Bill Moyers talks with Archbishop Desmond Tutu who has been a tireless voice for justice and racial reconciliation. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the struggle against apartheid.
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ARCHBISHOP TUTU: (From speech) We have a cause that is just. We have a cause that is going to prevail.
BILL MOYERS: He fought against South African apartheid, and dedicated his life to peace and reconciliation.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: How are you? You’re welcome. You’re welcome. In the end, justice and goodness will prevail. This is a moral universe.
BILL MOYERS: Join me for a conversation with one of the leaders of this century, Desmond Tutu. I’m Bill Moyers.
(Announcements)
BILL MOYERS: Desmond Tutu was born in an impoverished township in South Africa in 1931.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I had a wonderful mother. I had a very strict father. My mother was not educated, but she is — she was an incredible person. She had a natural sense of siding with the underdog. Whoever was having the worst of an argument, whatever the rights and wrongs of it were, my mother would side with. And — I hope that I resemble — her a bit in that as well.
BILL MOYERS: He wanted to be a doctor, but wound up a parish priest and a prophet.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: (From speech) For until blacks are free, no one in this country is going to be free.
BILL MOYERS: For 30 years he was a leader in his people’s struggle to end apartheid, the rule of white supremacy.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: (From speech) If you think you can stop us from becoming free, you are going to be stampeded.
BILL MOYERS: The course was hard and costly.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: (From speech) The system tries all it can to destroy us. It won’t succeed. God is on our side.
BILL MOYERS: In I984, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and appealed to the world to join the struggle.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: (From speech) I give notice that if in I8 to 24 months from today, February the 3rd, apartheid has not been dismantled, or is not being actively dismantled, then for the first time I will, myself, call for punitive economic sanctions, whatever the legal consequences may be.
BILL MOYERS: One year later, even as his own people still could not vote, the Anglican Church enthroned him as the first black archbishop in South Africa.
In I994, millions of black South Africans, including Desmond Tutu, voted for the first time. Nelson Mandela was elected president. Apartheid was no longer the law of the land. But the nation’s healing had just begun. President Mandela asked Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its mandate is to document the horrors of apartheid and to sow the seeds of reconciliation between blacks and whites.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: We do want to forgive. But — I mean, we don’t how to for — who to forgive because we don’t know the killers, you know.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: He had a gun in his hand pointed at my forehead.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: The act of opening a magazine was the detonating device for a bomb.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Through Translator) We buried a corpse that didn’t have a head.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Through Translator) They shot him and blow him up.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: (Through Translator) It was a tragedy for your family. I am very, very sorry that they had to die.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: (Through Translator) And then they said to me, ‘Today you are going to die.’
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: (Through Translator) During that period, we were suffocated.
BILL MOYERS: How did you manage to sit there day after day and hear these stories of terrible things that people had been doing to other people?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: For me, the — the discipline that one had got used to as a priest was a help. I mean, when I get up, my meditation, Bible study, the Eucharist and — and — and that gave shape. It gave you — it gave you parameters. And it gave you structure for your life. Otherwise, you — you could have it disintegrated. And it was terrible, but — and I — I cry easily. That is — I mean, I — I broke down on the very first day. But I — then said it wasn’t fair, ‘God, you couldn’t allow this to happen,’ because the media then concentrated on me instead of on the people who were the rightful subjects, the — the victims. And if I wanted to cry, then I would cry at home or in church. But I was sustained by prayer, yeah.
BILL MOYERS: When you were a parish priest, you helped so many people deal with their grief, the loss of a — of a son, the loss of a brother, the loss of a husband …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: …to work through that emotional suffering that is always part of that kind of loss. And I wondered how have you dealt — how have you grieved? You’ve had a lot of loss in your life.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. Well, as I say, I — I cry. I cry easily. And it’s in many ways, perhaps, a gift. It’s a sign of vulnerability and weakness and knowing that one doesn’t have resources within one’s self, that it throws you back on God, which is quite wonderful, actually, that you — you say to God, ‘You wanted me to do this job. For goodness sake, you are going then to have — to have to give me the grace to be able to accomplish it.’ And — and God is faithful.
And — and you know, all the extraordinary people around the world praying for us. That’s real. Actually it’s more real than many of the things that we think are tangible, when people write to you and they say, ‘We are praying for you.’ And — and when I go around the world, people say, ‘I’ve been praying for you for years.’ I — I heard somebody the other day say, ‘I have a yellowed picture of you on — on the door of my refrigerator. And I’ve prayed for you.’ It’s very humbling. It’s also very invigorating, exhilarating. And — and to know that prayer is for real.
BILL MOYERS: Were there moments in the commission hearings when, among yourselves, you thought, ‘We can’t go on. We can’t do this. This is not going to work’?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, I tell you — I mean, that the meetings of the commission, right from the beginning, were hell. You know, I think that there would have been very many, many more moments when we would really have broken down. We, as a commission, were very representative of the brokenness of our community. You know, that is one of the things that we got to discover, that apartheid wounded us all, every single South African. And anyone who says they were not affected would, to that extent, actually demonstrate just how wounded they are.
We were — we discovered that we were, ourselves, wounded. We discovered that it wasn’t easy to jell as a commission. We — we were experiencing what it means to be a South African who has lived in a broken society, where people by law were alienated from one another. The suspicions that — came almost naturally. ‘Is this guy doing what he is doing to me because I am black and he is white?,’ you know. That kind of thing. And it took quite awhile for us to begin to have a measure of trust in each other. And — we realized then that the healing could ultimately, actually happen only through those who were themselves wounded, so the wounded healers.
BILL MOYERS: When you were conducting the hearings, listening to these stories, did you have a sense of learning something about human nature that you had not already learned about living under apartheid?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I think that there was a shock. You know, for instance, you — you thought you knew that there — say there was torture. But it’s a different thing knowing cerebrally to think, not as statistic, but a human being of flesh and blood say, ‘They opened a drawer. They undressed me and then they shoved my breasts into — into the drawer and slammed the drawer on my nipple.’ That — that’s a totally different ball game from intellectualizing, or saying, ‘Yes, we know so many people. ‘
What I did learn were, as with two contrary things, the one was to be overwhelmed by the depth of depravity to which we can sink. That’s the one side. And — and that bowls you over. But that’s not the — that’s not the only truth that comes out because the other thing that the commission and our experience in the commission revealed is that people are incredible. People — people are a glorious creation; that just as much as we have this extraordinary capacity for evil, so we have a remarkable capacity for good. When you listened to people who by rights ought to have been bristling with anger and resentment showing — showing that magnanimity, that willingness to forgive. That — that’s tremendous. That’s tremendous.
BILL MOYERS: I can understand learning that about human nature, but what about power? What has this taught you about power? For example…
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: …the commission discovered in the process of your hearings that the racist government of South Africa had had a chemical program, a biological warfare program, that was designed …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: …to kill blacks and only blacks. In fact, to make blacks sterile, to render them sterile. When you heard that, what — what did you think? This was your own government.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: This was your own …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I — I was aware that — at that particular time, my own reaction was this is the worst thing that has come before the commission. Because the others, you would say, ‘Well, people, on the whole, did things on the spur of the moment,’ as it were. But this was so calculated, so scientific, so objective, so cold that I — I said, ‘For my money, this is the worst thing that we — we got.’
But with regard to all of that, one of our recommendations has, in fact, to do with accountability, that we must never allow again a situation where people have unbridled power, where they don’t have to account to someone, to parliament or to a commission or whatever. That we — all of us, have something in us that makes it far too easy for us to succumb.
And — and this is one of the glorious things, again, about theology, which I — I was saying. I mean — you realize the importance of theology, that now you know why in — in the Middle Ages it was regarded as the queen of the sciences; that, you know, there is something called ‘original sin’; that there is absolutely no reason why those who were yesterday’s oppressed don’t become tomorrow’s oppressors. That — the glory is not like so many people stray once they have got power. The remarkable thing is that we should still have so many wanting to — to be virtuous about power, to — to say, ‘We are in this, and we were in the struggle,’ not for what we would get out it. It was not for our self-aggrandizement. We had said it was for the sake of the people. There are those who have so quickly forgotten those ideals. But we mustn’t then become cynical. We’ve got to say, ‘Of course. What did you expect?’
BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you, theologically, that people who read the same Bible, follow the same savior, pray to the same God wind up on opposite sides of the issue of color and race …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: … and could do this in the name of God?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. Well, of course, again, you know — I mean, if you have a sense of history, you are not too shocked. You — — you say you have the Crusades were undertaken and — and they were gory affairs. They were undertaken by people who genuinely believed that they were doing this in the name of God. And — and it — it’s never been different. The Nazis were — were not pagans. I mean, the Nazis in Germany, these were very civilized Christians. And — and — they actually had chris — German Christians who were supporting Hitler. Mercifully, of course, we — we had the confessing church that stood up against them. In your country, the United States, how could you have people justify slavery? To own — to own another human being. But it — it happened.
BILL MOYERS: Well, an — answer that. How? I mean, what happened?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Because — because we are human beings who have been given, extraordinarily, by this God we worship the gift of freedom. And God has such a deep reverence for that gift, that God who — alone I usually say he has the perfect right to be a totalitarian, had much rather see us go freely to hell than compel us to go to heaven. God takes seriously the gift that God has given us. And we make choices. And the God, who is an omnipotent God, in many ways become impotent, because God has given us the gift to choose. And God hopes that there will be those who agitate against slavery, that we will have people who will fight against racism, injustice, oppression, wherever.
BILL MOYERS: But you see, I grew up in a small Southern town that was 50 percent black and 50 percent white back in the ’40s and ’50s. I grew up well-taught, well-loved and well-churched, but absolutely unaware of what half of the population — life — what life was like for half of the population.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, you — you’ve got to take seriously the fact that you belong in a community.
BILL MOYERS: Culture may be more important than theology.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: That — and — no, no. I don’t — I want to say …
BILL MOYERS: Economics.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: …you see, the — theologoy transcends them. Theology subsumes them, you know. It — it takes account — an authentic theology takes account of all of that, that — and the thing that we mustn’t do is to be — in fact, dismissive of those who take the wrong turn, because the grace of God is incredible. You think God doesn’t want — do what you and I might have wanted seen done to the — to the perpetrators of evil, which is to dispatch them, to snuff them out of existence. God doesn’t do that. God doesn’t send a lightning bolt to strike down. He won’t — he won’t strike down Milo — Milosevic, but — with a lightning rod. He is going to wait so that God’s agents will be the ones who accomplish that. And when we fail; God fails.
BILL MOYERS: Well, I can understand and appreciate that theology, but it’s of little comfort to the people who die in the waiting.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes, but you also say to them, as we had to say to our people, ‘You know, in the end — in the end, justice and goodness will prevail. This is a moral universe.’ We — we were able to use — you know, in the Book of Revelation, there’s a — there’s a wonderful passage where there are souls under the altar. And they cry out, as all who suffer cry out, ‘Oh, Lord, how long?’ Now the answer we would have expected to get would have been the answer that says, ‘Don’t worry. It will be OK.’ It does say that, but it says, ‘Before it is OK, a few more of you must suffer and die.’ And we used to tell our people at home, ‘It is going to be OK. The victory has already been won. But in the process of our apprehending this victory, appropriating it, there are going to be casualties. More of our people are going to be detained. More are going to be imprisoned. More are going to be killed. But my dear people,’ we used to say, ‘we have already won. They have lost. Those who support injustice have lost. They may have guns. They may have — they may appear to be powerful. But don’t let it kid you.’ And we used to say to the white people in South Africa, ‘We’re being nice to you. We’re inviting you, join the winning side.’ And that was in the dark days.
BILL MOYERS: When did you first perceive that the government was trying to destroy black people?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, I think — it’s a thing that grows on you. But when you see a — a program like that, chemical biological warfare program — you see, now that focuses a thing that they really had been doing, the consequences of their policy. It’s encapsulated in this kind of program, that they don’t actually believe seriously in their hearts that we are quite as human as they, and that we are expendable. And — and it was because, I think, again, actually, they were — they were a people under siege in a way. They saw themselves as a small group at the bottom of Africa. And they had a nostalgia, really, for Europe. And they — they didn’t accept that they were African. And that — or maybe they did.
And — and when you talked, for instance, about the so-called black on black violence…
BILL MOYERS: The necklacing and all of that?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah, it is — that the treatment that people have received fills them with a self-hate. And they — they then have a self-destructiveness. But they frequently turned on others who looked like them. And — and I think white South Africans, Afrikaners especially, are in many ways very African. They — they are — the culture, the understanding of what a human being is in many ways is like us.
And — and when they discovered — I think whenever they found that they were — they were more African than they thought, that really made them mad, you know. I think — and — and since they couldn’t kick against themselves too much, they kicked against us.
BILL MOYERS: What was the worst thing about apartheid?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Ultimately, it’s actually the way it makes you doubt that you are child of God. When you are — when you are subjected to treatment that begins to work in here, and you begin to say, ‘Hey, maybe they — they are right.’ Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes. And so when they call you a non-European, a non-this, you might think it isn’t working on you. But in fact, it is corrosive of your self-image. You end up wondering whether you are actually as human as those others. You — you wonder, ‘Does God actually love me, black, as he loves a white child?’
I — think that for me — for me it was getting to say to — to black people, as the black consciousness movement did, ‘God didn’t mistake creating you black. Celebrate who you are. God loves you.’ And — and that became for me, actually, very central in the — in the sermons that I was preaching. Actually, I preach only one sermon. I’ve always preached one sermon. And I thought I was preaching for black people and discovered actually when I went back home that, in an incredible kind of way, the people who perhaps more than others needed to hear that they mattered to God were white people. Because they, in — in a remarkable way, have come to think that their worth was extrinsic. It — it depended on the kind of car you had, the size of your house. And you said to them, ‘No, no, no, no. You’re worth is intrinsic. It doesn’t depend on status. It doesn’t depend on race. It doesn’t depend on anything. It’s given.’
So you don’t actually need to throw your weight around to try to bolster an emptiness that you know is inside you. You are doing many of these things because you are actually suffering from a sense of inadequacy. Know you matter to God.
BILL MOYERS: I saw some footage of an angry black crowd turning on a black policeman who the crowd suspected of being an informer, an agent, a traitor. And you were in the picture. You put yourself, thrust yourself, between that angry crowd and that victim.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BILL MOYERS: Didn’t you think you might be killed?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: When you’re standing at — on the edge of a sidewalk, and there’s a little child, and there’s a car coming along, and the child walks across the street in — in the path of the oncoming car, do you stand on the — on the sidewalk and say, ‘If I go, I might get killed’? You don’t even think. You — you act.
BILL MOYERS: Did you have fear?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Not at the time. It’s afterwards. It’s afterwards when you see — and — I mean, when I saw some of it on television, and — and I said, ‘What in the name of everything that is good has got into me?’ No, because I think that most of us would do that.
BILL MOYERS: What about the time you and a companion were on your way to visit some clergy, Lutheran clergy, who were being mistreated in prison? And the — and the white police stopped you, took you out into the bush and started roughing you up. Were you afraid then?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: We were thankful that it happened in dayl — in daytime because we — we were quite clear that our encounter with those police officers, had it happened when — when it was dark, we might be telling a different story.
BILL MOYERS: Right.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: We might be telling a different story.
BILL MOYERS: But did — was there fear at that point?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, you know — I mean, you have to believe that maybe God has to work overtime. Or your — your arc — your guardian angel. I — I think — I mean, that because you are human, there are things — I mean, that you feel in your solar plexus, but there are others that are stronger than the pull. The pull may be saying to run away, because you see, in fact, ‘Once I run away here, I’ll never make it again.
BILL MOYERS: Mm-hmm. And that would explain why, on another occasion, where you — some white policemen were attacking an older black man, you again put yourself between the perpetrators and the victim. And you held up your bishop’s cross at them until they — they stopped.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I don’t — well, I don’t remember — I mean, some of these things. I — I would just say that where I really ever got very angry was when they tried to get at me through my children or my family, which they did quite frequently.
BILL MOYERS: How?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well — I mean, one way would be if — if someone was telephoning the house to give a — a death threat. Now you’d have thought that if I didn’t answer the telephone or my wife didn’t answer the telephone, if it was one of the children, that someone at the other end would have the gumption to — to know that — I mean, you — you don’t say that kind of thing to a child. I mean, you — you would see the child sort of seize up. And — and that really got my goat. And I’m saying, ‘Look, I am the one who chose this path. If — if you want to clobber anyone, clobber me, do — not them.’ And — and …
BILL MOYERS: Well, they tried. They withdrew your passport. There were these death threats. Even when you received the Nobel prize — Peace Prize, you had to empty the hall because of a bomb threat.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes, well, isn’t it wonderful now to say that we were on the winning side; that despite all their extraordinary efforts, they’ve lost? Or we say to them, ‘Participate now in the victory because we told you freedom is indivisible. You will never be free until we are free.’ And they thought, ‘That is another Tutu slogan.’ And then they discovered come April 1994, and South Africa is free. And South Africa is suddenly warmly welcomed into the wor — world community.
BILL MOYERS: Recently, I saw a couple of disturbing reports in a survey, said that a majority of the whites in South Africa did not believe that reconciliation is possible. And 80-something, 81 percent of the blacks, the oppressed, still believed it was possible. And the other survey…
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: …was of the Human Rights Commission, which reported that five years after that marvelous date that you were just talking about, when President Mandela was sworn in …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: …after you introduced him, that racial discrimination is still deeply imbedded in the …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: In the schools.
BILL MOYERS: …in the schools.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah. Well, in many ways, of course, I think that we tend ourselves to be naive, you know. In — in expecting that something that has become ingrained in people over centuries is going to slough off them in a matter of three — you remember, it’s only five years. How long have you in this country been trying to get rid of racism? Can you imagine if the statistics you are giving me now were reversed?
BILL MOYERS: Reversed.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: If the blacks, who were the victims, were saying, 80 percent of them, reconciliation is for the birds. Where would whites be? This is 1999. Who are still the ones who live in shacks? Who? It’s blacks.
The — you look at the disposition of wealth. The vast majority of our — of the wealth of our country, the vast bulk of it is still in the hands — you look at — you look at the stock exchange, and you say, ‘Who owns most of those stocks?’ It’s whites. You say, ‘Why are you whining? What do you want? Do you want black people to say, “To hell with the reconciliation. We are going on a rampage.”‘ Unless you work enthusiastically for transformation in South Africa, you are going to end up with nothing.
BILL MOYERS: There was a moment — a powerful moment in the commission hearings, when a white South African, Mr. Ackerman — his wife was killed …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah. St. James, yeah. Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: … in St. James Church, when some black guerrillas burst into the service and began firing.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: And there’s this moment when he says, ‘How on Earth are we ever going to be reconciled?’ And when I saw that, I — I was wondering how do you forgive? What do you actually do when you forgive someone?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, basically, you are saying, ‘I am abandoning my right to revenge, to payback. I — I mean — by the fact that you have abused me, you have hurt me, you are — whatever it is that you have done, you have wronged me. By that you have given me a certain right as — over you that I could refuse to forgive you. I could say I have the right to retribution.’ When I forgive, I say, ‘I jettison that right, and I open the door of opportunity to you to make a new beginning.’ That is what I do when I forgive you.
BILL MOYERS: The — the Buddhists talk of letting go of the past, dying to the past, when you forgive, of letting loose of the sorrow that you have brought with you from the past. Is that what you’re talking about?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. The — the thing is, of course, that I don’t know that you yourself are able, by an act of will, as it were, to let go of the pain. The will part of it, where your will is, deliberately to say, ‘I am not going to let you victimize me and hold me in a position where I have an anger against you, a resentment, and, I’m looking for the opportunity to pay back.’ I am saying, ‘I want to let go of that — that right, and — and begin to work for the possibility of restoring the relationship. ‘
BILL MOYERS: Do I have to do anything, the person being forgiven?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: For your own sake, the only way you can appropriate forgiveness is by confessing. That opens you. That opens you to the possibility of being able to receive it. It’s like — it’s like opening your window. You see, forgiveness can be likened to the fresh air that is outside or the sunlight that is outside and — and you have a room and the — and the windows are closed and the curtains are drawn. The wind is still out there. My forgiveness is still available to you. But it won’t find access until you open the window and the light streams in. You draw the curtains apart, and the — and the fresh air comes in. You, by your contrition and confession, so — say, ‘I am sorry; forgive me.’ Open and my forgiveness enters your being.
BILL MOYERS: We’re talking here about genocide, torture. Are genocide and torture forgivable?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: As a Christian, you — you have to say, ‘Are there things that are unforgivable?’ I’m afraid we follow a lord and master who at the point when they are crucifying him in the most painful way can say, ‘Pray for their forgiveness.’ And we follow the one who says, ‘Forgive one another as God and Christ forgave you.’ That is for us the paradigm. We may not always reach to that ideal, but that is the standard.
BILL MOYERS: I saw mothers who’d lost their sons struggling — Christian mothers …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: …struggling with this issue. They wanted to forgive and yet there was something there that was so hard to do — and I was thinking, ‘Could they ever be friends?’
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: That is not what you necessarily ask, you know? It could very well be that you say, ‘I have forgiven you, but I’m not going to try and have a relationship with you. I — I want to walk away.’ That is legitimate. I mean, I have forgiven you. I’m — I’m not nursing grudges against you. But I don’t — I don’t believe I could — I could have a relationship with you that pretended, you know, nothing had happened. Because I’m also a psychological being. I can be a spiritual being. But I’m also a psychological being. I don’t control my thoughts and my memories. I can hope that my memories are healed.
BILL MOYERS: This lack of bitterness on your part, is it something you’ve had to struggle for?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I think that we have different temperaments. I have myself been angry, very angry. As I told you, I — I get very angry at — at how other people are made to suffer. I get very, very angry. And I remonstrate with God. I get very angry with God, too. I mean, I—I hope, I mean, that my relationship is one which is a genuine relationship, and I think — I mean, that when you look at the Scriptures you do see that — if you have got that relationship or if you’re trying to cultivate that relationship, then all the worst things about you, you spill them out. And I — I’ve been angry with God. But I am — I am fortunate, I think, that I don’t — I don’t think, I mean, that it’s been that I have had to struggle. But I haven’t suffered as much as other people. I mean, it’s — it’s those mothers you’re talking about who are the incredible ones.
BILL MOYERS: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I mean, who — who hear for the first time that, ‘My child was given a booby-trapped hand grenade and so when he pulled out the pin, he was blown to smithereens.’ Or he — or she hears that they gave him milk — they gave him laced coffee, they shot him in the head and they burned his body. And as they were burning his body, they were — they were having a barbecue on the side. And, I mean, you have to sit and — and it’s those mothers who are, I mean, an extraordinary bunch of people.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
BILL MOYERS: Tell me about your own mother.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: My mother was not educated but she was — she was an incredible person. She’s — I resemble her physically. I mean, she had a big nose like mine. She was dumpy.
BILL MOYERS: And your father?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: My father was strict, as I say, and there were many times when, as a small boy, I would — I got very angry with him at his treatment of my mother when he — when he had drunk and would — would assault my mother. I — ooh, I really — I really got mad. I would get — I mean, she was big and — and really caring, you know, really, in all kinds of ways he — almost obsessive in — in his concern for our health, our education and within the limits of his capabilities trying to let us have as much of the good things as he could provide. But I couldn’t accept that side of his — of his character and his — his behavior. And — and, yeah, I mean, that — that was hard.
BILL MOYERS: When you were a younger man, you must have read the constitution of South Africa formulated by the apartheid government. And it says right there, ‘declares South Africa to be a Christian nation.’ And I remember during the ’80s when Americans like Jesse Helms — Senator Helms and Patrick Buchanan, who was a top adviser to Ronald Reagan …
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: …called on America to stand with the apartheid government because the government there was the last bastion .. .
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah, yeah.
BILL MOYERS: … that’ s a direct quote, “last bastion of Christianity against communism.”
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah, yeah. Well, that is what they said. I mean, I — I had a conversation with President Reagan and — and I told him that his history was actually a little wrong. He had forgotten that it was the apartheid people who were now in government who had supported Hitler. They opposed South Africa’s entering the war on the side of the allies. And I said, ‘It is because the policies that they are following are very close to Hitler’s Nazism.’ And I don’t think that I persuaded him. And I said, ‘Look, I’ve come to you here in the White House to ask you, please, help us. We want to get rid of an evil system relatively peacefully and you have the power. Apply sanctions.’ He and Margaret Thatcher were some of the strongest supporters, really, of apartheid in — in the sense that they gave considerable comfort to the perpetrators of that system when they — they would never listen to us. I mean, I — I spent nearly an hour with Mrs. Thatcher as she then was in — in — in I0 Downing Street, seeking to persuade her on behalf of our people. And she — she wouldn’t buy it. She — I mean, they used to say about her, ‘The lady’s not for turning.’ She certainly was not for turning on this particular issue.
BILL MOYERS: What about President Reagan? What did he say to you when you made the case?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I — I got so incensed at one time when he announced — I was in South Africa and I said, ‘Well, the we — the West can really go to hell.’
BILL MOYERS: I remember that.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Apartheid was confined, reinforced because they — they knew they had powerful friends protecting them.
BILL MOYERS: In this country?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah. And we — we were the ones who had to pay that price. Mercifully, one used to come around here and go to the university and college campuses and the students, particularly, were incredible. In so many places, they were involved in demonstrations to force they institutions to divest and — and they became so powerful — not they alone. I mean, there were other organizations, TransAfrica and so on, but they changed the moral climate in this country to such an extent that your Congress not only passed the anti-apartheid legislation, they — they mustered in a presidential veto override as well. And — and tremendous. And that is why one even today goes around and says, ‘We are free today because of you and thank you. Thank you for supporting us, because our victory, spectacular as it is over the viciousness of apartheid, would not have happened without you. Nelson Mandela is free today and you can say to your children’s children, “I had a part in getting him out of prison. I supported the anti-apartheid movement. “‘
BILL MOYERS: Your friends and admirers in this country want to know how goes your struggle with cancer.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: There’s life after cancer. I — at the moment I — I think it’s — it’s fine. I’m all right. Peop — people are praying quite clearly. I think God said, ‘Whew. All these prayers, the only way to deal with them is to get him well.’
BILL MOYERS: Have you found yourself bargaining with God for a little more time?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: No.
BILL MOYERS: You haven’t?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: No. No, I — you know, I mean, when you look at what’s happened in my life, you know, how many of us can say, ‘Well, I was in a struggle. I have seen the struggle come to a successful conclusion. I have seen apartheid die. I have seen a new dispensation come into being.’ But one of the things that you — you get when you have a life-threatening illness is having a new intensity to life and a — a greater appreciation for the things that you have taken so much for granted — your — your wife’s love for you, the smile on your grandchild’s face, because you’re saying, ‘Hey, I may be seeing these things for the last time. ‘
BILL MOYERS: So you have a sense of time being rationed?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Not rationed. , No, no. I mean, it’s not as if you’re watching every moment. You’re just saying it’s fun to be alive. And for goodness sake, enjoy it. And — and don’t walk around like — I mean, as if God is waiting to snuff you out like you — you blowout a candle. No, God — God is generous and — and pours forth God’s gifts with gay abandon. And enjoy them and — and celebrate them and — and be eucharistic and give thanks to God for — for them. And — and enjoy. I mean, it’s fun.
BILL MOYERS: Someone said to me, ‘Desmond Tutu listens to his friends. But ultimately he listens to the voice of God. ‘ When you hear that voice, how do you recognize it?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I — I don’t know. I — I — actually, I mean, I have to tell you, I don’t know, but I know. There are those moments when it’s — it’s as clear as a bell, but you don’t — it’s not that I hear heavenly voices.
BILL MOYERS: No.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: No. I mean, it — it’s just a kind of conviction.
BILL MOYERS: Finally, thi — this report that you have prepared, this report that your commission released, has been called one of the most important documents in the 20th century. What would you like of it for the world to take to heart?
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I would hope, I mean, that the world would realize that there is no situation that is not transfigurable, that there is no situation of which we can say, ‘This is absolutely, totally devoid of hope,’ because that is what people thought about South Africa. And that the star turns of this report are those we wrongly call just ordinary people. There are no ordinary people in my theology, but it is the small people, the ones who used to be nonentities, they are the stars and for the world to know that those called — so-called ordinary people are incredible.
BILL MOYERS: Thank you very much.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: God bless you.
This transcript was entered on May 18, 2015.
