Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu says some of South Africa’s leaders are sinners and his compatriots have failed to sustain the idealism that brought an end to apartheid.
”Part of our own disillusionment is the high expectations that we had,” Archbishop Tutu told reporters on Monday night at a British High Commission function ahead of his 75th birthday on October 7.
”We imagined that because we had this noble cause, the vast majority of people were altruistic, were idealistic, and we thought we were going to translate that and transfer it automatically to the time when we were then free; it’s not happened.”
Asked about South Africa’s political leaders, Tutu said: ”They have shown that they are human. We all have been afflicted by original sin.”
Tutu was speaking a week after former deputy president Jacob Zuma won at least a temporary legal reprieve in efforts to prosecute him for corruption.
The collapse of Zuma’s graft trial has renewed speculation that he could become South Africa’s next president although he denied last week that he had renewed a campaign to become the country’s next leader.
Tutu has said he would not support Zuma, who was acquitted earlier his year on a rape charge, becoming president of South Africa due to his moral failings.
Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his peaceful opposition to white rule. He headed South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear the painful stories of survivors and victims of apartheid crimes.
The archbishop said South Africa had ”very serious” problems such as poverty, HIV/Aids, corruption and crime but had achieved a remarkable degree of stability in 12 years of democracy.
”Which country doesn’t have problems? …When you think of, say, America. It’s been free for 300 years. What has Katrina revealed?” he asked, referring to the hurricane that flooded New Orleans in 2005 and focused world attention on poverty in the US.
”You see some horrendous things that you would not have expected in the country that is the only superpower,” he said. – Reuters