Desmond Tutu: God’s tiny giant – a Ukiah minister shares his memories
By Rev. Anthony M. (Tony) Gamley
South Africa’s Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu (“Call me ‘Arch’”) was an extraordinary human being. As a born-and-raised South African I was saddened at his passing but deeply moved by the countless tributes that poured in for him from around the world.
Small of stature (five feet, four inches), Desmond Tutu will always be a giant in the annals of his beloved country’s painful journey toward democracy. He came from poor beginnings – his father a teacher, his mother a domestic worker. He contracted polio as a child and as an adolescent spent 20 months in hospital with tuberculosis. The polio impaired the use of his right hand, forcing him to become left-handed. He once joked with me that “some people say I’m a very sinister person” (a word-play on sinistra, Latin for “left”). “Sinister” would be putting mildly what the apartheid government thought of him! But God had a special plan for this little boy.
I first met Desmond Tutu in the early 1980s and had quite a lot to do with him after that, our last meeting being in Hawai’i. Even on our first meeting he was warm, affable and open, and gave me a big bear-hug … something he loved to do: hugging was his specialty. A person of deep prayer, meditation and devotion, he spoke with bold prophetic fervor to the racist Nationalist government of the day, always wanting the best for the other person – always trying to tease out the goodness he was convinced lay at the heart even of those who took serious issue with him, and in fact who would have assassinated him if they could. Many death threats were made against him and his family. Later, he would “speak truth to power” (he’d prefer to say, “love to power”) whenever he saw the fledgling democratically-elected African National Congress government elected by his own people falter under the blight of greed and corruption.
His friend Nelson Mandela put it perfectly when he said, “Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid, and seldom without humor, Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless.” Little wonder that the voiceless millions called him Tata – Father.
He was a person of incredible courage. Sometimes it would seem like David versus Goliath as his diminutive frame stood unflinching between the Caspir – a massive behemoth-like vehicle used by the apartheid military forces – and the crowd; or when he stepped into the midst of an enraged mob of his people, determined to save an unknown fellow black man from being burned alive by the horrendous “necklace” method. He was also known to stand defenseless between fully-armed apartheid police and the people, daring them, “Shoot me first!”; and he would travel hundreds of miles to appeal on behalf of those sentenced to death and who were already housed on death row (South Africa still vigorously implemented capital punishment at the time).
He and Leah, his wife, could easily have left South Africa but elected to stay – the admirable sign of true commitment, patriotism and dedication. It was at this juncture that then-President Nelson Mandela appointed him Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he sometimes wept openly on hearing harrowing in-person testimony about the unspeakable, brutal torture and murder perpetrated against thousands of his people by the ruthless apparatus of apartheid. Yet he stoically maintained an unshakeable belief in the inherent goodness that lay at the heart of every person, even the most recalcitrant – and that we should strive by all means to bring out that hidden gold. He believed firmly in the healing power of forgiveness. “There is no future without forgiveness,” he would say – either personal or corporate forgiveness: “When I forgive, I’m saying that I am giving up – jettisoning – my right to hold this matter against you, or take revenge against you.”
He advocated peaceful, non-violent, negotiated change. His father had taught him, “Don’t raise your voice; improve your argument.” In describing the diverse, colorful make-up of the South African population, he coined the phrase, “Rainbow Nation,” underscoring the need for all ethnicities in his nation to work together to fashion a unified, reconciled country. He knew no barriers between Christian denominations or between Christianity and other world religions. One of his closest friends was the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, with whom he co-authored “The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness In A Changing World.” Tutu himself wrote or co-authored several other books, including a children’s Bible.
Notwithstanding the numerous honors that came to him unsought, he remained a humble “man of the people,” occasionally bending down to pick up and dispose of a piece of litter that lay on the ground. In 1983, it was the Nobel Peace Prize; in 2009, it was the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama; and then a long list of other awards and accolades from across the planet.
To me, and to millions of others, he is not gone. I still see his smiling face and twinkling eyes, and I can hear his unmistakable laugh and rejoice in his impish sense of humor. His was a selfless, sincere humanity that radiated an infectious joy, forged in the crucible of his own hardship and in the suffering of his people. His own modesty and identification with the poorest was graphically reflected in his simple funeral. He had stipulated that his body be placed in “the cheapest coffin available” – plain unadorned pine, with rope handles, and with a small bunch of a few white carnations from his family placed on the lid; and that his ashes be laid in a niche beneath a plaque in the floor of St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, his “home” cathedral in South Africa’s Mother City. On choosing his final resting-place, he noticed an adjacent cracked floor tile and asked for his ashes to be interred next to that cracked tile as a symbol of his own imperfection.
Joking about his own height, he sometimes said that he stood on the shoulders of others. Now we stand on his. When asked how he might like to be remembered, he said: “He loved. He laughed. He cried. He was forgiven. He forgave. Greatly blessed!”
At his passing, one of his people said simply, “When we were in the darkness, he brought light.”
Beloved Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu: A complete, whole and authentic Christian and human being.
Rest in peace, Tata.
Rev. Anthony M. (Tony) Gamley is the interim pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Ukiah.
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