‘Don’t Trample Us,’ Tutu Warns as He Defies Funeral Ban
A defiant Biship Desmond Tutu today warned Pretoria, “Don’t trample on us,” and told 1,000 mourners at a funeral he will defy new bans on public services for victims of racial unrest.
Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, said God had called upon him to preach, and “I listen only to God, not to any other authority.”
He said Wednesday’s edict forbidding open-air funeral services for police victims would “boil the legacy of bitterness and anger.”
“Where else can we speak? We have no representatives in Parliament,” he told the crowd. He said he would “continue to speak at all meetings, responsibly, as a minister.”
“Don’t rub salt into our wounds; we are already bruised,” Tutu said in Tumahole, where three teen-agers killed when police clashed with mourners after an earlier funeral were buried.
Tumahole is not in the emergency rule area and the funeral was not restricted.
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