Saturday, August 05, 2000
Tutu foresees 'yet another mountain'
By James Pilcher
The Cincinnati Enquirer
For most of his adult life, the Most Rev. Desmond Tutu had two goals — serve God and end apartheid, his native country's racial segregation policy.
Desmond Tutu
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But once the 68-year-old Anglican archbishop from South Africa met those goals, others emerged. The Rev. Mr. Tutu began to realize that goals were just stepping stones along the journey of life. The journey itself — and how we act throughout — is the goal, he said.
“I always thought of myself as being goal-oriented, and I had that one purpose of destroying a systemic evil,” said the Rev. Mr. Tutu, who will receive the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's International Freedom Conductor award tonight at a ceremony at Covington's Northern Kentucky Convention Center.
“We are reaching out for the kingdom of God, but the kingdom of God is ... forever reaching out. We're climbing a mountain, and when we reach the top, we look across and see yet another mountain looming out ahead where the vista opens up.
“At that point we can't say we have arrived; it's actually the beginning of a new stage of our journey.”
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DESMOND TUTU
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• Born: Oct. 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, South Africa, to a domestic worker and schoolteacher.
• Residence: Atlanta, where he served a two-year fellowship at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. He is in the process of relocating to South Africa.
• Family: Married 45 years to Leah; children: Trevor Thamsanqa, Theresa Thandeka, Naomi Nontombi, Mpho Andrea; several grandchildren.
• Career highlights:
1961: Ordained as Anglican priest.
1975-76: Dean of Johannesburg.
1976-78: Bishop of Lesotho.
1978-85: General Secretary, South African Council of Churches, which represents all the major Christian churches except the Dutch Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic Church (the latter is an accredited observer).
1984: Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid.
1985-86: Bishop of Johannesburg.
1986-96: Archbishop of Cape Town, the first black to hold the position.
1987-97: President of the All Africa Conference of Churches.
1995-98: Chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
1998-2000: Two-year fellowship at Emory University's Candler School of Theology.
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THE AWARD
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The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center International Freedom Conductor Award was established in 1998 by the Freedom Center to honor those who “exemplify the ideas of freedom and human rights worldwide.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped lead the successful fight against apartheid in South Africa from the time he was elected bishop of Lesotho until the racial segregation policy was overturned in 1993, will receive the award tonight at a sold-out dinner at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington.
Civil rights hero Rosa Parks received the first award in 1998. Ms. Parks and the Rev. Mr. Tutu are members of the center's advisory board.
There is no set schedule to when honorees are selected.
The center, in its planning stages and scheduled to open on Cincinnati's riverfront in 2003, will commemorate and document the efforts of those who helped slaves escape and gain their freedom.
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The Rev. Mr. Tutu's journey not only includes leading the movement against apartheid — which formally ended on New Year's Day 1993 — but leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South African President Nelson Mandela's attempt to heal the wounds caused by apartheid, where thousands of blacks were killed or tortured for speaking out against the government.
A low point came in 1997, when the Rev. Mr. Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A round of tests in April showed the cancer had not spread.
High points came in 1984, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, and tonight, when he becomes the second person to receive the International Conductor Award. (Civil rights hero Rosa Parks received the inaugural award in 1998.)
“I am bowled over to receive it and can't understand why I've been chosen,” said the Rev. Mr. Tutu from Atlanta, where this week he finished a two-year fellowship at Emory University's Candler School of Theology.
“There are many more deserving, and I can only accept this on a representative capacity. What am I without those who were there before me?”
Many who know the Rev. Mr. Tutu say that kind of humility is what drives him on a journey once defined by its ending, but now by the scenery along the way.
“He is one of those few people who is honestly interested in the person right in front of him,” says Steven Kraftchick, associate dean of academic affairs at the Candler School.
“And the thing many people don't know about him is that he has a great sense of humor. He doesn't joke about people, but he understands how ironic God has made human existence.”
That humor is firmly in place when he discusses his Nobel Peace Prize.
“With all the people in South Africa who could have been picked, they chose me ... and I think it was because I had an easy name that fit on the medal,” said the Rev. Mr. Tutu, sounding strong despite his recent illness.
Katie Davis, a former student of the Rev. Mr. Tutu at Emory, says he is “the perfect sense of a pastor,” because of his willingness to put others before himself.
“When I first met him, I welcomed him to campus, and he took five minutes just to chat with me and find out about me,” Ms. Davis said. “He just pulls that out of you.”
Friend and fellow activist Harry Belafonte called the archbishop “the 21st-century man” because he can be strong yet tender while leading a national movement.
“Trying to wrap him up ... is like trying to put God in a bottle,” said Mr. Belafonte, who will participate in tonight's ceremony. “He has become South Africa's, if not the world's, conscience. He is a walking example of what we would hope others would be.”
The Rev. Mr. Tutu's last visit to Cincinnati came in 1994, when he lobbied local businesses that had severed economic ties with South Africa because of apartheid to reinvest in the country.
Cincinnati-area leaders said his presence continues to be felt.
“He has shown us that despite the conditions or oppression, we need to be lovers of people,” said the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor of Greater New Light Baptist Church in North Avondale and a member of the Freedom Center's national advisory board.
Adds U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Nathaniel Jones, co-chair of the center's board of trustees: “He personifies the mission of the Freedom Center. His life is the personification of absorbing the blows of violence and repression of a system and then moving on to lead the effort to reconcile.”
The Rev. Mr. Tutu said forgiving the the previous regime through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was more difficult than overcoming apartheid.
“Ultimately it is easier to be against something,” he said. “Fighting against apartheid helped to unite disparate and diverse groups against an enemy we could clearly identify.”
The commission included victims and perpetrators alike recounting their experiences in public. Those who confessed their wrongs received reduced sentences or complete amnesty.
Early on, the Rev. Tutu broke down in tears when a wheelchair-bound man, clearly frustrated by the speech impediment brought on by torture, wept when he couldn't continue.
Yet he says the process brought a realization to his countrymen that “the aberration is the bad person and that we are inherently good.”
His final goal, the Rev. Mr. Tutu said, rests in awareness of God's charity.
“The only thing I am looking for now is to make people realize that God loves everyone,” he said. “I want a society where people matter.”
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