Cape Town — Nobel Peace Prizewinner, cleric and champion of justice for the world's poor: retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu still moves at a blistering pace, leaving aides and admirers struggling to stay abreast. AllAfrica's Tami Hultman managed to snag a few minutes of his time in Cape Town, for an interview that touched on Africa's prospects, South Africa's relations with Zimbabwe and the contemporary relevance of Good Friday, which Christians observe next week.
The interview was conducted prior to the current escalation of the governance and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.
First I want to ask you about the recent biography of you – Rabble-Rouser for Peace - by AllAfrica's managing editor, John Allen – a long-time South African journalist who worked with you for many years, including as communications director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which you headed. Before his intensive series of conversations with you and your wife Leah, had you spent much time reflecting about what you've lived through and accomplished?
I am not sure that I have spent time reflecting on my past life very much. I do have a small exercise, which someone suggested once when I was in retreat. It is good, as you flip back through your life, from as early as you can remember to where you are, just to give thanks. That's about the only kind of review that I've done, until we chatted with John. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised at the amount of research he has done and the number of things he has unearthed. (laughs) I did say to him I would certainly hope that it was not going to be a hagiography!
The cover photo shows you in what some might see as an uncharacteristic pose – dark glasses, arm raised – maybe belligerently, or at least aggressively. Very unlike those book covers where you're looking serene and contemplative. Do you like the photo choice?
Maybe being older I would have wanted something less robust.(laughs) Yes, I think it shows a certain part of me. As I have looked back, I have wondered whether I was not often more abrasive than I should have been. I wonder whether I ought to have listened to the dictum, that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But that was part of who we were at a particular time in our history. It's honest. It's an honest picture and it shows. Maybe I might have liked it more contemplative.
These days there is a running debate among Africans and people who care about Africa over whether to promote the continent as a place where positive developments are being overlooked or, on the other hand, to insist that the world pay attention to Africa's crises. What do you think? How should we think about Africa today?
We are bombarded and overwhelmed by a great deal of bad news. And it is true. Wherever you look -
Burma, Darfur, Zimbabwe - there are some really awful things around. We may sometimes get to be despondent about how things are panning out. And I have thought that a ministry that the church possibly ought to be considering is reminding people that, yes, there are awful things, but there are a heck of a lot of wonderful things happening.
You know, you could have spent a great deal of time speaking about the war in Iraq, and that would be justifiable. But we forget how before that war, we had millions of people around the world demonstrating against the possibility of a war, miles away from their doorstep. One particular day, when the world said we want to register our opposition to the war, you had this wonderful wave of humanity. Starting in the east as the sun rose, it was wave upon wave upon wave of remarkable people, passionate about peace. If we had the eyes to look, think of the people who spend so much of their time serving people who suffer from HIV and Aids; the many who are involved in relief in places like Darfur.
I have thought that part of my remaining ministry is reminding us of the very considerable accord that there is in the world. In our experience here with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where you were quite devastated by the revelations of atrocities that people committed, [we had] the revelation of the extent of our capacity for evil. All of us.
But then, one of the surprising things I took away from the TRC was not the being devastated and appalled, as one might have expected. It was the other thing. The exhilaration that you experienced as you encountered, you saw examples of the incredible generosity of people, the incredible capacity of people to be good. And so I think a ministry we ought to be engaging in is not just showing the amount of good there is but, also, reminding people that, in fact, we are fundamentally good. We are created for goodness.
Which is why you can have something that is odd, in a sense, in a world where we have made a fetish of success. And so you get people being macho and aggressive in pursuit of that success. It's extraordinary, then, that the people we admire, the ones we look on as heroes and heroines, are not the ones that are successful and celebrities because of their bank balances. Yes, we probably envy them a little and yes, think that they count. But the people we really respect - revere in fact - are not macho. Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and the list just goes on and on. The Dalai Lama is one of the few who can fill Central Park when he goes to New York. He and Madiba [Nelson Mandela] are among the only two non-popstars who can do that. And you have to ask why? The reason is that people realize they are good.
So you prefer to emphasize the positive.
I don't think that we are meant to pretend things are other than they are. Things are awful! Here in South Africa, now, it is about 800 people who die every day of Aids. Many of those needn't have died. We've been irresponsible in the way we have sought to deal with that. I think it is important that it is publicized and people will get to know about all of the awfulness. But we also need to be finding a way of reminding people of the bigger picture – that, despite all of the appearances to the contrary, it is in fact a moral universe.
You mentioned Zimbabwe, on your doorstep, as it were. You have been very critical of President Robert Mugabe for, among other things, his increasingly authoritarian rule, and you have called attention to the economic and humanitarian emergencies in what was once a prospering country.
It's been awful. It's very sad. There has been so long a time with people suffering as much as they have. And I am very sad, because I used to have the highest regard for [Mugabe].
Why do you see things having come to this point, in the Mugabe administration?
Those who are not African may not always understand it. President Mugabe was the star before Madiba [Mandela] appeared. Then, when Madiba appears, the media are cruel, really, in how they turned to concentrate almost exclusively on Madiba. That must have shaken President Mugabe. I think, in part, it explains what subsequently happened. He found it very difficult to play second fiddle.
You've also urged African leaders, including South African President Thabo Mbeki, to take a strong stand for democracy in Zimbabwe.
When President Mugabe has gone to some of these heads of state meetings, African heads of state, he has been welcomed like a hero.
Why do you think President Mbeki, whose movement had world support in its struggle for democracy and justice in South Africa, has been so reluctant to publicly criticize Zimbabwe's crackdown on dissent?
I did say to President Mbeki at one point that I understood the constraints under which he was operating. If Thabo [Mbeki] criticized President Mugabe, he would be seen as an upstart. He is much younger. And Mugabe was imprisoned for his struggle for an independent Zimbabwe. Even though Thabo was in exile - exile is not the same as being in prison, you know. And so he had a great deal that was constraining him. And I said that.
But I would have thought that we might have found a way - perhaps let one of the government ministers say, quite categorically, that there were things that were unacceptable. I would have thought, too, that the African Union would say: "Here are criteria, standards, against which we have to judge anyone, and they are objective. If you don't do one, two, three, four you fall by the wayside - and maybe forfeit your membership until you abide by the standards.
And I wish, for our own sakes, that African leaders could uphold these standards. Because, in some way, it is almost as though they are saying, "We can't afford to be too strict in our judgment of him, because it might rebound on us. We might be held to the same standards." It is almost as though they are scared that they are likely themselves to fall by the wayside.
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You've also made it clear, in the past, that you aren't looking to the United States and other western nations to provide the answers to Africa's problems.
I wish so much that the West could learn a tiny bit of modesty. One looks at all the mess that is happening in many so-called "third world" countries. I wish the nations of the West could just remember a little bit that they produced the Holocaust. They produced Fascism. They produced the dictatorships in Spain, Portugal. When you think of the guillotine in France, you think of all the bloody wars that have happened in England, on the European continent, in the United States. Look at what Katrina revealed of the state of your country.
There are many good people in the West, in the United States, yes. I'm just saying they shouldn't be so hoity-toity. And they mustn't forget that Africa was not always like this. Africa produced refuge. Not refugees, it provided refuge. Asylum. When people were hungry in Palestine, they came to Africa for food. Abraham and his family and Jacob came to Africa. When the Holy Family was facing persecution in the Holy Land they escaped to Africa for refuge. And when on that Friday which we call "Good", when Jesus carried a cross, it was Simon of Cyrene [an African] who helped Jesus carry his cross. And don't forget that some of the greatest minds in our church were African.
At the same time, you've said the global community should be doing more to help Africa develop economically, to end its conflicts?
In the end, actually, you are not being altruistic when you do that. It's the best form of self-interest. Because the world is operating in such a way these days that you can't quarantine yourself from unrest, from the effects of the poverty and disease in other parts of the world. The war against terror is not going to be won as long as we have conditions in so many parts of the world which make people desperate. It's as simple as that.
If we do not learn the law that God tries hard to teach us - that we are family - we will do what Martin Luther King said would happen: we will learn that we are brothers and sisters or we will perish together like fools. That is the law of this universe. And I hope that we will learn that before it is too late.
