Tutu: Righteous and Just

The image is unforgettable: the stocky frame of Bishop Desmond Tutu, in purple cassock, forcing his way through the enraged crowd, confronting a mob intent on lynching a man suspected of collaboration with the white rulers, rescuing the already-beaten victim from almost certain death.

And the words of the prelate still ring in our ears--his appeal to those driven to the extreme of murder--as he affirmed “the need to use righteous and just means for a righteous and just struggle.”

The bishop of Johannesburg had, once again, lived out his faith and his commitment to justice with the same courage that won him the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize for peace, for nonviolence, for an alternative to the use of force.

Perhaps we exaggerate when we say that the image of the bishop’s heroic act is unforgettable. It was not his first, and not likely his last. But nothing that he has said or done has won a concession from the whites who govern South Africa. The bishop has articulated the wrongness of apartheid, the terrible frustration of the black majority that is oppressed by it, the awful danger of failing to abandon racism while there is still the possibility of peaceful change. And the response from Pretoria is as if he had not been heard.

“We are in a very desperate situation,” he said after rescuing the man from the mob. Black is turning on black. In escalating violence, blacks are killing as many blacks as are the police. The opportunity for dialogue still exists but is diminishing, day by frustrating day.

Perhaps we also exaggerate when we say that there has been no response to Tutu’s appeal. The response may have been the treason indictment of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, among them many who share Tutu’s commitment to nonviolence. Maybe the regime’s answer was there, in the hours after Tutu’s brave rescue, when white police drove through a troubled black township, shouting provocations as they fired tear gas into homes. There must still be many, in the white elite that rules South Africa, who fear change more than violence and who presume that privilege can be sustained at the cost of justice.