Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who became the conscience of South Africa during apartheid, celebrated his 75th birthday on Saturday surrounded by the country’s new elite.
But the pugnacious cleric shows no sign of slipping quietly into retirement, spending his birthday morning encouraging students in Mozambique to have questioning minds before rushing back to Johannesburg for a gala dinner in his honour.
”As graduates, you must always keep a questioning attitude towards everything in order to be able to find solutions for your problems. Conformism will never lead you anywhere,” Tutu urged around 400 students at their graduation ceremony in the Mozambique capital Maputo.
”Each of you is potentially an investment for the development not only for Mozambique, but also for the entire African continent.”
Guests at the gala dinner were scheduled to include leading businessmen, politicians and former South African president Nelson Mandela, but not current President Thabo Mbeki whose government has lately been in Tutu’s sights.
”What has happened to us?” Tutu asked last month, 12 years after the end of white rule. ”Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.
”We have achieved our goal. We are free … We have an obligation to obey the laws made by our own legislators. We should be dignified, law abiding citizens … proud of our freedom won at such great cost,” he said.
Never a member of the ruling African National Congress, Tutu has clashed frequently with the successive governments of Mandela and Mbeki.
He has repeatedly questioned the official response to the HIV/Aids pandemic and what he dubbed ”a culture of sycophancy” towards Mbeki, leading the president to brand him a populist.
Tutu also declared ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma unfit to lead the country following Zuma’s admission during a rape trial that he had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive family friend half his age.
But the ANC paid homage on Saturday.
”We are appreciative of the fact that you have dedicated your entire life to the quest for peace, justice, human dignity and human rights in our country,” ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said in a statement.
Foreign leaders have also been on the receiving end of Tutu’s sharp tongue, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe who was called a ”caricature
of an African dictator”. Mugabe in turn called him ”an evil little bishop”.
International recognition of Tutu’s contribution to the struggle against apartheid — the system of racial segregation he had described as ”evil and unchristian” — came in 1984 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He became Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, placing him at the head of the Anglican church in South Africa.
After the country’s first multi-racial elections in 1994, Mandela appointed Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to unearth the truth about apartheid-era human rights violations.
Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, and was treated again in 1999 and this year. – Sapa