Desmond Tutu’s legacy beyond reproach

In September 1989, several anti-apartheid leaders and organisations participated in a protest march in Cape Town.

Although apartheid was already crumbling, it needed the final push of a Defiance Campaign to finally bring it to an end. The 1989 protest became all the more significant because it happened in the same month that the last apartheid general election was held.

Although it was organised by a cross-section of SA’s political organisations and leaders, the one leader who stood out was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who died on Boxing Day.

As was the case with Nelson Mandela’s death, some young upstarts have used their social media voices to try and reduce Tutu’s larger-than-life legacy to that of someone who sold out his people. This generation of keyboard activists is quick to reduce a legacy built over nine decades to a single moment that they deem to represent selling out.

Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and because there have been no prosecutions, they shout that he let his people down.

One of the pillars that the masterminds behind racial segregation tried to use to prop up their ideology is Christianity. They found scriptures behind which they would hide the evil system they were creating, and it became a nuisance for them when a man of the cloth like Tutu would use the pulpit to poke holes in the racial segregation theory.

Tutu’s legacy cannot be reduced to one grossly misrepresented chapter of his life. To reduce him to a single moment at the TRC where he allegedly tormented Winnie Madikizela-Mandela by asking her to ask for forgiveness from people who claimed she had wronged them during the struggle is very shallow.

Tutu could have chosen a much easier path – as many clergymen did during the dark days of apartheid. He could have chosen to hide behind his priestly robes and turn a blind eye to the suffering he was witnessing. Instead, he chose to be a thorn in the side of the apartheid state. He used the global platform available to him to fight against injustice wherever it manifested itself in the world. And for that he paid the price of being constantly harassed by the police.

When the concept of a rainbow nation was first sold to South Africans, Tutu chose to preach that. To tell South Africans that there is enough space for every race to have a seat at the table. And that helped the country through a very violent and chaotic period. When leaders of the left did wrong he was that voice that called them to order. He became the moral compass of the anti-apartheid struggle and it was no surprise that he called out Madikizela-Mandela when she encouraged “necklacing”, the burning of suspected informants using a tyre.

It would seem that those who had Tutu’s level of moral conviction to call out icons of the anti-apartheid struggle when they did wrong are easily labelled sellouts.

Tutu refused to go with the flow during apartheid, he marched when other preachers just chose to preach. He called out Madikizela-Mandela publicly. He called out Jacob Zuma (and the ANC) when it wasn’t even fashionable to do so.

Tutu didn’t live his life like he was in a popularity contest. He lived his life to obey his God, to fight for justice.

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