DESMOND TUTU, the retired Anglican archbishop of South Africa, visited Chicago last week to be honored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. The blunt, ever-playful “Arch,” 76, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership in the anti-apartheid struggle, and he later headed his country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Before being presented the Lincoln Leadership Prize by Oprah Winfrey, Tutu sat down with the Tribune to discuss South Africa’s legacy, Zimbabwe, race, Barack Obama and the “generous” but “crazy” United States of America. Following is an edited transcript:
Q: How much did you know about Abraham Lincoln?
A: I remember how, when I was teaching in one of [South Africa’s black] townships, one of the students recited the Gettysburg address. He is remembered as an icon of emancipation. So it was a very great privilege to have been awarded this [prize].
Q: South Africa has been a beacon of light on racial reconciliation and human rights. But several recent issues have made people wonder about its direction: Its leadership on Zimbabwe. A vote in the UN Security Council not to increase pressure on the Myanmar junta over human rights. Objecting to a proposed ban on cluster bombs at an African summit.
A: I’ve said we are betraying our legacy. We are hurting people who were with us in the [anti-apartheid] struggle.
The argument that this was an issue that never should have gone to the Security Council, if that argument had been used about our situation with apartheid, if people had said [that], we’d probably still be with the shackles of apartheid binding us.
Q: Is it a question of leadership? Why is South Africa having trouble with these issues?
A: The only thing I can say is really you’re seeing a fissure between the position of the government and the position of people in the country. I wouldn’t say it’s a South Africa position. Like when we were struggling [against apartheid], when most students like yourselves were trying to get your institutions to divest, you had [President] Reagan with his constructive engagement policy.
Q: South African President Thabo Mbeki’s remarks about AIDS were damaging early on. He even said it was something that was brought in by others, didn’t he?
A: I was devastated in many ways. At least in a way he acknowledged that it would be better for him to step out of the way. … But you think of the many people who have died needlessly, because if the present program had been in place then, a lot of people who have died would not have died. I don’t know why he’s had these blind spots.
Q: Do you think part of his problem was the weight of carrying on after what Mandela and you have done there?
A: Well, I thought he had the measure of that. He was asked, “How do you feel about trying to fill the shoes of Nelson Mandela?” and his retort was wonderful, because he said, “Who said I wanted to step into his shoes? He’s got such bad taste in shoes.” It was wonderful. He has got just the right way of responding. I don’t know what happened.
Q: Do you think he’s angry at the West. Is that part of it?
A: Part, I would say, yes. The sense that the West pontificates about us. And he was upset over AIDS. There was a suggestion that it was caused by [African] people being too promiscuous, and all of that, and then the caricatures that you’ve had.
Q: America is on the verge of seeing, perhaps, the first African-American nominee for a major political party in Barack Obama, and he’s half-African too. How to you react to that?
A: You are a crazy country, I think, in very many ways. You’re a country that has, I think, some of the most generous people I’ve ever come across in the world. [But] on the whole, you got very, very upset at [Obama’s pastor Rev.] Jeremiah Wright [Jr.]. Now, Jeremiah Wright may have said more crudely what, actually, almost every African-American would have wanted to say. I mean, that is how they feel in your country, that race is a very, very real issue.
When I first came to this country in ’72, I was quite shaken by the intensity of feeling that African-Americans had. And I said I couldn’t understand: Why are they so bitter? Why are they so angry?
There, in South Africa [under apartheid], they told you, “You’re nothing, and we’re going to treat you like the nothing you are. And don’t ever hope to think that you have a chance of being treated differently.”
Here, you say to them, “You’re equal, and the sky’s the limit.” And they keep bumping their heads against this thing that’s stopping them from reaching out to the stars. And so I understood that it was the illusion of equality, which is still the case.
And yet, why I say you’re such a crazy country, you’ve got all of that going against you, and yet you produce [Obama]. Where else in the world would you ever have had anything like that? I mean an African-American being not just a credible candidate but one who has galvanized. I mean the number of young people who have come out and said, “Yes, we think it is actually possible to have a different kind of society.” Only here.
Q: How do we fix this problem that half the country doesn’t recognize and the other half is so bitter about?
A: You guys [need to] sit down and have a process, something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where people will have the opportunity of telling their story.
[There is a] pain in the tummy of every African-American that has not been articulated. And if you were to have a forum recognized by the nation, accepted by the nation, endorsed by the nation, people could come and tell their stories and tell it without fear.You really are a great country, and you owe it to yourselves to exorcise this demon. You owe it to your own children.
———-
hdellios@tribune.com
srowley@tribune.com
