He has really turned into a kind of Frankenstein for his people.' (commenting about Robert Mugabe to Australia's ABC TV) 'He has, I mean, mutated into something that is quite unbelievable. What a pity he's not a Christian'? I don't think that is the case, because, you see, God is not a Christian.' (Speech at Dalai Lama's birthday, June 2, 2006)
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Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: 'You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. 'I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid.' (Speech at a UN's gay rights campaign, 2013). No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place. I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. 'I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. You are the rainbow people of God'.' (His book 'The Rainbow People of God', 1994) 'At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I've said, 'Move your hands,' and I've said, 'Look at your hands - different colours representing different people. The white man knows.' (Interview with US press, reacting to Ronald Reagan's vetoing of economic sanctions apartheid government, 1986) He sits there like the great, big white chief of old can tell us black people that we don't know what is good for us. 'Your President is the pits as far as blacks are concerned. When you tickle us, we laugh.' (Statement urging sanctions against South Africa, 1985) 'For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too. 'Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.' (New York Times, October 19, 1984) He did not hesitate to use humour and anger to express his values and outrage. He was shrewd enough to realise that Pretoria feared economic sanctions more than the African National Congress’s largely ineffective campaign of violence against the apartheid state.Īrchbishop Desmond Tutu, who died Sunday morning in Cape Town at age 90, was a man of strong faith and conviction, but also of words. Then he would perform a rhetorical somersault and order the crowd to disperse and go home peacefully, and not bring shame to the reputation of ‘The Struggle’ by resorting to violence. He would begin by whipping the angry youths into a frenzy of rage about the latest apartheid atrocity. He would almost always be the keynote speaker - the rest of the leadership were imprisoned or banned from public speaking and he was de facto leader of the black opposition. Back in those last years of apartheid when I was based in South Africa, I lost count of how many potentially calamitous protest rallies and marches I covered. Tutu was simultaneously a provocateur and a conciliator.
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During that struggle, Tutu enraged the government so much that it twice suspended his passport, yet ministers never had the nerve to lock up the most famous churchman after the Pope.