A man apart who fought for justice everywhere

A man died this past weekend. I watched from a distance as many on social media platforms vilified him and called him cruel names. Nearly all these people cited his “treatment” of Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), where he begged her to apologise for her role in brutal crimes committed by the Mandela United Football Club that reported to her.

The immortalised video of this exchange has been circulated widely on social media.

To these people, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was a “traitor” because he dared to hold accountable a woman whose human flaws many refuse to accept, because in their eyes, they diminish the godly image they have created of her. That this image is incongruent with her legacy and frankly, the legacy of any leader, is deemed irrelevant.

Mama Winnie was an extraordinary woman – a true revolutionary guided by great feelings of love for black people. We may even say, undebatably, that there was a time in our liberation Struggle where she was effectively a one-woman army. She is one of the greatest revolutionaries that this continent has ever produced.

But none of this negates that this same woman had a share of responsibility in the kidnapping and brutal murder of a 14-year-old boy and the vicious beatings of other young boys – a crime for which she was convicted by a court of law.

Stompie was a child and he was killed like a dog by the Mandela United Football Club that reported to Mama Winnie.

To not hold her accountable for this is to say that his life didn't matter – or that it mattered less than the legacy we want to manufacture that presents her as a saint rather than a great revolutionary and a deeply flawed human being. This is why people hate the Arch – because he dared to ask Mama Winnie to acknowledge what she did to Stompie.

And then there are those who want to reduce the entire TRC exercise to the archbishop and, in that way, blame him for those who administered the apartheid regime getting away with murder. What these people conveniently ignore is that there were those who were denied amnesty by the same TRC, which Tutu chaired.

That these people were never prosecuted is something which the democratic government, not the Arch, must be held accountable. That reparations were never paid despite this being one of the resolutions of the TRC is something that must be laid at the feet of ANC leaders.

Those who argue that the TRC was a farce are absolutists who do not appreciate the value of the process not only in making us understand the diabolical machinations of the apartheid regime, but in giving closure to some families who might never have laid their loved ones to rest in dignity. It isn't unimportant just because other issues weren't resolved.

Through his clerical work, Tutu provided sanctuary to freedom fighters and used his position to advance the cause of black people, not only in SA but also across the continent. When black people were being massacred in the Biafran War, as the world watched as a body count exceeding 2m accumulated by the end of the war, it was Tutu who stood up and demanded that the world act. It was his efforts that led to churches across the world coming together to provide joint aid to the people of the Republic of Biafra dying of starvation.

An internationalist at heart, the Arch took a stance on the Israeli-Palestine “conflict” that angered a lot of Christians who stand on the side of the Zionist state.

I've inverted the word “conflict” because what is happening in the Middle East is not some disagreement or discord between two nations, it is the oppression of one nation by another. The two sides aren't equal. The Arch never wavered in his stance that Palestine was the oppressed. At great cost, he stood firm on this.

This wasn't the only stance he held that earned him the ire of his religious fraternity. It was also on the stance of the LGBTIQ+ community that he defined himself as a man of principle. In a world where religion is used to persecute this community, he used it to fight for it, to argue for its humanity.

He often stated that his God is not so small that He would be angered by two people of the same sex loving each other. It is perhaps the most profound war cry any cleric has ever made on this question.

The Arch was a thorn in the flesh of the post-apartheid state, sparing none of the administrations his objective cricitism. Not even Nelson Mandela was immune to criticism. He publicly criticised Mandela as a political leader presiding over an administration that even then showed elements of what he called a “gravy train mentality”, and as a man.

At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of South Africans, President Thabo Mbeki was inexorable in his callous stance that delayed the launching of an antiretroviral treatment programme.

While activists were demanding access to life-saving treatment that pharmaceutical companies were pricing exorbitantly in the developing world, Mbeki was organising panels to debate the efficacy of these drugs and engage in sanctimonious rhetoric that many in the medical community deemed unscientific. All this while people dropped dead like flies – the Arch and others fought for their right to live.

President Jacob Zuma was not spared either and it was under his leadership that Tutu would finally cut ties with an ANC that he had dedicated decades to supporting. I have no doubt he wouldn't have spared the Ramaphosa administration if his last years hadn't been characterised by ill-health. This was who Tutu was.

This is the man I'm going to remember – a man who was, in many ways, an epitome of everything decent, humane and compassionate about black people and who fought anyone who treated us less than humanely.

I'm going to remember a man who wasn't afraid to declare that wrong is wrong no matter who does it. Those who wish to remember a “sell-out” are at liberty to rewrite history and inject it with any amount of mistruths they wish.

They may also claim he wasn't radical enough because he insisted on non-violence. The radicalism of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu might not have screamed on social media platforms, but it whispered in the real world. And it is in that world that he will be remembered by those whose lives he touched – the people of Biafra and of Palestine, the families of Stompie Seipei and other victims of apartheid, the gays and lesbians who endure persecution in the church, and atheists, like me, who learned from him that the true measure of human decency lies not in one's religious beliefs but in their treatment of others.

He was, to the very end, a man apart.