Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon who won the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting racial discrimination, died on 26 December. This interview with Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk in 2012 shows Tutu’s views on Mahatma Gandhi, India’s relationship with South Africa, his responsibilities as chair of global peace organisation The Elders, and his visit to Bihar.
Shekhar Gupta (SG): It is a special privilege for me today to welcome one of our finest living legends, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A voice and conscience of people and a nation and who, along with Nelson Mandela, scripted a brilliant story of reconciliation, forgiveness and nation-building.
Desmond Tutu (DT): Thank you very much. It is a wonderful country to come to. You know, we owe a lot to India. India was the first country to insist that apartheid should be an item on the agenda of the United Nations. And, of course, you gave us a gift that we returned to you, Mahatma Gandhi.
SG: That too with so much value added. We sent you an ordinary man and you sent back a Mahatma.
DT: He not only influenced (South Africa) in our struggle so that we use non-violent methods, but Martin Luther King Jr regarded him as one of his mentors. He (Gandhi) inspired him in the civil rights movement in the United States. So we owe a great deal (to Mahatma Gandhi). We wouldn’t have made it without the support of the international community and India is a very significant part of that.
SG: Archbishop, there was a great challenge winning independence for India and building a diverse society, but it was much tougher in South Africa because power was being taken away from people who were going to remain in the society.
DT: Yes. F.W. de Klerk played a very critical role. I take off my hat to him for his immense courage. It isn’t easy to give up power.
SG: Particularly when it is backed by a notion of racial superiority.
DT: Yes, but we have remarkable people in our country when you think of the magnanimity that so many showed. Not only Black people, we had White people as well who came to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was quite amazing how very few people wanted revenge. It was very touching to see victims being ready to embrace the perpetrators of some of the most gruesome crimes. We had at least one American, a young woman, a Fulbright scholar who was killed gruesomely. Her parents came and supported the granting of amnesty to the people who killed their daughter. Amazing. The world has many good people. My youngest daughter and I wrote a book, Made For Goodness. Each one of us is made for goodness.
SG: If I may digress a bit, you offered to doff your hat to President de Klerk. That hat could be South African but this scarf looks very Indian to me.
DT: It’s a wonderful thing. I am here with a group, The Elders. One of the members of this group is your very distinguished Ela Bhatt, who started SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association). We are glad to be here. Of course, as you see, it isn’t paradise, but you probably are moving in that direction with the prosperity that you have. Fortunately for us, we have been allowed to join the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). We are hoping that you will help us because we need considerable finances. South Africa has awful disparity.
SG: So what does this group of Elders do?
DT: We have Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Gro Brundtland, Mary Robinson…some very fantastic people. In a traditional community, you always have the elders who are regarded as repositories of wisdom and experience, who make available for the community, for those who are succeeding them, the benefits of their experience. Therefore, we go around and we’ve been to Sudan, Darfur…
SG: Do people listen to elders anymore?
DT: They do, actually. People have come around to realise that the world is not made up just of money. Well, we have seen all of the turmoil that is happening around the world. I think that people are recovering the belief in values. One of the reasons we have to come to India is that we are concerned about the general discrimination against women…and we are zeroing in on child marriages.
I think all of us almost always imagine that we are superior and yet we know that we are, of all creatures, the most insecure. Women have an extraordinary capacity, they bring to life, nurture, they’re able to support and, almost always, they are collaborative. Well, what you see with Ela Bhatt’s SEWA, you’ve seen it with Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh). He showed that women are reliable debtors. He says that all the capital they have lent out to women has been returned, a return rate of almost 90 per cent. In Liberia, women played a very significant role in promoting peace. We need a revolution by women.
SG: Archbishop, you went to Bihar, which is referred to as the dark continent of India.
DT: We went there and we came away inspired by what we saw. We have come especially to deal with the whole question of child marriage. The chief minister has said that they want to ensure that in the local councils, women’s representation is pushed to 50 per cent. We went to this village, where we met about 20-30 young people, both boys and girls. It was fantastic, how enthusiastic they were about opposing this practice of child marriage. Child marriage is something that holds back communities. You can forget about six of the eight millennium development goals unless you stop child marriages. You can forget about improving child mortality, maternal health. You can’t do anything about universalising primary education because these girls drop out. These young men we met (in Bihar) said they believe that child marriage is a very dangerous practice.
SG: So what lessons do you take back from Bihar to South Africa?
DT: In South Africa, we have incredible disparity between the rich and the poor. It is now 18 years since our first democratic elections. And we said in our Truth and Reconciliation report that if the poverty, the gap between the rich and the poor is not narrowed quickly, then we can kiss reconciliation goodbye. What we found (in Bihar) was that there is considerable political will. Your Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is an amazing person. The things they are doing with girls and with young people and with women…We might be saying these are things to copy. India is in a fantastic position. We want to support India’s call for a permanent seat in the Security Council (UNSC). India is, after all, the largest democracy in the world.
SG: And of course the most chaotic, diverse.
DT: There are many things that we can learn from India. For instance, the effect of your economic growth, an incredible 9 per cent and you complain about 7 per cent. Also, you are in the forefront in information technology. But we hope so very much that as you take your place as one of the leading countries in the world, you will give clear leadership such as we saw in Bihar on this issue of child marriage and that in India, which has had a woman prime minister, women should come into their own.
SG: One thing you could teach India is something on the lines of Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Nelson Mandela asked you to head. Because India has many conflicts. Your Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have become a model. Do you think that can work in India? Say, in a Maoist area, in Kashmir?
DT: The point is, we are not peculiar. If it worked in South Africa and the situation was dire, it could work anywhere. And one of the wonderful things is you don’t have to copy every detail of ours. Because each such instrument has to be tailor-made for a particular situation, it is ad hoc. I suggested to President Clinton when he visited South Africa that the US will want something akin to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because people are carrying a great deal of hurt…I mean the native Indians, the African-Americans. They must have an opportunity to tell their story.
SG: So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission can work here also. Because you believe that it takes time, but in the end good always wins.
DT: Absolutely, this is a moral universe. And there is no question in my mind that ultimately, justice, goodness, compassion, all the things that we admire will be the ones that will have the last word.
SG: But you know, if we look at your own story, you’ve had a tough life. Tuberculosis at 12, you wanted to become a doctor and you became a teacher of English. And then, priesthood. So what has your own experience health early on, your tough upbringing, teaching and then priesthood taught you about leadership because you are now a global leader?
DT: I have learnt more and more just how much I owe to other people. When I was in hospital (as a boy), Trevor Huddleston (Anglican parish priest and an anti-apartheid activist) used to come and visit me. It did something in enhancing my self-esteem, but it also told me about the need to care for others. As I look back on life, I am more aware of how much I have depended on others and how much I have come to learn from others. Some of the experiences, which at that time you thought were such awful things, have been good teachers as well. When you come out of the crucible, it has been a process of cleansing. We have had some extraordinary people.
SG: You were the most extraordinary of them.
DT: When you look at Nelson Mandela, 27 years jail, and say, ‘Oh, what a waste’, I say, ‘no’. That guy, when he went to prison, was one of the angriest young people. He was appalled. That period of imprisonment, the suffering taught Mandela to become magnanimous, to understand the point of view of others. He emerged not as someone who was saying we destroy everything that stops us from being free.
SG: He came out as a South African nationalist.
DT: He is a fantastic human being. One also recognises, as he says, he is not a saint…like all of us. But I can’t imagine what it would have been like had he not been there.
SG: How important was this spiritual side to the Reconciliation Commission because you have combined politics and spirituality beautifully, although you’re not a politician. You are only a man of God and a man of the Left, which takes some balancing.
DT: If we had not had a spiritual element to it, our people would not have understood. They wanted the things that happened. They are the ones who wanted us to start prayers. The commission itself was made up of people with all kinds of points of view we had Muslims, we had a Hindu, we had Christians, a Jew, communists. We had people who might be atheists…
SG: And we had Leftists who are priests.
DT: No. It’s just that the God I worship is always notoriously biased in favour of the poor, the hungry, the downcast and the outcast. If you like them, I mean you can say God is Leftist. I mean He…
SG: He or She.
DT: It is actually very important because giving God male characteristics only has tended to make God macho. But in the Bible, some of the descriptions of God… I mean God says to the people He has chosen that, I will never forget you. Your name is engraved on the palms of my hands. Then, He says, can a mother ever forget the child she has borne? I mean this is the highest form of human love. So there are feminine characteristics in God just as there are masculine characteristics.
SG: Archbishop, you keep saying to God that we know you run the show, but why don’t you make it more obvious? When was the last time you said that to God?
DT: There are many occasions now… Democratic Republic of Congo where they’ve used rape as a weapon of war, Burma, Tibet… There are so many instances when ghastliness seems to be going to have the upper hand for a very, very long time. And I laugh easily but I also cry easily. There are many instances when you say why for goodness God, why do you allow this to happen? Why do you let the powerful, the ruthless do this to the least of your creatures? Why do you allow these powerful ones to be corrupt and to be so brazen about it when many of the children are living in poverty?
SG: What do you hear from God?
DT: Well, God says, it will be alright. And I don’t doubt that. The trouble is that God’s timetable hardly ever seemed to coincide with mine. Because I want to see things happen now but again, it is the glory of being human and being this creature of God who said, I have given you free will and I am not going to intervene to stop you from doing the bad because I have given you this gift. And if you use it to perpetrate a holocaust, a genocide, a theft, corruption, I will not stop you, my child.
SG: What does India need more of? India needs to see more of your smile. So I hope that you keep coming to India more often than you do.
DT: I would love to. This is a fantastic country. It has a very venerable history. You have some extraordinary people who have influenced you. We talked about Mahatma Gandhi. You know there are wonderful things and we hope to keep coming. And once you get to take leadership on child marriage…
SG: And some similar curses which we don’t deserve to have and which we should have thrown off a long time ago. That’s why I said you need to come to India more often.
DT: There are some wonderful people here and you’ve got your own special Elders in our group. You’ve got Ela Bhatt and she’s wonderful in our meetings.
SG: Thank you so much. It is a blessing to have a conversation with you.
This interview was originally published in The Indian Express in 2012.
Also read: Nehru loved India, but the things he did were not right for India — Gayatri Devi in 2006