Words By Desmond Tutu You Didn't Know
A round-up of unreported comments by Desmond Tutu, assembled by Eve Dada
1. Desmond Tutu in 2010 at the World Cup Opening Concert in Cape Town South Africa:
Big smile: "I'm giving you time to rest."
Tutu dances. The crowd goes "Tutu, Tutu, Tutu".
"It's just fantastic, just fantastic. Beinvenue Afrique du Sud" (in French). "Willkommen" (in German). "Can you feel it? You can touch it! Welkom toe ons land Suid-Afrika" (in Afrikaans. Then a welcome in Xhosa).
"Now friends, before I tell you, who is going to be in the finals?"
Tutu cackles. "Ha, ha, ha!"
"I think we've got to pay a wonderful tribute to a man to whom we all owe this. He is in Johannesburg, and if we make enough noise he will hear us. So we say, hello, Nelson Mandela!"
The crowd goes wild.
"Viva, Madiba! Hellolo, Rolihlahla!" (Nelson Mandela's Xhosa middle name.)
"Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's unbelievable, I'm dreaming, man, I'm dreaming, wake me up, wake me up, oh, what a lovely dream, ya ya ya ya ya ya ya, we are showing the world, hey, we are the world, we are the world, we welcome you all, for Africa is the cradle of humanity, so we welcome you home.
"All of you, all of you Germans, French, every single one of you, we are all African, we're all African."
The Arch starts dancing.
"All, hoo hoo hoo hoo. And we want to say to the world, thank you for helping this ugly, ugly, ugly worm, caterpillar, which we wear, become, become a beautiful, beautiful butterfly.
"We are a beautiful, beautiful butterfly.
"And now—for the games. We're going to see a wonderful film, about a fantastic man, Madiba, Madiba ..."
The Arch waves his arms and goes off stage.
2. Desmond Tutu on Ubuntu
"There is a Zulu proverb called Ubuntu that says: 'I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours.'"
Desmond Tutu explained it this way: “One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu—the essence of being human. Ubuntu is not, 'I think therefore I am.' It says rather: 'I am a human because I belong. I participate.'
3. Desmond Tutu on His Fellow Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela:
"Like a most precious diamond honed deep beneath the surface of the earth, the Madiba who emerged from prison in January 1990 was virtually flawless."
4. The Arch Interviewed by the BBC after Mandela's Death
BBC interviewer: "He was leading the ANC negotiating team against the apartheid government ..."
The Arch: "You had to be pinching yourself, you see, this is happening. I mean, here are the terrorists, meeting with those, who just a few weeks previously, were hunting them down, had arrested many of them, and others were in exile. There were those who thought that they should fight to the last drop of blood, if it was necessary. But he had, he has, the credibility, and very likely the credibility, is something that you get because of every suffering, you see, because when he says, guys, we've got to forgive, nobody could say, you are being facile, you are talking glibly about our forgiveness, what do you know about suffering, 27 years you know. We couldn't have thought of anything, that was the sort of person we needed, I mean, when you look at what happened when we won the world Rugby Cup, when thousands of mainly Afrikaners, could chant Nelson, Nelson, for this man who many had been vilifying as a ... you realize, I mean, he had been able to get people to eat out of his hand."
BBC interviewer: "You make it sound as if he is somebody who shouldn't have stood down so soon. He should've stayed there."
The Arch: "Yes, but it may be part of his greatness that he did stand down. I think that many would've said, another term with him at the helm, it would've helped us in a way to get over the hump. We were having a great deal of negativity in the country, niggling this, niggling that. He has, he had weaknesses like any other person, but they are overshadowed by the glory of his ubuntu, his humaneness."
BBC interviewer: "In his final years, as though making up for lost time, Mandela criss-crossed the country, supporting a range of projects dear to his heart."
The Arch: "He was almost in a frenzy, opening a school over here, a clinic over there. It is a clue to the nature of the man, that he understood and I think it is part of what happened to him in Robben Island, that I am there, whatever I am, it's for the sake of others. It drives him almost as a passion, and I think he has got, and he knows then, that it's not for self-aggrandizement, it's for the sake of others."
BBC Interviewer: "And for the pretty girls, the film stars, and the models, and all the rest of it."
The Arch leans back smiling: "Well, enjoying good things is a wonderful preparation for heaven."
Then he cackles. End of interview.
5. Evert's Poem Entitled “Mandela”
so this is why I’ve been
in New York all this time
to stand at the UN
and vote for a man
Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela
his life cut by twenty-seven and a half years
yet he said, I’m not bitter
I’m not bitter?
up here in the north
we sure could learn from his south
here the smaller the brain
the bigger the mouth
you liked New York, Nelson
but I have to warn you
we poopscoop our dogshit
and giftwrap our bullshit
we’re all prisoners in a dark sitcom
some talk revolution
but the closest they get
is to call Doctor King
an Uncle Tom
praise-sing Rolihlahla
Nelson Mandela
your mother Nosekeni
your eldest son Thembi
they too went underground
prison-bound
unable to go their funeral
where did you go?
the last walk to hell
a deep descent
but you came back
your back unbent
you knew a nation
marched from Lagos to London
Beijing to Boston
Moscow to Cuba
Makgatho, Maziwe
Zenani and Zindziwe
how proud for them yeah
that you were their tata
my father was proud
when you went to jail
he, a ten-foot crackpipe
I couldn’t inhale
his idea of father
came straight from hell
he touched me only
to beat the shit out of me
and when he finished
he beat the shit as well
all those years I made up
two fathers for me
the one I could smell
whiskey-fart near
the other one gone
island-bound, gagged
Nelson, he ain’t here
I liked having one father who was missing
he made up for the one
who was too much there
but far from my fatherland
on the isle of Manhattan
where the hype high-fives
to maroela-tree size
you get to spot self-deception
it wears a funny green hat
check it out
the cold smile of fact
Nelson, I can never dig my tata
the way I love you
but marooned in my whiteness
how long? very long
in my self-imposed exile
I know one thing that’s true
the father who is my father
is my father
and the father who is not
is not
is you
amandla!—power
awethu!—is ours
the price of freedom has been paid
in blood, in pain, in tears, in rage
hey, dad, I count the scars
you wrote on me
I price the resentment
I kept forever on simmer
I total up the rage
I ate each New York night for dinner
but now today
as I make my cross
with Rolihlahla I say
sweet freedom at last …
I’m not bitter
6. Desmond Tutu and Restorative Justice
There is a distinction between retributive justice and restorative justice. Retributive justice is punishment; revenge. In restorative justice, if wrongdoers repent and ask forgiveness from their victims and the families of their victims, wrongdoers are accepted back into the community.
Appointed by President Mandela to head up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Tutu proposed a threefold approach:
(i) confession, with those responsible for human rights abuses fully disclosing their activities
(ii) forgiveness in the form of a legal amnesty from prosecution
(iii) restitution, with the perpetrators making amends to their victims.
If you could prove that your actions—torture and murder—were carried out for strictly political reasons, you could be forgiven.
Although most of the torture and murders during the freedom struggle were committed by South Africa’s Security Police, the ANC was not blameless.
The armed wing of the ANC, uMkhonto we Sizwethe—MK or Spear of the Nation—was co-founded by Nelson Mandela in the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre. That's when the cops shot and killed 69 fleeing Africans, most of them in the back. MK launched its first attacks against government installations on 16 December 1961.
During the Rivonia Treason Trial, Mandela testified:
“At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the use of torture by uMkhonto we Sizwe was "routine", as were executions "without due process" at ANC detention camps. This was particularly true in the period of 1979–1989, although torture was not official ANC policy.
From a Searchlight report:
"Searchlight South Africa has been vindicated by three recent reports and one major press investigation into the system of prison camps run by the African National Congress in exile. The three reports into abuses in the ANC appeared between October 1992 and January 1993. The most reliable and significant of these reports, by Amnesty International (2 December 1992), drew more than half its material from information previously published in Searchlight South Africa in issues 5 to 9. The ANC was compelled at the highest level to acknowledge its imprisonment, torture and execution of members in exile as a means of suppressing critical opinion.”
7. Desmond Tutu and Winnie Mandela
In 1991, Winnie Mandela was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to the assault of 14-year-old Stompie Sepei. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a two-year suspended sentence on appeal.
Stompie joined the uprising against apartheid in April 1985 when he was 10. He became the country's youngest political detainee when he spent his 12th birthday in jail without trial. He and three other boys were kidnapped on 29 December 1988 by members of Winnie Mandela's bodyguards (known as the Mandela United Football Club) from the home of the Soweto Methodist minister, Paul Verryn. Earlier that year, students who had an ongoing dispute with Winnie Mandela's bodyguards, burned down her house.
Stompie was wrongly accused of being a police informer. Screams were heard as the 14-year-old Stompie was murdered by Jerry Richardson, one of Winnie Mandela's bodyguards. Stompie’s body was recovered on waste ground near Winnie Mandela's house on 6 January 1989. Richardson was later convicted of the murder.
From The New York Times by Suzanne Daley, Dec 4, 1997:
Winnie Mandela's Ex-Bodyguard Tells Of Killings She Ordered
He arrived in shackles holding a miniature soccer ball and dancing slightly. He would not raise his right hand to take the oath, saying he preferred to put it over his heart. Once that was settled, he promptly refused to testify at all until he had had a chance to talk with his family.
But when Jerry Richardson, Winnie Mandela's chief bodyguard in the late 1980's and one of her closest confidants, finally began talking today, his story was chilling.
''My hands are full of blood today because I would be instructed to kill and I would do like I was told,'' he told South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Mr. Richardson, 48, who is serving a life sentence for the killing of 14-year-old Stompie Seipei, described beating, torturing and killing people whenever ''mommy'' (his name for Mrs. Mandela) asked him to do so. He was officially the coach of a soccer team she sponsored, the Mandela United Football Club. But the team rarely played, he said.
''She would say we would have to be attending funerals or torturing and disciplining people,'' he explained.
Mr. Richardson told of using garden shears to kill Stompie Seipei in 1989 after beating him for days. He said Mrs. Mandela participated in the beatings, using her hands, fists and a whip. But she never did any of the killing, he said.
From The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1997
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- After a day of vehement denial, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela bowed to an emotional appeal yesterday from Archbishop Desmond Tutu for an admission that "things went horribly wrong" when violence and death swirled around her in the late 1980s.
"I beg you, I beg you, I beg you, please. You are a great person, and you don't know how your greatness would be enhanced if you would say you are sorry. 'Things went wrong. Forgive me.' I beg you."
He and five other commissioners had spent nine days listening to testimony incriminating her in a "reign of terror" revolving around her Mandela United Football Club in the township of Soweto.
They listened as she dismissed as "ludicrous," "ridiculous" and "lunacy" accusations that she was involved the kidnappings, beatings and murders with which a dozen witnesses have associated her.
Poised and confident, she disputed virtually every allegation. With explosive indignation she told the commission: "You are not suggesting, for God's sake, I should be held responsible for the actions of those youths when they left my premises."
She clearly stunned Tutu with a final address that had the ring of what he described as a "campaign speech" instead of the apology he was expecting.
Speaking to her personally and pastorally, Tutu told the godmother of one of his grandchildren: "I acknowledge Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's role in the history of our struggle. And yet, one can see something went wrong, horribly, badly wrong. What, I don't know."
For a few seconds there was silence. Then "the mother of the nation," who hardly uttered a word of remorse throughout the day, switched on her microphone and said: "It is true. Things went horribly wrong. I fully agree with that. And for that part of those painful years when things went horribly wrong -- and we were aware that there were factors that led to that -- I am deeply sorry."
She apologized to the family of Dr. Abu-Baker Asvat, for whose murder, according to evidence presented to the commission, she allegedly paid two Zulus $4,000.
She denied any involvement in the killing, allegedly carried out to silence the doctor because he knew too much about the violence at her house and refused to corroborate her false allegation that a local Methodist minister had sodomized youths.
She also apologized to the mother of Stompie Seipei, a 14-year-old member of her football club, who was beaten and killed after being accused of being a police informer. She had denied any involvement in the killing even though she has been convicted of a role in his kidnapping.
Judging from the commissioners' questions to her, it was clear they were struck by the sheer weight of testimony against her.
Her suggestion that she was the victim of a "bandwagon" of fabrication would have required collusion among a dozen young men who were close to her, local church and community leaders, the police and the security service.
Confronted with the dimensions of such a conspiracy, she said: "I really have no idea how they managed to weave that web."
8. Desmond Tutu, the ANC, and President Jacob Zuma
“I think we are at a bad place in South Africa,” Archbishop Tutu told The New York Times in 2010, “and especially when you contrast it with the Mandela era. Many of the things that we dreamed were possible seem to be getting more and more out of reach. We have the most unequal society in the world.”
In 2011, Archbishop Tutu said this: “This government, our government, is worse than the apartheid government, because at least you were expecting it with the apartheid government. Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me. You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the A.N.C. government. You are disgraceful.”
At one point, Desmond Tutu voted against the ANC.
9. Desmond Tutu and the Bible
“We had the land, and they had the Bible,” the Archbishop said in one of his parables. “Then they said, ‘Let us pray,’ and we closed our eyes. When we opened them again, they had the land and we had the Bible. Maybe we got the better end of the deal.”
10. Desmond Tutu on Homophobia
"I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place," a 81-year-old Desmond Tutu said at the launch of the Free and Equal campaign in Cape Town. "I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level."
11. After his retirement as Archbishop in 1996, Desmond Tutu's spent the early 2000's in America, where he spoke against the Iraq War and Israel's treatment of Palestinians: his inconvenient truths have been erased by our liberal media
After he retired, Tutu was a visiting professor in both Georgia and Massachusetts in the early 2000's, and a speaker at three kinds of protests, all ignored by the liberal establishment media. They were:
(i) the global justice movement and the movement to cancel debt in the Global South
(ii) the protests against the US/UK invasion of Iraq
(iii) the protests against the Israel, which Tutu called an apartheid state: the Israelis treated the Palestinians like apartheid South Africa treated its Black citizens—an assessment which met with the concurrence of ex-president Jimmy Carter in his 2007 book entitled Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.
Today we remember Desmond Tutu as the first black Archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa who spoke tirelessly against apartheid, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, as well as the man whom President Mandela appointed to head up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
His words of rage against the USA and Israel are forgotten.
So does our liberal media erase history.
Remember this: after WW2, America started 30 wars in which our troops killed a minimum of six million civilians and soldiers in Asia, South America and the Middle East (as per an op-ed by MIT's John Tirman on Jan 6, 2012 in The Washington Post entitled "Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?"). The term "evil empire" springs to mind.
And what Desmond Tutu had to say about any of this, will remain unreported in most of his obituaries.