Statements

• Launch of Desmond Tutu digital platform preserving his teaching for posterity
  
  
• His car, a valuable lesson in itself, goes on public display
  
  
• The Archbishop would have celebrated his 92nd birthday today

At one minute past midnight, tonight, the first phase of a bespoke digital platform designed to make Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s extraordinary body of work publicly accessible is scheduled to go live online, to coincide with what would have been the Arch’s 92nd birthday.

The platform is available at https://archive.tutuiptrust.org.

The first phase of the project entailed engaging with the Archbishop’s physical and digital archives, conceptualising the arrangement of the collection in line with periods of his life, digitising physical items and processing items already in digital form to populate those periods – and then designing the architecture of the digital archive and uploading the first tranche of materials.

Where sections of the archive are yet to be populated they are curated for silence; that is, their location is visible as it forms part of the essential environment.

The project will unfold over several years, as more and more materials are prepared (arranged, itemized, inventoried, captured in digital form, processed and professionally referenced) and uploaded. The next phase will also include linking the platform to important materials held in the archives of local and international universities, among others.

The aim is to provide a one-stop, comprehensive and accessible resource for present and future generations of learners and thinkers.

The project is being directed by the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust, which was established by the Archbishop to manage his intellectual property and associated rights.

There is also a physical aspect to the archiving initiative, with a large collection of papers, artefacts, books and gifts associated with the Archbishop located in Cape Town. The physical archive underpins the programmatic work of the Trust’s sister organization, the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, including the permanent exhibition at the Old Granary Building.

The most recent addition to materials on public display at the Granary is the Archbishop’s old Toyota Corolla which, in itself, teaches an important lesson about probity.

This is the modest (1600cc, with manual transmission) car that the Archbishop selected in 2008 after receiving a generous gift from a US billionaire that was sufficient to have bought an expensive limousine. Of course, his choice of ride was the antithesis of the cars favoured by South African government ministers, in a country beset by radical poverty.

When the Archbishop wrote to thank the billionaire and inform him of his choice, he said that instead of spending all the money he thought it should be shared with others.

“The Archbishop Tutu IP Trust is thrilled to have prepared the ground for the next phase of the archiving project that will draw in the expertise of university partners in the UK, US and South Africa,” said chairperson of the Trust, Dr Mamphela Ramphele.

“The digital platform has been designed to be accessible, easily searchable, and robust.

“Memory of Archbishop Tutu’s template for human leadership based on the principles of inter-dependence, love and justice for all cannot be lost to a world (and beloved country) being driven to the abyss by consumptiveness, inequality, and division,” Dr Ramphele said.

* The digital platform was developed for the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust by Africa Media Online, a South African company specializing in digital preservation and archiving, and AM Quartex, a UK-based company focusing on discoverability and design that allows users to access the archive on any digital device.

6 October 2023

* PHOTO CREDIT: ORYX MEDIA

Statement from Dr Mamphela Ramphele and Mr Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke, chairpersons, respectively, of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust and the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation

PICKING UP THE PIECES:
THE 1st ANNIVERSARY OF ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU’S PASSING

1. End of the traditional mourning period
2. Beginning of global university partnership to secure his teaching

A year ago, on Boxing Day, South Africa’s beloved Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu passed away after a protracted struggle with prostate cancer, teaching lessons about life, love and human values until the very end.  

The image of this man – who in life rubbed shoulders with some of the most powerful and celebrated people on earth – lying in state in a simple pine coffin with rope handles, was both gorgeous in its humility and a searing indictment on the culture of extravagance that has overwhelmed traditional human practises venerating the departed. 

The first anniversary of his passing marks the end of the traditional mourning period by his widow, Mrs Nomalizo Leah Tutu. 

It also marks the beginning of a new global digital journey to protect the Archbishop’s body of work for future generations.

Archbishop Tutu occupied a unique position (organically, without being appointed or elected, guided by his faith) as a global moral conscience and human role-model. We have been acutely conscious of his silence this year. 

Were he still here, he’d have helped us understand, from an inter-connected human family perspective, where we should stand in this year of war in Europe, accelerating climate calamity, energy crisis – and increasing social and political bankruptcy at home.

The Arch’s work took him around the world, dropping pearls of wisdom as he went. These teachings, unlike Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs in the old European fairy-tale, remain relevant and accessible today. Gathered together, they comprise what we term the Archbishop’s Heirloom to Humanity.

The Archbishop Tutu IP Trust and the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation will work together on the development of a single-site, accessible and usable global digital archive (The Heirloom Project) in collaboration with South African and international universities associated with the Archbishop. Several have already committed to the project; details will be announced early in the new year.

The university consortium model is inspired by the approach of the Atlanta University Center Robert W Woodruff Library, which serves the research and information needs of four historically Black colleges and universities: Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College and Spelman College.

The objective of the digital archive project is not to eulogise the Archbishop, worthy as he is of acknowledgment and praise; or to commemorate him, worthy as he is of being remembered.

The objective is to harness the full body of his teaching in order to be able to contribute meaningfully to the endeavours of those he left behind, and are still to come… Those interested in pursuing their faith, spreading the truth of our interconnectedness and interdependence as a single family of human beings and/or or completing the unfinished business of addressing unresolved injustices and inequities.

Among the obvious advantages of working with prestigious universities on several continents is that they are well-established, living institutions inhabited by successive generations of curious people with an interest in knowledge, and keeping it alive.

The archive will, eventually, contain an exhaustive collection of easily searchable digital files of papers, speeches, statements, comments, interviews, articles, photographs, television footage and artefacts associated with the Arch. 

On the 1st day of 2022, the Archbishop was laid to rest. It has been an eventful and productive year, steeped in sadness and loss.

On behalf of Mrs Leah Tutu, we very gratefully acknowledge the loving support of family and friends across South Africa and the world throughout the mourning period. 

We send warm festive season greetings to all.

This statement was issued for Dr Mamphela Ramphele (Chair of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust) and Mr Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke, (Chair of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation). 

For more information please call Benny Gool 082 5566 556 or Roger Friedman 079 8966 899 (Tutu Trust); or Ntombenhle Shezi 078 7598 318  (Tutu Foundation).

A year ago, on 7 October 2021, a frail Archbishop Desmond Tutu marked his 90th birthday by attending a service at his beloved St George’s Cathedral followed by a party with family and close friends at home.

He had entered the final straight of his journey… it was the last birthday he spent on earth. For 22 years he had waged a public battle against prostate cancer, wanting people to learn from his experience, teaching lessons about living until the very end.

He was a human role model who understood with great clarity the interdependent and interconnected nature of our species. His guiding philosophy was of one family of God, from which none are excluded regardless of colour, culture, belief, gender, sexuality, geography…

He passed away the day after Christmas, on 26 December 2021.

Although dearly missed, his spirit of Ubuntu, and the values he embodied, live on in all he encountered over an extraordinary 50+ years of servant leadership.

His ethics live on through the programmatic work of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. And his teaching will continue to resonate across the world through a global archiving initiative led by the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust, in partnership with universities in South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom.

We celebrate the Arch today even as we continue to mourn for him and miss his infectious humanness.

We thank Mrs Leah Tutu and the Tutu family for sharing their husband and father, for supporting and enabling his astonishing life of service and good example.

24 March 2022

Dr Mamphela Ramphele

As events in Eastern Europe unfold so hideously on our television screens, and soon, at our petrol pumps, we feel the loss of values-based leadership, the loss of the Arch, particularly acutely. There is a palpable void that it is our collective challenge, as human beings, to fill.

Archbishop Tutu was not a one-man band. He was as dependent on those around him as anyone else. Had he been on the list of speakers tonight he would have told us that he wouldn’t have been the subject of a public exhibition had he not stood on the shoulders of others, who lifted him up – and had he not sported a recognizable nose. Many of those shoulders are here today. He’d tell us how special we are, and that we should give ourselves a clap.

A few years ago, in their wisdom, Archbishop and Mrs Tutu established a Trust alongside their Legacy Foundation. They wanted to free the Foundation of the burden of running their personal office and affairs, and allow it to focus on programmes and projects to keep the work relevant and alive.

I want to say to the chairperson of the Foundation and his Board, to the outgoing CEO and her staff, past and present, to the Apartheid Museum and all who contributed to developing this exhibition: Thank you. Enkosi. Baie Dankie. Re a Leboga. You have done the Arch proud. Through you, he will continue inspiring new congregants today and tomorrow. It is a great privilege for the Trust to work with the Foundation from this historic space, now deeply rooted in the philosophy and memory of our beloved founding father.

The front page of the Trust’s website lays down the challenge that confronts us, in the words of the ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus: “Memory is the mother of all wisdom.”

Archbishop Tutu’s wisdom lay in his understanding of the human condition – the human family, God’s family, he called it. He understood the primacy of our inter-dependence, as human beings. He had a natural grasp of the concept of the global village long before the term became de rigueur. And he intrinsically got it that a village built on foundations of inequality, bullying, nationalism and injustice was undesirable and unsustainable.

This wisdom, this blueprint, we call the Arch’s “heirloom for humanity”. It embodies, as he did, the yearning of many people for a new approach to leadership based on shared human values of equality, compassion and sustainable custodianship of the earth.

Our collective responsibility, as Trust and Foundation, is to gather and preserve it, make it accessible to present and future leaders, and repurpose it in relevant ways to confront the new and old challenges ahead of us. 

The Archbishop’s footprints traverse the planet. In a sense, memories of him are virtually uncontainable. There are important collections of his sermons, letters and speeches housed in various academic institutions, locally and internationally, the Legacy Foundation has gathered together and collated a large quantity of artefacts – but there are also many footprints that have never been gathered or recorded. 

It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle for which we don’t yet have all the pieces. 

As you engage this exhibition, this extraordinary body of work, my challenge to you is to see beyond the beautiful images and the warm, fuzzy feeling that being in the Arch’s presence naturally evokes to glimpse the heirloom contained within. For he was a human role-model.

The love, fairness, humour and compassion, but equally the truth and the courage and the feistiness. And the consistency…

The Arch’s departure to the land of ancestors does not let the State of Israel off the hook for the apartheid it practises against Palestinians. It doesn’t free homophobes on our continent to victimise their sisters and brothers, or misogynists to reinforce male dominance. It’s not a free ride for the wealthy to continue exploiting poor people.  It doesn’t say to oil producers, ‘continue extracting filth’, or to the ANC government, ‘now you’re at liberty to carry on running South Africa into the dirt’.

As we honour the Arch, and treasure the time God gave him to teach us how to be better human beings, we are guided by his values.  Although he said he stood on our shoulders, some things he seemed to understand better than us.

* Remarks by Chairperson of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, at the opening in Cape Town today of Truth to Power: Desmond Tutu and the Churches in the Struggle Against Apartheid, an exhibition showcasing the Archbishop’s life and legacy.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu: 7 October 1933 – 26 December 2021

The world has lost a lodestar and a doting parent. 

Born in a mining town west of Johannesburg 90 years ago, in the period between colonial and apartheid rule in South Africa, his love, humanity and courage propelled him through the glass ceilings his country and the world imposed on Black people and thought.

His journey through the ranks to head the Anglican Church in Southern Africa, his moral leadership of the struggle against apartheid, including the campaign for South Africa’s economic isolation, his management of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission – and the cocktail of faith, compassion and justice he consistently exuded – led to him occupying a central seat at the world table of human righ

The company he kept included monarchs, presidents and leaders across the spectrum of human endeavour. But what elevated him to the realms of the extraordinary was that in heart and mind he never deviated from his fundamental path: He was a disciplined priest with a structured faith routine and an elevated sense of pastoral duty and responsibility. 

Whether at home, in the office, in a car, visiting Buckingham Palace, or in Gaza, certain times of his day were devoted to prayer. It refuelled him. Without it he would wither, he said.

He was equally at home addressing the United Nations as he was visiting elderly patients in a run-down hospital ward… as he was comforting victims of apartheid atrocities, as he was picking up litter in the street. These actions were all connected in his vision of one connected family and world.

So, too, was his fearlessness and passion in challenging acts of human selfishness, injustice or discrimination wherever they manifested.

In his book, apartheid was more than a crime against humanity, it was a crime against God. It was a sin. And so, too were gender discrimination, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, pollution of the environment…

His became a global voice against nuclear armament, the death penalty and child marriage. As one who had overcome polio and TB in his youth, later living with cancer for decades, who dreamed of becoming a medical doctor – and as priest with deep compassion for the needy and those experiencing any form of suffering  – he was naturally drawn to the health field, to the struggles for universal health care, children’s health, HIV treatment, dignified dying…

He was an activist for justice in Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Canada, the United States, Australia – drawn like a moth to challenging unfairness, prejudice and intolerance… a critical counter-weight to the earth’s despairing slide through over-consumption and greed to the environmental and social cliffs. 

He directly touched an incredible array of people and championed righteous causes.

***

Although strongly associated with peace and non-violence, Archbishop Tutu didn’t describe himself as a pacifist. 

There were certain rare events where violence was unavoidable in the defence of justice. But there could never be any justification for human rights violations – of any kind, committed by any party. 

In the 1980’s he threatened to emigrate from South Africa if the gruesome practice of necklacing alleged police informers with petrol-filled tyres was not halted. 

And in the 1990s, at the helm of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he applied the same balanced principle to spotlighting human rights violations committed by the State and those prosecuting the anti-apartheid struggle. The vast majority of the commission’s findings of violations related to crimes perpetrated by the State, the few that implicated ANC cadres were to have major consequences…

***

Desmond Mpilo Tutu described himself as a prisoner of hope. Others have defined him as a servant leader, voice of the voiceless, mensch, and pebble in the shoe of injustice.

If he was a saint, he didn’t regard himself as saintly – though he often said God has a soft spot for sinners. The Arch was the first to admit that he had faults, like the rest of us. Among them, he said, was what he described as growing too comfortable in the public limelight, which he viewed as a hint of immodesty. Another was an almost pathological inability to ever say “no”. A third, pointed out by his doting wife Leah, was that he laughed at his own jokes.

Neither was Desmond Tutu a politician. Because his pastoral duty extended beyond the confines of his church he crossed paths with politicians. 

In May 1976, for instance, writing as “one Christian to another”, he penned an extraordinarily prescient letter to then Prime-Minister John Vorster. “I am writing to you sir, because I have a growing nightmarish fear that unless something drastic is done very soon bloodshed and violence is going to happen in South Africa almost inevitably.” His letter was dismissed as political propaganda. The following month youth in Soweto sparked a national insurrection. 

When apartheid’s grip began to loosen, and Black South Africans were finally able to join political parties without risking State brutality, he discouraged members of the clergy from joining political parties because, he said, they should be able to serve all people equally, regardless of their political affiliation.

Although some of the clergy strongly disagreed with him, the wisdom of this edict became more apparent over time. God’s work, and that of political parties, are not always perfectly aligned. Prophets’ freedom to speak truth to power should not be watered down by party political considerations.

The Arch was regarded by some as being close to the ANC. The apartheid government, for instance – and most media at the time – came to view him as an ANC proxy. It is true that he interacted with exiled leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, including the ANC. After meeting Nelson Mandela in 1990, following his release from imprisonment, they struck up a close relationship which added to perceptions of a special political relationship. But this was never the case. 

In 2011, when the South African state declined to issue a visa to His Holiness the Dalai Lama to attend the Arch’s 80th birthday celebrations, in deference to China, the Archbishop addressed a press conference in Cape Town warning the ANC that if it didn’t mend his ways he would pray for its demise, just as he’d prayed for the demise of the National Party of apartheid.

He’d became a stern critic of the ANC long before it became fashionable. He spoke out about the elevated lifestyles of politicians under President Mandela, tussled with President Mbeki about HIV treatment and the unfinished business of the TRC, and warned the nation about the consequences of electing Jacob Zuma to the highest position in the land.

***

Among the Archbishop’s greatest sadnesses was a sense that, although he’d always strived to do his duty to his country, his country didn’t always do its duty to him. 

This was particularly so in respect of the completion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. The Arch poured his energy and soul into balancing the rights of apartheid victims and perpetrators, with the interests of post-apartheid healing and reconstruction, as per the letter of the Act which created the commission.

When the commission drafted a final report including findings of human rights violations committed by the ANC, the ANC went to court to try and block its publication. The court found in favour of the commission, and President Mandela defied his party to officially receive it from the Arch. 

Mandela said afterwards that he accepted the report because of the Arch’s integrity.

But Mandela was on the threshold of retirement, and the die was cast.

Instead of implementing the commission’s recommendations, which were fundamental to achieving the balance and justice the commission sought, the post-Mandela government largely ignored them. 

And then, instead of owning up and stating the reasons why it chose not to prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations to whom the commission did not grant amnesty, for example, the State sat back and allowed a poisonous narrative to take root that the commission had been too “soft” and done too little to hold perpetrators to account.

Other critical recommendations, such as the implementation of a wealth tax to reduce inequality – that has since deepened – and on the scope of reparations packages, were similarly ignored.

By ignoring the commission’s recommendations, the state reduced it to a symbolic event, and effectively slammed the door on the possibilities of harvesting the fruits of South Africa’s formal reconciliation and national unity process.

***

Desmond Tutu’s work was richly acknowledged. He received many of the world’s top humanitarian and human rights awards, including the Nobel Peace, Ghandi and Templeton Prizes. He received honorary degrees from an abundance of top universities, and top National awards from many nations, from east to west.

But arguably his greatest prize was conferred on him in July 1955; the certificate of his marriage to Nomalizo Leah Shenxane, a strong woman. A trained teacher, nurse, mother and motor mechanic.

She was his earthly strength for 66 years. She was more than the glue that held the family together, she was his pragmatic confidant and very incisive adviser. She dragged him down to earth, and she enabled him to fly. 

While he turned to prayer for answers to life’s most perplexing questions, she provided an unshakeable base at home to keep things practical and grounded. Besides an abundance of wit and intellect to keep him on his toes.

When asked to name the greatest influences on his life, the Arch usually named his mother, Aletta. From his descriptions of her, she was an extraordinary kind and gracious woman. From old photographs, one can tell he also inherited his good looks from her.

But Nomalizo Leah Tutu was his rock. 

To Ma Tutu, their children, Trevor, Thandeka, Naomi and Mpho, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we say: Thank you for sharing your lover, partner and parent with the rest of us. For freeing his grace to seep across the earth.

The world has lost a parent and a guiding star. Now it’s up to us to ensure that the gifts of wisdom and understanding of ourselves that Desmond Tutu bequeathed live on forever.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Mrs Leah Tutu have cast their votes in Local Government Election 2021. The couple voted at home during a brief visit by a delegation of Independent Election Commission officials.

The Archbishop turned 90-years-old this month. For nearly 63 of those years, he was denied the vote due to the racist policies of South Africa’s post-colonial and apartheid governments.

Acting chairperson of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, who co-ordinates the Archbishop’s Office, said the Arch and Mrs Tutu wouldn’t allow their relative frailty to get in the way of exercising their right to vote. 

“They are of a generation that felt the full impact of apartheid, and were denied the right to vote for most of their lives.

“They were too close to the struggle, and the Arch presided at too many funerals of struggle martyrs, to ever take this right for granted. They are acutely aware of the preciousness of being able to have a say in who should lead our government,” Dr Ramphele said.

She said Archbishop Tutu was fond of the old maxim (of disputed origin) that, in a democracy, people get the government (or leaders) they deserve.

“If you don’t participate in elections, you can’t expect complaining afterwards to fix much,” Dr Ramphele said.