John 6 v 1

John 6 v 1

THIS past week I had the privilege of attending a church service in which the renowned Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Dr Desmond Mpilo Tutu was the guest speaker. The celebrated cleric preached an inspirational sermon from John 6 v 1.

The passage is one of the most well known scriptures in the entire Bible. It talks about Christ’s miracle of feeding over 5000 followers from a meal of few fishes and loaves. In fact it was a small boy’s lunch pack.

The main thrust of this great churchman message was that each of us has a responsibility of developing our own individual contributions to the nation building process. He challenged the each and every one of us not to ever take for granted the impact of our personal contributions, however little they may seem to us.

The point is, life is such that in the long term, our little contributions might prove to be a decisive turning point in the greater national agenda. He warned us never to undervalue or underestimate the collective impact of our combined small roles.

The nation can be so bereft of ideas and resources, so much that there is a desperate need to receive whatever little individual contributions are available. Not even one individual citizen’s contribution should be taken for granted. It does not matter how poor or uneducated that person may seem to be.

The biggest resource any nation might need is a committed, disciplined, purposeful and ambitious individual. If any nation has more instead of less of such kind of people, then its future prospects will soon become bright.

I was so humbled by the clarity of thought of this man. I was also charmed by high his intellectual wit and humor. I am sure I was not the only who felt so much admiration for him.

"Tutu warned us never to undervalue or underestimate the collective impact of our combined small roles"

DANIEL MOLOKELA

After the sermon, I could not help but reflect more and more about the great impact this man has made in many lives. Practically speaking, tens of millions of the people living in the new South Africa today owe so much to this man. To most South Africans, Tutu is not only a big icon of the anti-apartheid struggle but he remains a big source of inspiration in the building of the new South Africa. He is no doubt a living legend.

Tutu is a man of many talents. He has achieved so much in his life. Some of his well known feats include among others;

• He served as the head of the Anglican Church in Lesotho between 1976 and 1978. He was then elected the first black Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches in the height of apartheid days, in 1978.

• He was the first black head of the South African Anglican church. He was appointed the Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986.

• Tutu was one of the outspoken leaders of the United Democratic Front, the South African internal movement of the 1980s that made the country ungovernable through a series of mass actions.

• He was awarded the Alfred Nobel Peace in 1984. Added to that, he was hailed as the new Martin Luther King, as a strong advocate for peaceful and non-violent civil disobedience.

• Tutu was also instrumental in laying the foundation of a new post-apartheid South Africa. In particular, he was the head of the critical Truth and reconciliation Commission.

• Tutu has also been given credit for helping popularizing the inter-racial notion that promotes the idea of South Africa being a ‘Rainbow Nation’. He has also set up the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre that is set to perpetuate his life’s legacy for posterity.

• Tutu has been a guest speaker in many international forums and events. He has also been a visiting lecturer in several universities, especially in the USA. In fact he recently starred in a Broadway play in the USA.

• But perhaps as a form of appreciation from the South African people he has served so much for free over the years, he was recently voted into the top ten of the SABC 100 Greatest South Africans of all time poll show.

As I write today, I have no doubt that not only is Tutu regarded as one of the greatest South Africans ever, but also as one of the greatest sons of Africa. Tutu is an enduring role model.

But it appears that his fame has not reached the Harare regime yet. According to Mugabe, Tutu is a ‘little bishop’ who just cannot keep his big mouth shut. But this has not come as a surprise to many admirers of Tutu. Apparently, Mugabe’s strange lack of admiration for Tutu is linked to his public criticism of his style of leadership.

Unlike, Thabo Mbeki and his ‘quiet diplomacy’, Tutu has preferred the much louder ‘megaphone diplomacy’. In this regard, he is quoted to have said that the struggle against apartheid would not have been won if Mbeki’s logic had been applied on apartheid South Africa in the 1970-80s.He has thus gone up the roof tops and shouted his lungs out in his rabid attacks on the Harare government.

Tutu was once quoted in the Cape Argus as saying that ‘Mugabe has gone bonkers!’ he is said to have remarked that Zimbabwe was a showpiece on the African continent before Mugabe ‘embarked on this crazy show’.

On the retirement issue, Tutu has also been very loud and clear. He has said that if Mugabe was ‘as sensible as he used to be’, he would have stepped down by now and passed on the baton to the next leader for Zimbabwe.

He said: "Had he stepped down earlier, he would have had a splendid niche in the history of his country. But now he will be more remembered by many as power crazy!”

Tutu has also not spared all the Mugabe sympathizers in the international community. He has challenged them instead, to turn on the screws on the ailing dictator.

He was quoted by the UK’s Daily Telegraph as saying that ‘had the international community invoked the rubric of non-interference then we would have been in dire straits in our anti-apartheid struggle’.

He also has said that he is baffled by the conduct of Mbeki and other Mugabe apologists. He said: "I am baffled that we as South Africans have declared that the last elections in Zimbabwe, though not free, were yet legitimate. That is distressing semantic games. Human rights are human rights and they are of universal validity or they are nothing."

Tutu has also been very critical of those who feel that African elections must not be judged at the same high standard with the rest of the world. He has insisted that ‘there are no peculiarly African human rights, what has been reported as happening in Zimbabwe is totally unacceptable and reprehensible. We all ought to say so, regretting that it should have been necessary to condemn erstwhile comrades. The credibility of our South African democracy demands that’.

It also appears that Tutu’s unequivocal stance against both the Mugabe and the apartheid regimes has also served to inspire other church leaders. It seems the likes of Archbishop Pius Ncube in Bulawayo and Archbishop Sebastian Bakare in Mutare has also taken his cue.

Indeed that last year or two has seen a very clear increase in the number of critical voices emerging from the Zimbabwean churches. Predictably, the outspoken church leaders like Ncube have been viciously attacked and vilified by Mugabe and his cronies. Bakare’s Zimbabwe Council of Churches was also listed among the list that was given to COSATU as that of ‘quasi-political’ organizations that are perennial hostile to the Zanu-PF government.

But it appears the men of the cloth seem undeterred by the Mugabe regime’s rabid attacks on their personalities. If anything, they appear to be more inspired to give all their personal energies and contributions in helping to bring about a new Zimbabwe for their congregations.

It seems that like Tutu, they have come to accept the inevitability of persecution from the cruel and desperate politicians such as Mugabe. They appear to also have learnt by now that Zimbabwe, like apartheid South Africa, has now become a country where revered archbishops have become little bishops under the scared eyes of the oppressors of their people such as Mugabe - danielmolokela@yahoo.com
Daniel Molokela is the National Co-ordinator of the Peace and Democracy Project
Johannesburg, South Africa. His column appears here every Monday
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