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David Shapshak
Desmond Tutu’s personal story of the time he spent as head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been sold to publishers Random House and is scheduled to be in print by late next year.
The deal was confirmed this week by Stephen Johnson, the head of Random House in South Africa. Earlier this year Tutu submitted a detailed proposal to the publisher’s London office, which had been accepted, Johnson confirmed. TRC representative John Allen confirmed only that talks were under way.
“It will be Desmond Tutu’s own personal account of his journey as head of the commission,” he said. The Nobel Peace Prize winner is scheduled to hand in a manuscript by April next year and the publication target has been set for November 1999.
Johnson could not confirm if a contract had been signed, but a book deal of this kind is thought to be worth a sizeable amount.
As a respected figure with a good standing abroad, the advance was likely to be significant, one local publisher told the Mail & Guardian.
Tutu’s tenure as the head of the controversial commission since early 1996 has been as turbulent a time in his life as it was in the country’s.
The personal journey is all the more poignant because of Tutu’s own battle against prostate cancer, which was discovered last January. He underwent treatment in the United States for several months before taking up the chair again.
Tutu was drawn into the amnesty committee’s controversial decision to grant his son, Trevor, amnesty for a bomb hoax in the 1980s.
He has presided over revelations about apartheid-era dirty tricks and torture by state-sponsored assassins like Eugene de Kock and Dirk Coetzee, allegations of torture and thuggery against struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and torture in African National Congress camps in Angola.
Tutu has openly wept during disclosures of the brutality of South Africa’s struggle for freedom and the previous attempts to stifle it.
The commission was forced to reconsider blanket amnesty for 37 ANC leaders after objections from other political parties.