Tutu's wise words

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Wise words

Desmond Tutu: “We are one community”


Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate, has been called “a symbol of love and forgiveness”, in spite of having witnessed the darkest side of humanity, especially during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa.

The Archbishop was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 in May 2010, on the publication of his new book, Made for Goodness: and why this makes all the difference. This intimate and inspirational book, which he has written with his daughter Mpho, herself an Episcopal priest, seeks to explain “why we can find hope and joy in the world’s darkest moments by realizing that we were made for goodness, that we are wired so that goodness will win in the end.”

Although in his interview, when discussing the current corruption levels in South Africa, Archbishop Tutu expressed his disapproval, he nevertheless pointed to the key quality which prevented a descent into violence at the ending of apartheid: “There always is this thing, which is difficult to put into your language, that we call ubuntu, the sense of what it means to be a human being, that my humanity is caught up in your humanity. If I dehumanise you, then whether I like it or not, I am in that process dehumanised.”

Asked what his top priority would be were he advising the government, he said:

“If I were to advise political leaders everywhere, it’s the fact that until we recognize that we have got one world, there is no jumping off, we have got this one world and we are not ever going to have the kind of security people look for. You certainly are not going to get it from the barrel of a gun. America has one of the most sophisticated defence systems which was made obsolete by a wire cutter. We are one community. And once we acknowledge that, we know therefore that it is obscene to spend the amount that we spend on defence when a very minute fraction of that would ensure that everybody everywhere had enough to eat, had clean water to drink – I mean, we are silly!”

Touching on the role of Western governments in Afghanistan he questioned:

“Have they succeeded? All you are doing is you are building up a resentment; it would be maybe Moslems who say, why are you clobbering those, and the Moslems around the world get upset. It would also be those we call the developing world who say the developed world makes the rules by which we play the game and they are also the referee in that game and that is building up an anger, a resentment, that now and again expresses itself.”

However, it is impossible for Archbishop Tutu to remain gloomy for long. Explaining the title of his new book, Made for Goodness, he said:

“Doing wrong is wrong. It actually does not give you the satisfaction you thought it would.” (He laughs heartily.) “The aid workers, who come most of them from very well-to-do parts of the world, and they themselves are generally people who could have lived quite comfortably, quite safely, they go to Darfur where they are at risk. Why? The world does not acknowledge them usually. Yet some of them have gone not once, but twice or maybe thrice. Why? It is because we are created for goodness, we really are.”

(Source: BBC Radio 4, UK; harpercollins.com)