“True reconciliation is a deeply personal matter. It can happen only between persons who assert their own personhood and who acknowledge and respect that of others.” -Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 in Klerksdorp, a small gold mining town in South Africa. His father was a teacher and his mother was a domestic worker, working as a cook in an institution for blind women and doing laundry for a white family. At the age of twelve his family moved to the large, capital city of Johannesburg.

From 1948-1993 South Africa had a government policy of apartheid, which upheld a system that discriminated against people who were not white. People were divided into four groups – White, Indian (“Asian”) Colored and Black. Non-whites had a far inferior educational system, inadequate medical care, and substandard public services. Apartheid was introduced by the Nationalist party in South Africa when they took power in 1948. The objective of Apartheid was for the 4 million whites to maintain control over the 23 million non-whites in South Africa.

White people in South Africa owned most of the land and lived in cleaner, safer neighborhoods. Black and “Colored” people were relegated to poor townships where they lived in tin shacks with no water or electricity. They sometimes did not have enough food to feed their families and often could not get jobs. They also had to carry a “pass” with them at all times. This pass had their fingerprints and their picture on it. If they were caught without the pass, they were arrested and put in jail. White people did not have to carry a pass and could go wherever they wanted at any time. Desmond Tutu often spoke out about the lack of equal rights for his people. When asked about suffrage, he said “In the land of my birth I cannot vote, but a young person of eighteen years of age can vote just because they have white skin.”

When he was a teenager, Desmond became very sick with tuberculosis. His lungs were filled with bacteria, and he almost died. He had to be in the hospital for almost two years. While in the hospital, a white priest named Trevor Huddleston came to visit him often. He would bring Desmond books to read, would play checkers with him, and even tutored him in school subjects so that he didn’t fall behind while he was sick. No white person had ever cared about Desmond or treated him with respect. Trevor Huddleston became a mentor and close friend and eventually Desmond named his son after him.

After Desmond recovered, he wanted to become a doctor and find a cure for tuberculosis. Though his grades were good in high school, his family could not afford to send him to medical school and so he decided to become a teacher just like his father. Because he was black, he could only teach in black schools, and he soon discovered that the education that black students received, which was called “Bantu,” was drastically inferior to the education that white students received. For example, most of the black children only went to school for three hours a day and were taught how to be servants to white people rather than learning math, science and other academic subjects. As a result, Desmond Tutu decided that he could not continue being a teacher in this Bantu system. “I just felt I couldn’t be a part of this…I said to myself, sorry, I’m not going to be a collaborator in this scheme. Then I asked myself, 'What can I do?'"

Desmond remembered his good friend Trevor Huddleston and how he was able to make a positive impact on people’s lives through his work as a priest. So, Desmond left his teaching job and studied to become a priest. As a priest, Desmond Tutu was able to reach out to all of the people of South Africa, giving them hope and dignity. Eventually he became the first black person to hold the post of Archbishop in the Anglican Church in South Africa.

Desmond Tutu and the other black and colored people in South Africa could not continue to accept the unjust apartheid laws. Instead of using violence to solve the problem, Desmond Tutu decided that the way to make things better in South Africa was to show the world the horrible things that were happening in his country. “For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too,” he pleaded when asking people around the globe to join the cause to end apartheid in South Africa.

He worked with local churches to speak out against the Apartheid government and violence against the black and “colored” people. In 1976, police opened fire on 10,000 high school students in the town of Soweto who were protesting the unfair treatment. Over 500 youth were killed during the Soweto Uprising which sparked more violence and retaliation by the South African government. In response, Desmond Tutu led peaceful marches that called for economic sanctions against South Africa. He hoped that if countries around the world stopped buying goods from South Africa the government would be forced to end the violence against black and colored people and create laws that protected all citizens of South Africa – not just whites.

In 1984 Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent work to end Apartheid and bring equality for the people in South Africa. In 1994, after several years of negotiations, Apartheid ended in South Africa. Desmond Tutu and all the other people of color in South Africa could vote together with whites for the first time on April 27, 1994. People waited in line for hours and sometimes all day to cast their votes. On that day, Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president of South Africa. When Nelson Mandela won the election, Desmond Tutu remembers, “We were on cloud 9. It was like falling in love…it was the day of liberation for all of us, black and white together.”

When Apartheid ended, President Mandela appointed Desmond Tutu as Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The purpose of the Commission was to reveal the truth of the human rights abuses that had happened under apartheid and to recommend to the Government ways in which those who had suffered or their families could be rehabilitated and receive reparation for their suffering. It was also able to grant amnesty from prosecution to those perpetrators of politically motivated crimes who told the truth about their acts. Victims came to the Commission to tell their stories. Many found healing and relief through the Commission and even some perpetrators who admitted to their crimes were forgiven by those they had abused. The commission focused more on healing than punishment, it was hoped that hearing the truth would bring the different groups in the country together and promotion of reconciliation and nation building.

Archbishop Tutu continues to be a world leader in the struggle for human rights. He believes that all people are God’s children, sisters and brothers, members of the same family. As in any family, when a member is sick or in need, the whole family pitches in to help. He would hope that in that spirit of compassion we would all help each other. He is deeply concerned about the spread of diseases such as malaria, TB and AIDS. He longs for a world where there are opportunities for everyone to receive an education, to have access to health care, clean water, to have a house and to be able to live with dignity. A world where people care for people rather than things, where there is enough for all and where we can celebrate our diversity of language, culture and faith.

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