'Tutu was not driven by politics, but by morality'

There is a certain irony at the ANC singing the praises of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu after his death, because he had long given up on the governing party, with his frustration growing as our democracy grew older.

The ANC mourned his passing and described him as “an extraordinary South African”.

Like most black South Africans, Tutu had no hesitation of supporting the ANC at election time under Nelson Mandela in 1994 but this support became more hesitant during the two terms of Thabo Mbeki (1999 and 2004) and stopped completely after the first term of Jacob Zuma (2009 to 2013) when Tutu famously declared in 2013 that he would not vote for “the ANC of today”.

The Arch had a good personal and political relationship with Mandela, resulting in SA's first democratically elected president appointing him in 1995 to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was tasked with investigating human rights abuses under apartheid. It was a difficult task and, as Mandela said at the time, there was no-one better qualified to undertake this task.

Mandela’s widow, Graça Machel, in her tribute to Tutu, described his appointment to head up the TRC as a masterstroke of her late husband’s administration.

The TRC received more than 22,000 statements from victims and held public hearings at which victims gave testimony about gross violations of human rights, defined in the TRC Act as torture, killings, disappearances and abductions, and severe ill treatment suffered at the hands of the apartheid state.

But the TRC found that human rights abuses were committed by people across the political spectrum, including the ANC. This angered the ANC who threatened to interdict the TRC’s final report.

It was possibly the first signs of a rift between Tutu and the ANC.

I was fortunate to share a private dinner with Tutu, his daughter, Thandeka, and her husband, in Atlanta in 2003 where he shared his misgivings with Mbeki, who was then president of both the  ANC and the country. He said that it was only after Mandela intervened, that Mbeki agreed to accept the TRC report.

Tutu’s greatest fear was that the ANC was increasingly moving away from the constitution, which it had been instrumental in negotiating as the lodestar for our democracy.

When I interviewed the Arch, he warned that there appeared to be a lack of understanding among politicians that “unlike in the apartheid dispensation, when parliament had the sovereignty, we now have the constitution”.

He also complained that the ruling party had lost its moral compass and sense of service, alluding to the rise of corruption associated with the ANC.

“Maybe we assumed a great deal. We assumed that we would remain as altruistic as we were during the Struggle. If you had approached anybody who had been involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, all of them would have said that they are involved in the Struggle for the sake of freedom. Whether I am there to enjoy that freedom or not is totally irrelevant. I am going to give it my all for the sake of the freedom of us all. We thought that spirit would transfer automatically to the postapartheid era and sadly it has not,” Tutu lamented.

“We seemed to have lost that self-sacrificing, altruistic, being there for the sake of others and not for the sake of self-aggrandisement.”

Tutu’s major fallout with the ANC was personal and related to the way it treated his friend, the Dalai Lama. The ANC under Zuma refused the Dalai Lama permission to visit SA to attend Tutu’s 80th birthday party in 2011.

It had two years previously also refused him permission to attend a Nobel laureates’ conference in SA, claiming that his visit would “distract from preparations for the 2010 Soccer World Cup”, which was hosted in SA.

Tutu described the government’s behaviour at the time as “disgraceful”. He accused the government of bowing to pressure from China, SA’s biggest trade partner. The Dalai Lama and his fellow Tibetans have consistently opposed China, which invaded Tibet in 1950.

Ebrahim Rasool, former ANC leader in Western Cape and former SA ambassador to the US, worked very closely with Tutu on the World Conference on Religion in the 1990s and said that Tutu was never a party political person, but was committed to liberation theology.

“He always reserved the right to be critical of the liberation movement. He was not driven by politics, but by morality. For instance, when he spoke out against Winnie Mandela, he did it from a moral perspective, but never considered the political implications.

“Because he was so principled and did not take into consideration political factors, he grew more and more despondent with the ANC, especially under president Jacob Zuma. I was fortunate to accompany president Cyril Ramaphosa on a visit to the Arch and saw the warmth with which they greeted each other. I think he was hopeful that Ramaphosa was the kind of leader who could move the country forward.”

After his death this week, scores of ANC leaders, including Ramaphosa, streamed to the family home in Milnerton, Cape Town, to pay their respects.

Asked what politicians and political parties, in particular the ANC, had to do to honour Tutu’s legacy, Rasool said: “We need to become our own consciences. He is probably the last of our great leaders of conscience to leave us.

“Our president has been accused of focusing too much on the internal dynamics of the ANC. I think he needs to do this, but he also needs to be mindful of the moral leadership that our country requires, leadership that was, until now, provided by a person such as Archbishop Tutu.”