Tutu: A prolific creator of magic moments of laughter and heart-searching

Nkosikhulule Nyembezi

“THE vote is still a wonderful thing, but for most people, there's more heart-searching this time. It isn't like the previous elections. It is no longer a foregone thing to vote for the ANC, and you have to make decisions that go against your inclinations. The way you feel in your head is not the same as the way you feel in your heart.”

Those are the words, unmistakable for their wit and moral clarity, of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu, who died aged 90 on December 26, as he remarked outside the Milnerton library voting station after casting his vote in the 2009 national and provincial elections.

They are words he lived by and which he repeated publicly since 2009, as a moral compass of the nation who coined the “Rainbow Nation” term. Many will remember his courageous fight against injustices and his tireless efforts to promote unity and national reconciliation among the people ravaged by the brutality of decades of colonial and apartheid rule.

Ironically, up to his last days on earth, he was deprived of the privilege to thoroughly enjoy his freedom as a citizen of a democratic nation. He continued to confront the different forms of brutality inflicted on the ordinary people by the corrupt individuals in government and private business: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, corruption, and poverty.

As an election observer, I still remember one of our unique encounters. Arriving with his wife, Leah, at Milnerton library polling station in 2009, I accompanied them inside. This Nobel Prize winner, wearing his trademark fisherman's cap, apologised to other voters for jumping the queue, pointed at me, and jokingly said, “They are making me go ahead of you because I am so decrepit.”

He was a prolific creator of magic moments of laughter that he saw encouragement potential for others in contextualising important public education messages, hundreds of them, including in spaces choked by animosity and anxiety.

About that heart-searching: what exactly was disconcerting with it during elections? Two specific examples come to mind.

First, the poor record of the implementation of the 1998 Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations by successive democratic governments. These include the distribution of the final reparation grant, which was to be made available to each victim or equally divided among relatives or dependants of the deceased victim who have applied for reparation.

The amount of the grant was based primarily on a formula which considers the suffering caused by the gross violation that took place. Each victim would receive a maximum individual grant of R23 023, a sum based on a benchmark amount of R21 700, which was the median annual household income in South Africa in 1997.

Over the years, Tutu educated us that, according to the report, the rationale for the grant was because survivors of human rights violations have a right to reparation and rehabilitation. The grant was aimed at providing victims with resources in an effort to restore their dignity, accompanied by information and advice which would allow the recipient to make the best possible use of these resources and a range of services which can be purchased if money is available – for example, education, medical care, housing and so on.

So much for the theory. Until now, the reality looks discouraging as the government has allocated insufficient resources towards reparations, a state of affairs which has been sharply criticised by Tutu who once remarked in February 2000: “It is very distressing that it appears nothing is being done for the people who sacrificed greatly for our country”.

We can only hope that the passing of Tutu will further goad the government into demonstrable action to finally restore human dignity to those affected.

Second, the failure of the government to implement policies and programmes to deal with unemployment, hunger, and poverty. These failures to radically attend to the most pressing socio-economic challenges have undermined the efforts of the ANC-led government to break with the apartheid era top-down approach treatment of the majority of the people as mere subjects to be controlled instead of embracing a bottom-up approach style of governance that places government as the legitimate embodiment of the people.

He was one of the iconic figures exhorting citizens to help in the reconstruction efforts at local government when the government launched media advertisements to promote the Masakhane Campaign in 1995. The campaign sought to fuse the prevailing discourse of nation-building articulated through an idea of collective overcoming and shared victimhood with a discourse of active citizenship, suggesting that national reconstruction was only possible if all citizens realised that human rights go hand in hand with duties and responsibilities to pay for municipal services.

Unfortunately, the poor state of our local government leaves a lot to be desired and rubbishes the earlier civil society efforts to inculcate a culture of a transparent and ethical governance.

Over the years, politicians have veered off the tracks by shifting the meaning of people-driven development by removing emphasis from democratic participation and instead stressing each citizen’s fiscal responsibility towards the nation. Similarly, freedom has increasingly been opportunistically aligned with individual autonomy and the promotion of responsible behaviour even though the high levels of poverty and chronic unemployment have badly eroded the ability of citizens to survive, let alone paying for municipal services.

The act of payment, and thus recognising one’s obligation to the state, has increasingly been posited as the prerequisite for recognition as a legitimate member of the new political community. This elitist approach is contrary to Tutu’s embracing spirit. It must stop. We must return inclusive and responsive government, as well as an inclusive and caring society.

Many of us who enjoyed Tutu’s wisdom should spend the rest of our lives trying to replicate his caring, priestly effect in our homes. We can have as much success as the generations of spiritual leaders, freedom fighters, and human rights activists who tried to replicate his gallant acts, inevitably falling short of the paragon but still elevated by the effort.

Nyembezi is a policy analyst and human rights activist.

Cape Times