Editorial | Grasp Tutu’s bequest

With the earlier passing of the likes of Mandela, Hani, Tambo, Slovo and Sisulu, Desmond Tutu’s death this week continues, as President Cyril Ramaphosa observed, South Africa’s “farewell to a generation of outstanding … leaders who have bequeathed to us a liberated South Africa’’.

Indeed, there can be no questioning of Archbishop Tutu’s contribution to the struggle against the morally bankrupt system of apartheid and the freeing of South Africa. Neither is it hyperbolic to argue, as many people did even before his death, that Archbishop Tutu became the conscience of a free and democratic South Africa.

But Archbishop Tutu’s legacy, as is often the case with people who do great things, does not belong only to South Africa. Their inspiration is universal. We vicariously own their deeds. The question is whether we have the courage to act in accordance with them.

In Jamaica’s case, Archbishop Tutu’s bequest includes principles for addressing some of the country’s deepest problems, not least of which is the gangrenous matter of corruption, as well as the island’s deep economic and social inequities. His starting point was selflessness, humility, honesty and truth-telling.

An Anglican cleric with incisive intellect and a wicked, but usually self-deprecating wit, Desmond Tutu became, in 1986, South Africa’s black archbishop. He had a wider platform from which to make the case he had already profoundly advanced for decades: of the intellectual, moral, political, economic and spiritual indefensibility of the system of white minority rule. Indeed, apartheid was not only a secular aberration. It had no place in God’s realm.

DOING IT TOGETHER

Although he believed in, and promoted, the principles of non-violent opposition to apartheid, Archbishop Tutu warned South Africa’s white minority leaders of the likelihood of the country’s crisis being resolved by violence. He emphasised the futility of the system itself. Outside of South Africa, he implored governments to put pressure on the regime, including through boycotts, to dismantle apartheid.

Or, as he framed the matter in a 1986 speech in Jamaica: “…In South Africa, white people believe they can have separate freedom … . And they discover that they have to spend so much time planning to protect this separate freedom that they have very little time left over to enjoy them. So, we say something that is perfectly obvious again – that until every black person is free in South Africa, no one is going to be free. The only way is to make it together.”

Ultimately, the logic of that argument, underpinned by external and internal pressures – not exclusively non-violent – prevailed. Nelson Mandela was freed from prison; the African National Congress (ANC) and other political organisations were unbanned; and in 1994, South Africa held its first democratic election on the basis of one person, one vote – irrespective of colour.

Jamaica might well lay claim to a tangible sliver of the legacy of that “generation of outstanding South African leaders” referenced by President Ramaphosa, for its historic support – across administrations – of the anti-apartheid campaign.

Significantly, the year after Archbishop Tutu’s speech as guest of Prime Minister Edward Seaga, Oliver Tambo addressed a Founders’ Day dinner of the People’s National Party (PNP), which was in opposition. Then, in 1991, Jamaica was among the first countries visited by Mr Mandela after his 1990 release from prison. And in 1994, Michael Manley, at the forefront of the international anti-apartheid battles of the 1970s, ‘80s and early ‘90s, led the Commonwealth’s mission to South Africa’s first democratic election.

NOT A FINITE PROCESS

Nation-building, though, is not a finite process. Attempting to improve people’s lives and well-being is an ongoing process, which, we suspect, is even more complex in a country undertaking the monumental transition that has taken place in South Africa.

Good systems and constitutions – which South Africa has – are important in these circumstances. But systems are as worthy as how well they are policed and abided by. They endure better when supported by strong moral voices.

South Africa, in this regard, was lucky to have Desmond Tutu morph from anti-apartheid campaigner and spiritual leader to, as he has been called, the conscience of the nation. His leadership on the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission was monumental, helping to give South Africa a real shot of reaching the early rungs towards creating a genuine ‘rainbow nation’. He was outspoken in support of human rights everywhere. He stood for LGBTQ rights in South Africa and for people with HIV/AIDS. And, importantly, he was the scourge of the corrupt.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said, in a tribute, that Archbishop Tutu was a personal hero. He should translate that heroship into something tangible by taking hold of the easiest of Desmond Tutu’s bequests: going aggressively after the corrupt.