Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The situation in South Africa is one of violence.

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

I was in college when I heard Desmond Tutu say that on a PBS special on South Africa and apartheid. It ignited me. Just that one line.

I had heard of South Africa and the racist system of apartheid. I had heard of Nelson Mandela. Steve Biko.

But Tutu, an Anglican Bishop, said it with passion. And, at the time, he was all there was. All of the members of the resistance, the African National Congress, were in prison. Tutu was it.

I was hooked. I joined the cause. I began reading and writing about apartheid in South Africa. I could not even fathom that such oppression was being allowed to happen. And it was.

I discovered Nelson Mandela, thanks to Tutu, and the massacres in Soweto and Sharpsville thanks to those first words by Tutu.

I watched public television religiously after that, taking in all I could about South Africa. As the United States Congress pushed for a sanctions bill to bring the apartheid regime to its knees in the mid-1980s, I watched the political fight day by day.

I went to small rallies and speeches. I protested outside of hotels where members of the apartheid regime were allegedly staying. Sometimes, we learned they were; other times, it was just a rumor.

When SWAPO came to the states, I came to show support. When the South African miners’ union came to raise money for the cause of apartheid’s end, I came to that as well.

I joined DC SCAR, the D.C. Student Coalition Against Apartheid and Racism. My late friend, Ray Davis was Executive Director. I attended meetings. I became good friends with Ray and others. We, young people, felt the sense of purpose often elusive in life. We would make the world be better.

And for me, it was Desmond Tutu who helped push me into that.

Yes, there was that Gil Scott Heron song, “Johannesburg.” That too. But Tutu lived in South Africa. He denounced the actions of the white minority racist government. South Africa was deeply oppressive and he traveled and spoke. It is hard to imagine also. But he had to do it if he really believed in the entirety of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1981, after he hammered the government of South Africa in a series of speeches in foreign countries, his passport was revoked. At the time, Columbia University was seeking to award Tutu an honorary degree. At the time Tutu was waging a moral, oratorical struggle, the United States, under Ronald Reagan, refused to fully condemn South Africa over and over, calling it a “democracy for whites.”

In 1984, Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize. He used the opportunity to demand that the United States of America back the “right horse” in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa and free Nelson Mandela.

Eventually, apartheid (political and legal) did come to an end. Triumphantly, Tutu visited America after Mandela’s release and declared that “South Africa will be free” to a packed audience in Baltimore, Maryland.

Years earlier, progress towards that freedom was obvious. The U.S. finally passed sanctions against the majority white regime and its financial collapse was imminent. The struggle was over, for political and legal rights.

Tutu, as he might say, was able to be a bishop again and the political fighters could continue the battle to write one of the world’s great evils.

When he died today, I just whispered a thank you to Tutu. His voice was the first official voice I heard calling for all to join the struggle. I did not do much. But I recognized the evil and tried to say, it was wrong whenever I could.

Desmond Tutu deserves all of our thanks mostly for living a righteous life.

We live in a moral universe. You know this. All of us know this instinctively. The perpetrators of injustice know this. This is a moral universe. Right and wrong do matter…No matter what happens. No matter how many guns you use. No matter how many people get killed. It is an inexorable truth that freedom will prevail in the end, that injustice and repression and violence will not have the last word. —Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM and is republished with permission.

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