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Desmond Tutu an Arch for Forgiveness
By Malcolm McKenzie
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a model of and for forgiveness, passed away on 26 December 2021. Like many South Africans, and many others around the world, I am still mourning this huge loss. Tutu was a gracious, generous, spirited, just, and forgiving human being and change-maker, the likes of whom we do not see nearly frequently enough. If there were more such people, our world would be a much better place. In this piece I share words I wrote originally in December 2020, as my tribute to a man who has been a guide and beacon for me and who is now gone. I hope that a few comments about and insights into this truly remarkable person might inspire all of us. My words of that time are as follows.
‘One of the most celebrated, and compassionate, of contemporary South Africans is Desmond Tutu. After Nelson Mandela, Desmond may be the best known of my compatriots. He is a truly remarkable man. Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, almost 10 years before the same award was given to Mandela. Soon after this, in 1986, he became the Archbishop of Cape Town. The Nobel Peace Prize Motivation (or citation) for Tutu praised him ‘for his role as a unifying leader figure in the non-violent campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa’. In his insistence on nonviolence, Tutu was an intentional heir to Mahatma Gandhi and his practice of satyagraha. Gandhi had developed this philosophy of non-violent protest when he lived in South Africa in the last few years of the 19th century and the first few of the 20th, before returning to India.
Desmond Tutu was the Chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This bold and successful experiment in restorative justice was set up soon after the open elections in 1994 had brought apartheid and legalized racial discrimination to an end. The Commission toured the country over a period of years, holding hearings in cities and towns large and small. Victims of racially motivated and state sanctioned violence were encouraged to come and tell their stories, in public. Sometimes the perpetrators of the violence made public confessions. The purpose of the TRC was to encourage openness, recognition, forgiveness, and healing – healing that was individual, communal, and national. It was a hard, grueling, but also exalting experience. The TRC was given the power to grant amnesty, which it did, at times controversially. Of course, and sadly, almost all the victims of this violence were black – but not every one. Amy Biehl was a Stanford University activist student who came to Cape Town on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1992. Amy wanted to help in the final days of the dying of apartheid. Here is Desmond writing about Amy Biehl:
On August 25, 1993, she was driving into the Gugulethu township when her car was stopped by an angry mob. The group had just emerged from a political meeting to protest the police slaying of a young black boy. Amy’s passion for justice and her purpose for being in South Africa were not written on her face. To the protesters, Amy was just another person, another symbol of apartheid oppression. They dragged her from the vehicle and beat, stoned, and stabbed her to death. Amy was twenty-six years old.
In 1998, the four young men convicted of her murder were granted amnesty by the TRC. Amy’s parents, Linda and Peter Biehl, not only supported this decision but went on to establish the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in Cape Town. It is a charity dedicated to fighting violence and helping the very community where Amy was murdered. Two of the men, Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni, now work for the foundation named after the woman they killed. They have a close relationship with Linda Biehl (Peter Biehl has since passed away) and have formed a unique bond.
How could such forgiveness come to pass? Imagine not only agreeing to the pardon of your daughter’s killers but employing them and developing a close working relationship with two of them. This seems superhuman. In 2000, when I spent a year at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts as the Academy’s first Bicentennial Visiting Scholar, I taught senior courses in South African and African Literature. I invited Linda and Peter Biehl to come to the Deerfield campus, from California, to tell their story. They were compelling, and electric in their compassion. They changed the lives forever, through their witness, of the young American students who were privileged to hear their tale of forgiveness.
Desmond Tutu has written a great deal, about his faith, the TRC, and the complexities of our humanity, and of being human. In 2014, he and his daughter Mpho published The Book of Forgiving, subtitled ‘The Fourfold Path for healing ourselves and our world’. In the final pages of the book, they write this:
We can’t create a world without pain or loss or conflict or hurt feelings, but we can create a world of forgiveness. We can create a world of forgiveness that allows us to heal from those losses and pain and repair our relationships. The Book of Forgiving shares the path to finding forgiveness, but ultimately no one can tell you to forgive. We can ask you to do so. We can invite you on the journey. We can show you what has worked for others. We can tell you that the healing that we have seen from those who have walked the Fourfold Path is humbling and transformative.
Here is that Fourfold Path:
Telling the Story;
Naming the Hurt; Granting Forgiveness;
Renewing or Releasing the Relationship.
It is not possible to do justice in a few sentences to the intricacies of this pathway, or journey. If you wish to grasp it fully, read the book. But here are a few indicators. Telling the story is the way of making meaning of our hurt and injury, and the first step in reclaiming our dignity. Not telling our story binds us to our trauma. Naming the hurt deepens the detail, allows feelings to be attached to the facts, and begins the movement forward from pain and grief. Granting forgiveness may be slow and drawn out, but through recognizing a common humanity, and choosing to forgive, we can gain freedom from the damage of the past. Renewing or releasing the relationship is the final and fourth stage. Forgiveness sometimes leads to renewal of a relationship, sometimes full release from it.’
In the weeks after his death, news media and social media were full of quotes and sayings attributed to Desmond Tutu. Many of these captured his irreverent wit, his refusal to accept injustice, and his generosity of spirit. Here are just two, which resonate with me and with the theme of practising forgiveness:
If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
Enemies are always friends waiting to be made.
Thank you Desmond, the Arch, for your life and for your largeness, and for embracing and enveloping your enemies with forgiveness. ◆
Malcolm McKenzie is Head of School at Keystone Academy, China ✉ malcolm.mckenzie@keystoneacademy.cn This article was originally written for Keystone Academy’s weekly newsletter.
