A decade later his country was free, and Tutu was able to test his theory. In 1995, a year after the start of the African National Congress (ANC) and the inauguration of President Mandela, he was appointed chairman of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a newly designed entity. as an experiment in collective healing.
Internationally, the TRC was highly praised for prioritizing reconciliation over revenge. At home, there were mixed feelings. On the one hand, the public hearings of the commission were a model of unprecedented transparency – apartheid progressed in the dark, of course. On the other hand, Tutu’s insistence on forgiveness sometimes appeared as an institutional reluctance to pursue more harsh forms of responsibility than forgiveness.
While the TRC was gathering evidence of wrongdoing under apartheid, Tutu wept and mourned and begged the witnesses to desperately accept their wrongdoing and apologize. This was often charming and sometimes confusing.
In a series of famous exchanges today, Tutu apologizes to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela for Joyce Seipei, Stompie’s mother, who allegedly played a role in the murder in the late 1980’s. He apologized, even though he had been bitter about the exchange for many years.
Today, a generation of activists who know little about the pipe and consider Madikizela-Mandela to be a hero see Tutu as too hard. They are not wrong, of course. However, Tutu was also strict in addressing former apartheid leaders, such as FW De Klerk, who lied and hid crucial information in their testimonies.
Due to the difficult exchanges in the context of the TRC, the pipe was neither made nor broken. He was a man who had nothing to prove and led the committee with a deep sense of love and a commitment to truth and forgiveness. This common sense sometimes extinguished his country’s need for tangible justice, with perpetrators filling prisons and giving victims details of where their loved ones were killed.
In the end, however, the most important criticisms of the TRC have little to do with Tutu. Focusing on the stories of the wounded – the relatives of the tortured and the murdered – the commission missed an important opportunity to address the structural and systemic impact of apartheid. In other words, despite its gruesome stories and spectacular scenes of grief, the TRC was never given a full mandate to address the group consequences of apartheid, losing the opportunity that naked racism caused to black generations.
It is almost impossible to count such a loss. How is the damage done combined and would a specific figure reduce the pain? The burden of answering this question lies with the new generation.
The TRC handed over to the National Prosecutor’s Office a list of apartheid activists believed to be involved in the killing of anti-apartheid activists. For the past two decades, the ANC’s successive governments have done nothing to bring these people to justice, nor to address the issue of reparations and compensation for all victims of apartheid.
It’s not Desmond Tutur’s fault. On the contrary, his death reminds us of the unfinished business of the transition from apartheid to democracy. This was not his job, it is ours.
The tired among us would do well to heed the words of the great man. With his brand honesty, Tutu said, “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. ” This insistence on reaching and crossing all kinds of divisions was the key to its effectiveness.
I’m not sure I would be free to be myself today if I didn’t wear that purple day in and day out where there were quarrels trying to make peace. That’s why I – and many black and white South Africans – owe it all to myself.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial attitude of Al Jazeera.
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