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Published on 03/15/1999 All articles from this issue

Nobel Prize winner Bishop Tutu talks justice, compassion at Flint Center

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By Clyde Noel

Special to the Town Crier

A compassionate religious life hinges on walking humbly with God, doing justice in the world and loving mercy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told more than 2,500 people at the Foothill College Celebrity Speaker Series March 8 at Flint Center in Cupertino.

Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, centered his message around apartheid and the help Americans gave to oppose apartheid.

"I came to the United States often and asked for help, and I want to thank you for making this a 'moral universe' - a movement for goodness toward a glorious end," Tutu said. "Your contribution provided the courage to stand up for the truth."

Tutu noted that justice and mercy depend upon humility before God. The God with whom people are to walk humbly is one who sees the misery of the oppressed, hears the cries of the abused and violated, and knows the suffering of the poor, he said.

"Only a persistent walk with this God will lead us toward justice, mercy and humility," Tutu said.

Tutu, bishop of Johannesburg, South Africa, and former secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his efforts to end apartheid.

The legal segregation system ended in 1994.

"The Peace Prize was an incredible experience for me, but it was given to all our people at a crucial point in time," Tutu said. "It was wonderful for our people because it gave hope, and they realized the world was with them."

Tutu emphasized that during the late 1980s and early 1990s freedom was blossoming in many unlikely places in the world.

"With the demise of communism, the end of the cold war, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, there was no way the South African government could continue pulling the wool over the West with its policies of human rights," Tutu said. "South Africa was the last bastion of Western Civilization against this pagan onslaught."

Tutu praised former South African president William de Klerk.

"Whatever we think about him and his career, all of us want to take off our hats to de Klerk," Tutu said. "He launched his reforms after taking power from P. W. Botha in 1989, and committed three million fellow Afrikaners to sharing power with the overwhelming black majority.

"It was Feb. 2, 1990 when he announced his courageous initiatives and released all political prisoners including Nelson Mandella. Had he not done what he did, a conflagration would have happened," Tutu said.

"Nothing, not even the most sophisticated weapon, not even the most brutally efficient policy will stop people once they are determined to achieve their freedom and their right to humanness," he said.

Departing from his text, Tutu stood for several seconds before relating one of the revelations to emerge from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee he chaired.

An investigator gathered photographs of people who had been tortured to death by police. "They used blowtorches to burn off the hands," Tutu said.

On April 27, 1994, South African citizens went to the polls. They stood in long, snaking lines, waiting up to three hours to vote.

"I voted for the first time at the age of 63 in the land of my birth," Tutu said.

He cited the courage of people who stand up for the truth. Using the phrase, "In the fullness of time," numerous times during his speech, Tutu said.

South Africa became free so the world has hope, because we have this extraordinary God.

Tutu emphasized, "the United States is the only superpower and we hope committed to upholding human rights. Freedom is cheaper than oppression, and democracy releases energies no other political dispensation can do."

Tutu, 67, is teaching theology this year at Emory University in Atlanta.

Tutu spoke the previous night at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts.