Bishop Tutu: The unstoppable catalyst that hastened funeral of apartheid ~ by Bayo Oluwasanmi

Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Bishop of South Africa passed away on Sunday at age 90.

The first and only time I saw Bishop Tutu was in 1986 at McGonigle Hall when he came for the Convocation at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, for the honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

As an undergraduate, I had read a lot about apartheid. I even wrote a stinging indictment of President Reagan’s South Africa policy in the widely read Philadelphia Daily News. Ever since, I have been a disciple of Bishop Tutu.

I was eager to see him speak. The hall was full to its capacity. People perched on edge of chairs while many stretched their necks to catch a glimpse of him.

Others stood outside around McGonigle Hall to listen to his address. He brought the house down with his eloquence, bluntness, charm, magnetism, wit, and laughter.

The uncompromising foe of apartheid and the unstoppable catalyst that hastened the funeral of apartheid, thanked and praised Temple officials for divesting all of its stocks in companies doing business in South Africa.

His looks depict his personality: buoyant, blunt-spoken. He mingled humor and laughter with impassioned cries for justice in his homeland where 23 million Africans have no civil or human rights.

He described South Africa as a “beautiful country with everything you could wish for – except justice. How ridiculous it is that what makes you worthwhile is a matter of biological irrelevance – the color of your skin.”

“It is the only country in the world that I know where it is a crime for a man to sleep with his wife if he is a migrant worker,” he adde.

Fondly called “the Arch,” Tutu was gifted with a rare lively wit, hard-hitting messages against apartheid. Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Tutu has uncanny talent for using the scriptures to galvanize righteous support in the fight against apartheid. He was South Africa’s moral conscience.

He reminded friends and supporters of apartheid that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant had its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Tutu demonstrated that truth must not merely come over his lips, but through his character, his affections for his people, and peoples of the world, and his whole intellectual and moral being. He believed in what the great theologian D.L. Moody said “Satan separates, God unites. Love binds us together.”

Asked how he would like to be remembered, he told the Associated Press: “He loved. He laughed. He cried. He was forgiven. He forgave. Greatly privileged.”

As the world mourns his passing, we should remind ourselves that at the end of our sojourn in this sinful world, all we can really take with us is what we have given away.

Farewell to the man of the people, the simple parish priest, the moral compass with humor and force. Rest In Peace.

Bayo Oluwasanmi; bjoluwasanmi@gmail.com