Tutu, Desmond (b. 1931)

The Priesthood

Tutu believed that religion could not be sealed off in a watertight compartment apart from the hurly-burly business of ordinary daily living. His early acquaintance with Father Trevor Huddleston, an activist white priest, made an impression on Tutu. Here was a man whose “speaking up for the oppressed showed me what a man of the Church can do” (Hope & Young 1981, 112). His friendship with Huddleston was an early reminder that not all whites were irredeemable. Tutu also credited his time in England, where he was a student at King's College from 1962 to 1966, with forestalling bitterness against whites. Tutu returned from England in 1967 to take a position at his alma mater, St. Peter's, which had become part of the Federal Theological Seminary. He arrived on campus at the time that black theology was popular. During this time, he was also the chaplain at the government-controlled black university, Fort Hare, where black consciousness was surfacing. He was in total sympathy with the young students' aims, but his nonracial attitude was too firmly entrenched after four years in England for him to support them totally, for he was at odds with their racially exclusive approach and militant tone. From 1972 to 1975, he served as assistant director for the World Council of Churches, where he was exposed to the ideas of liberation theology, which held that God favored the oppressed. By the time of the Soweto Uprising in 1976, when school children protesting the use of Afrikaans in the schools were fired upon by police, Tutu as the dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg was thrust into politics, comforting the parents in Soweto whose children had been killed.

South African Council of Churches

Following his tenure as dean, Tutu held the position of bishop of Lesotho, but it is for his work as the general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, the umbrella group of churches critical of the government's race policies, that Tutu has become especially renowned. Under Tutu's tenure from 1978 to 1985, the SACC became both more Africanized, with Africans taking over positions of responsibility, and more radicalized, often being accused of being a black power base. Under Tutu's leadership, the SACC appropriated funds to defend political prisoners, supported their families and provided education for their children, aided hard-pressed trade unionists, and assisted political figures fleeing to neighboring countries. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was strengthening SACC's contacts with the exiled liberation groups, including the African National Congress (ANC), which the government termed a terrorist organization.

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