ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU – THE RELIGIOUS LEADER THAT MOST OF THE PRIVILEGED WHO WANTED TO WRING HIS NECK IN THE 1980s FOR CAMPAIGNING FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

 

 

 

One of the anti-apartheid leaders who stood up for values, principles and morality while dedicating his life to the attainment of justice, human dignity, peace, human rights and freedom, is the retired leader of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
He will turn 89 on October 7 (2020).
While he called for a total onslaught against the apartheid regime, he had also come out strongly against the new post-apartheid regime, led by the ANC. He had spoken out against corruption, theft of state resources, lack of values and morality among some members and leaders of the ANC. He especially condemned the ANC Government for refusing to grant the exiled leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, a visa to visit South Africa in October 2011. Tutu extended an invitation to the Dalai Lama to attend his 80^th birthday celebration in Cape Town. He warned that the ANC Government must “watch out” because the people would mobilise against it as they had mobilised against the apartheid government.
Tutu, who was born in 1931, had travelled the length and breadth of South Africa and the world during his involvement for peace, justice and human rights since the 1960s.
In 1978 he was appointed secretary general of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) – a position he used effectively to intensify the struggles against apartheid.
He also held talks with the former UN Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim; addressed the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid; held talks with several governments; and addressed religious organisations in his call for sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
For his efforts to bring about peaceful change in South Africa, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
Between the 1980s and 1990s he held several talks with the ANC and the National Party Government to promote peaceful change. He vacated his position at the SACC after he was appointed the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg early in 1985.
In the early 1990s, prior to the advent of the new democratic SA in April 1994, Tutu also promoted talks between the ANC and the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to bring about a cessation of the violence between ANC and IFP supporters.
In 2010 when South Africa hosted the FIFA World Cup, Tutu was one of the leaders who came out with Nelson Mandela to welcome visitors to the country and to support the promotion of greater interaction between the different countries.
But a year later, when he was celebrating his 80^th birthday, he became increasingly disillusioned with the ANC Government after the Dalai Lama was refused a visa to attend his birthday celebrations. When celebrating his 89^th birthday, Tutu is now even more disappointed with the fresh disclosures of widespread corruption and theft of state resources by ANC leaders, officials, and members.

On his 89^th birthday, I want to publish an article the Press Trust of SA News Agency had written and circulated around the world about the developments when he was about to be enthroned as the first black Anglican Archbishop leader of South Africa in 1986.
The article, titled: “South Africa: Murder in the Cathedral”, was published on August 27 1986.

 

   
     SOUTH AFRICA: MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL

 

The enthronement of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Bishop Desmond Tutu, as South Africa’s first black archbishop of the Anglican Church promises to be a dramatic affair.
Most whites would prefer him to be behind bars because of his call for sanctions against the “fatherland”.
Meanwhile, with anti-Tutu hysteria rapidly climaxing the issue of his martyrdom has become dangerously real.

 
“TU TERRIBLE, TU SPECTACULAR, TU TU MUCH”

 

The run-in to the investiture of Archbishop Desmond Tutu on September 7 (1985) in St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town, has been marked by incredible virulence. He has been labelled “fat-cat, vain, impudent and transparent” and lampooned “Tu terrible, Tu spectacular, Tu Tu much”. The pro-government Citizen newspaper of Johannesburg, which runs an almost daily campaign against the archbishop-elect, said:
“There is no greater thorn in South Africa’s flesh than this man of cloth who strides through the world like a religious pop star”, and denounced the enthronement as a quest for “ecclesiastical super-stardom”.
More decisively, the right-wing Afrikaner political parties have called for his arrest, prosecution and the confiscation of his passport.
In Government circles there have been murmurs of treason.
It is an unusual situation for white South Africans to be frustrated by a black Christian whose neck they would dearly love to wring.
The up-market Business Day newspaper in Johannesburg neatly summed up the problem. Bishop Tutu, it said, “was taunting a blundering Government, calling for sanctions, pronouncing his hatred for capitalism and making of his investiture an international showbiz event”.
But the newspaper warned that if the Government took the bait and tried to play the Bishop at his own game, it would lose.
“The Bishop is a master of theatrical politics who has raised the consciousness of half of mankind about apartheid…. He has no need to fear Government. He has won the affection of his people, the honour of his church, the Nobel Peace Prize, and the acclaim of mankind; the only achievement that eludes him as a man of the cloth is martyrdom.
“To be tried for treason and (if the past trials are any guide) to be acquitted would create an international circus sufficiently sensational to satisfy the lust of cameras for a year or two.”

 
“ANY ACTION AGAINST THE BISHOP WILL LEAD TO BAD INTERNATIONAL PRESS”

 

The only point on which the newspaper may be wrong is that the Bishop will necessarily be acquitted. The law is specific and provides for lengthy incarceration for South Africans who call for sanctions against their country. There is little doubt that the Bishop’s action verges delicately on the treasonable.
From the view point of most whites the real issue is relatively simple. Will the satisfaction of jailing the Bishop outweigh the disadvantage of a bad international press? It is a judgement on which Bishop Tutu’s head depends.
 

 

“CONSIDERABLE LOT IN NATIONAL PARTY GOVERNMENT FAVOUR ACTION AGAINST BISHOP TUTU”

 

The Citizen newspaper offers some insight into the possible plans that are being made for the Bishop. It says action will not be taken against the Bishop before his installation because it would precipitate an international diplomatic incident given the high-powered guest list.
“The spectacular guest list …. is a ploy to ensure maximum publicity and martyrdom should any steps be taken against him.”
But it adds “because of the hostile public opinion generated during Bishop Tutu’s latest trip abroad and the mounting pressure for action in political circles, there is now a considerable body of senior opinion in the Government that favours some form of action at an appropriate time”.
This sounds ominous considering that warnings have also been issued recently by both the Minister of Manpower, Mr Pietie Du Plessis, and the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industries, Mr Kent Durr.
To boot, State President Mr P W Botha suggested in a jibe at his party’s Federal Congress that the country could soon see the back of the Bishop.

IN SOUTH AFRICA RACE COLOURS MOST PERSPECTIVES

 

It is difficult to say whether the Bishop would have been reviled so bitterly had he been white. In South Africa, however, there is little reason to doubt that race colours most perspectives.
In the Bishop’s case racism has been conveniently submerged in the great debate on sanctions and the national interest.
Most whites, if they are to be believed, are outraged by the Bishop because he has called for sanctions. The stock argument is that this will put Black people out of work, erode their living standards and increase their misery – “effects that the Bishop is unlikely to suffer because of his clerical wealth”.
As the Citizen put it: “Far be it for us to suggest there should be any actions against the Bishop. But at least we can question why a man who lives so well and travels so far is so unconcerned about the lot of so many blacks who are going to suffer because of sanctions.”
Seldom is there ever mention that sanctions will affect whites when these arguments are trotted out.
It is a remarkable testimony to white altruism which probably explains why social security for blacks in South Africa is virtually non-existent.
The fact that some four-million blacks in the country – 25 percent of the working population – are unemployed; that nearly two-million people in the bantustans without incomes, let alone jobs, never enters the reckoning.
Moreover, in attacking the Bishop, most whites gloss over the fact that he is not the only black person who supports economic pressure on white South Africa.
The largest labour federation in the country, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), favours economic measures as does the black business lobby, the National African Federated Chambers of Commerce.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) people’s organisation, commanding the support of millions of black South Africans, shares similar sentiments as do all of the extra-parliamentary black groups.
In short, the conundrum is that whites are against sanctions for the sake of blacks who favour economic measures that will pressurise the government into vital political concessions. Those blacks who are the exception to what is very much a rule are linked to the bantustans, which are essentially and increasingly dependent on South Africa for survival. They understandably reserve a special ire for the Bishop.

 

DR FAROUQ MEER – “BISHOP TUTU COMMANDS INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE”

                          

                                  Dr Farouq Meer

 

Dr Farouq Meer, an official of the UDF and the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), believes that part of the hostility derives quite naturally from the Bishop’s status.
“He is an international figure, with an aura enhanced by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. As such what he says commands an international audience.
“The fact that his views coincide with the opinion of the black majority in the country must hurt most whites. By articulating what black people really think he is breaking a conspiracy of silence imposed on the majority through their lack of political power and through white control of the media.
“Most whites are quite happy to ignore black feelings as long as it does not reach the outside world.  Bishop Tutu has broken the rules of the game and most whites are sore.”
Dr Meer adds that “deep down most whites realise that the real issue is not sanctions but apartheid”.
“They are using the sanctions threat to rally around a common fear. That fear has been raised by a black man, raised in their own backyard. They have allowed him to grow powerful and now he is a danger. It sticks in the craw of most in the white minority.”

                                    Zwelike Sisulu
 

ZWELIKE SISULU – “BISHOP TUTU AFFRONTS THE PSYCHE OF MOST WHITES BY CALLING FOR SANCTIONS”

 

Zwelike Sisulu, Editor of the New Nation black newspaper, propounds another dimension.
“South Africa,” he says, “prides itself on being a Christian nation”.
“The reality of that Christian commitment is now being questioned by a black man. He is challenging their comfortable Christianity, challenging them to come to grips with the real horror of the apartheid system on which they thrive. This is obviously disconcerting and enraging.”
Sisulu says there is also another aspect in which Tutu deeply affronts the psyche of most white people.
“Most whites are still basically paternalistic. They believe that they have allowed Bishop Tutu to ascend in the church. Therefore, he ought to act with reticence and circumspection, indeed respect they finally believe all blacks must show towards whites.”

 
DURBAN DAILY NEWS – “MANY SOUTH AFRICANS HAVE INTIMATIONS OF PARANOIA”

The white conservative Daily News afternoon newspaper in the city of Durban suggests yet another reason for the backlash against Tutu.In an editorial this week, it says: “With sanctions barriers going up all around us, it is quite natural for many South Africans to have intimations of paranoia. This may manifest itself in a desire to lash back at those who promote the campaign.”Whatever the psychological motivations there is little doubt that Bishop Tutu has incensed most whites as few churchmen have done in this country.The fact that he has invited international dignitaries to his enthronement has only fuelled white jealousies, inflaming the wrath of a besieged and isolated tribe.They are calling the enthronement in St George’s Cathedral “a showbiz event”. It gives most whites the opportunity for sincerely wishing the Bishop breaks a leg. Ends – Press Trust of SA News Agency August 27 1986