Index
Questions For Archbishop Desmond Tutu
The Priest ..... By DEBORAH SOLOMON ..... Published: March 4, 2010
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As an Anglican archbishop who spent decades working to defeat apartheid and is widely considered the moral conscience of South Africa, what do you make of your country’s current president, Jacob Zuma, who is in the headlines again for fathering a child out of wedlock?
I think we are at a bad place in South Africa, and especially when you contrast it with the Mandela era. Many of the things that we dreamt were possible seem to be getting more and more out of reach. We have the most unequal society in the world. We have far too many of our people living in a poverty that is debilitating, inhumane and unacceptable.
But why is Zuma still president? He sets such a poor example — a polygamist with three wives who just fathered a 20th child with yet another woman. Why is that tolerated?
It’s not. Two of the major churches have spoken out very strongly. The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church have said that he’s undermining his own government’s campaign to deal with the H.I.V. pandemic. That campaign speaks about being loyal to one partner, practicing safe sex and generally using condoms, and he hasn’t done that.
I see that you have been keeping company with the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet and your fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner.
He’s a fantastic guy. I’m not jealous, but we were together in Seattle recently, and they had to find the largest site, and there were 70,000 people. Can you imagine, 70,000 people came out for someone who can’t even speak English properly?
Did you see that photograph of him being escorted out a side door of the White House last month, past bulging bags of trash, presumably to appease Chinese officials who refuse to recognize him as the leader of Tibet?
I’m sad. It’s the same kind of thing that happened in South Africa. They wouldn’t let him come to a peace conference because the Chinese were raising objections.
Are you disappointed in President Obama, who just last summer awarded you the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
You can hear when I say that I’m sad that the Dalai Lama should have been treated in this fashion that there is at least one area where I’m feeling disappointment.
Are there other areas?
Let’s talk about my book “Made for Goodness.”
How did you come to write it with your daughter, Mpho Tutu, an Episcopal priest who lives in Virginia?
Partly it is that she being a priest would have had a great deal more exposure to spirituality. So we were much more on a wavelength than would have been the case with my other children.
Your oldest child and only son, Trevor Tutu, became embroiled in controversy in 1989, when he made a bomb threat at an airport in South Africa.
Yeah, and went to jail.
And was granted amnesty. What is he up to now?
He’s a very gifted person, but you see a little bit how God must feel about us because he has really undermined his own life by his abuse of alcohol. When he’s not under the influence, he’s incredibly wonderful, he really is, and it makes you weep to see how he then is almost intent on destroying himself.
How do you make peace with that, as a preacher who has just written a book asking us to be optimistic?
Not optimistic, hopeful. Optimism is a much lighter thing. Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. You see it wonderfully when you fly and the sky is overcast. Sometimes you forget that just beyond the clouds the sun is shining.
As the retired archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the Anglican Church in South Africa, do you still preach on Sundays?
No, I wake up in the morning on a Sunday and think: Whoopee! I don’t have to be preparing a sermon. I go to church and I sit next to my wife in the pew and I listen to a wonderful sermon by our parish priest and I go home. Or I will say, “No, today maybe he didn’t do such a good job.”
It sounds as if you’re still sermonizing.
I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.
INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.
The Priest ..... By DEBORAH SOLOMON ..... Published: March 4, 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As an Anglican archbishop who spent decades working to defeat apartheid and is widely considered the moral conscience of South Africa, what do you make of your country’s current president, Jacob Zuma, who is in the headlines again for fathering a child out of wedlock?
I think we are at a bad place in South Africa, and especially when you contrast it with the Mandela era. Many of the things that we dreamt were possible seem to be getting more and more out of reach. We have the most unequal society in the world. We have far too many of our people living in a poverty that is debilitating, inhumane and unacceptable.
But why is Zuma still president? He sets such a poor example — a polygamist with three wives who just fathered a 20th child with yet another woman. Why is that tolerated?
It’s not. Two of the major churches have spoken out very strongly. The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church have said that he’s undermining his own government’s campaign to deal with the H.I.V. pandemic. That campaign speaks about being loyal to one partner, practicing safe sex and generally using condoms, and he hasn’t done that.
I see that you have been keeping company with the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet and your fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner.
He’s a fantastic guy. I’m not jealous, but we were together in Seattle recently, and they had to find the largest site, and there were 70,000 people. Can you imagine, 70,000 people came out for someone who can’t even speak English properly?
Did you see that photograph of him being escorted out a side door of the White House last month, past bulging bags of trash, presumably to appease Chinese officials who refuse to recognize him as the leader of Tibet?
I’m sad. It’s the same kind of thing that happened in South Africa. They wouldn’t let him come to a peace conference because the Chinese were raising objections.
Are you disappointed in President Obama, who just last summer awarded you the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
You can hear when I say that I’m sad that the Dalai Lama should have been treated in this fashion that there is at least one area where I’m feeling disappointment.
Are there other areas?
Let’s talk about my book “Made for Goodness.”
How did you come to write it with your daughter, Mpho Tutu, an Episcopal priest who lives in Virginia?
Partly it is that she being a priest would have had a great deal more exposure to spirituality. So we were much more on a wavelength than would have been the case with my other children.
Your oldest child and only son, Trevor Tutu, became embroiled in controversy in 1989, when he made a bomb threat at an airport in South Africa.
Yeah, and went to jail.
And was granted amnesty. What is he up to now?
He’s a very gifted person, but you see a little bit how God must feel about us because he has really undermined his own life by his abuse of alcohol. When he’s not under the influence, he’s incredibly wonderful, he really is, and it makes you weep to see how he then is almost intent on destroying himself.
How do you make peace with that, as a preacher who has just written a book asking us to be optimistic?
Not optimistic, hopeful. Optimism is a much lighter thing. Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. You see it wonderfully when you fly and the sky is overcast. Sometimes you forget that just beyond the clouds the sun is shining.
As the retired archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the Anglican Church in South Africa, do you still preach on Sundays?
No, I wake up in the morning on a Sunday and think: Whoopee! I don’t have to be preparing a sermon. I go to church and I sit next to my wife in the pew and I listen to a wonderful sermon by our parish priest and I go home. Or I will say, “No, today maybe he didn’t do such a good job.”
It sounds as if you’re still sermonizing.
I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.
INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.
