Tutu Enthroned as Anglican Leader in South Africa, Calls for Equality

Enthroned on Sunday as the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu immediately used his new pulpit to call again on South Africa’s white-led minority government to end apartheid, to lift the present state of emergency and to begin negotiations with the country’s black majority on a political system in which all have equal rights.

“Let us acknowledge that all our problems, all the violence we are experiencing . . . ultimately stems from apartheid,” Tutu said, admonishing white South Africans that the burden of reconciliation in this divided and increasingly polarized society rests largely with them.

“Our people are peace-loving to a fault, “ Tutu told the multiracial congregation of nearly 1,400 people.

“Would white people still be talking about nonviolent change, as some of us do, if what they have done to us, and what they continue to do to us, had been done to them?”

Tutu’s assurance that “we shall be free, all of us, black and white, for it is God’s intention,” was an equally familiar theme for the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize as he gave his first sermon as archbishop in St. George’s Cathedral, situated across from Parliament and President Pieter W. Botha’s office.

Historic Moment

But the moment was historic, for Tutu is the first black to head the 3-million-member Anglican church in southern Africa. He made clear that he will use his new position to attack apartheid, the system of racial separation and minority white rule, as forcefully as he used his previous posts as bishop of Johannesburg and general secretary of the South African Council of Churches.

Tutu’s plea for the peaceful resolution of South Africa’s deepening crisis, and for the reconciliation of its bitterly divided society, was strongly supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A. K. Runcie. Runcie, the spiritual head of the 74-million-member worldwide Anglican community, cited Tutu’s election as evidence that, “here in South Africa, an old order is dying.”

“Those who hold power in this world must be ready to renounce it for the sake of Christ,” Runcie told 7,000 people gathered for an outdoor service after Tutu’s installation as archbishop.

“And, in the same way, those who seek power must be ready, even after all they have suffered, to make room for the claims of people they have seen as oppressors. . . . As no system based on brutal repression can endure, so no change achieved by violence can escape its damaging infection. These are the lessons of history. . . .

“We must grieve over all victims of violence and cruelty. But the church must not be owned, possessed or manipulated to either bolster up a system that is un-Christian or to serve a political ideology that leaves out God,” Runcie said.

A dozen other Anglican prelates, including Bishop Edmond L. Browning, the presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, were among the hundreds of foreign visitors. Other Americans included Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young.

“Many more wanted to come,” Tutu said, “but were denied visas by the South African government.”

Tutu, 54, was installed as the archbishop of Cape Town in rich and moving ceremonies rooted in medieval Europe but enlivened with rhythms of African music.

Wearing cream-colored vestments and a miter embroidered with gold, and carrying his pastoral staff, Tutu was led to his episcopal throne by Bishop Kenneth Oram of Grahamstown. There he was given a cross studded with diamonds from South Africa’s Kimberly mines.

Politics, notably the passionate black struggle against apartheid, were woven through the day’s lengthy ceremonies. Tutu’s installation as archbishop has “significance for our people, who have been oppressed for so long, for all those who have been silenced for so long, who have been trampled on for so long,” the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and another leading anti-apartheid clergyman, told the communion service.

“In uplifting Desmond Tutu, God has uplifted all of us,” Boesak said. “In raising your voice, God is also raising our voice.”

In his 50-minute sermon at the cathedral, Tutu defended, without apology, his highly controversial support of international economic sanctions on South Africa as a way of bringing apartheid to an end.

Challenges Critics

“The onus must be on those who oppose sanctions,” Tutu said, challenging his many critics here. “Provide us with another viable, nonviolent strategy to force the dismantling of apartheid. . . .

“I am not sure the government wants real change, which would mean an entirely new dispensation with a new disposition of political power and a greater sharing of the good things so abundant in South Africa--the land, wealth and other resources. In this, they are not different from politicians everywhere, wanting to gain power and hold on to it for as long as possible.

“I am amazed that there are many white people who actually want this kind of change. If I were white, I would need considerable grace to oppose a system that provided me such substantial privileges,” Tutu said.

But Tutu, contending that many whites in this overwhelmingly Christian nation still see blacks as not quite fully human, called upon whites to recognize blacks as their brothers and sisters.

“Would you let your brother live an unnatural life as a migrant worker in a men-only hostel?” he asked. “Would you let his family, your relatives, eke out a miserable existence in a poverty-stricken tribal homeland? Would you tell your brother or your sister ‘No, you have no right here because you are an alien,’ an alien deliberately produced by an evil and totally immoral and un-Christian policy?

“Would you deny your sister or brother a proper education, fobbing them off with something that you had designed as an inferior and cheaper commodity than that which you provided other members of the same family? Would you refuse your brother and sister a just participation in the decision-making processes of the land of their birth, treating them always as if they were a minor for whom decisions were to be made, since others always knew what was best for them?

“If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong together, that our destinies are bound up with one another’s, that we can be free only together, that we can survive only together, that we can be human only together, then a glorious South Africa would come into being where all lived harmoniously as members of one family, the human family, God’s family.”