With the demise of Mandela and Tutu within eight years apart, between 2013 and 2021, the dismantling of Apartheid was supposed to be their common legacy. Desmond Tutu was a close ally of Nelson Mandela in this great and prolonged struggle. Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent struggle against apartheid. In 1993, Nelson Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid peacefully and to establish the groundwork for a new democratic South Africa.
Yet this friendship of South Africa’s anti-apartheid icons was an uncanny one. Tutu used his senior position in the Anglican Church and the acclaim of the Nobel Peace Prize brought to spread his anti-apartheid message internationally and elevate the experiences and lives of Black South Africans while other leaders, such as Mandela, were imprisoned. While Tutu preached against apartheid's brutality, he was also harshly critical of Black political elites. He even openly chastised his ally, Nelson Mandela, for what he described as the African National Congress's "gravy train mindset". Tutu would later chastise Mandela for having an open romance with Graca Machel, whom Mandela would later marry. In 2013, Tutu abandoned his support for Mandela's party and called South Africa "the world's most unequal society".
When Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu stood on the balcony of City Hall on 11 February 1990, they thought that they had achieved their combined goal of the liberation of South Africa. They both wanted a free, united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist nation in which the will of the people would be the arbiter of the future. However, their routes to this historic moment had differed because of circumstance, temperament and primary motivation. Mandela chose the route of political struggle, embracing an African nationalist ideology, joining a liberation movement and plunging into political activism, leading, motivating, organising and galvanising that movement into increasing militancy and ultimately negotiations.
By contrast, the road that Tutu took chose him. He never set out to be a political leader and never became one. He was a Church leader who, in the absence of political leaders in prison or exile, and the banning of liberation movements, was chosen at a crucial time to head the South African Council of Churches (SACC), which, prior to the founding of the United Democratic Front, was virtually the only remaining platform of any significance opposing the apartheid regime. Although his voice against apartheid had already been heard, especially in his 1976 letter to Prime Minister Vorster, it was the SACC role that catapulted him into prominence. From then on, he was destined to be in the public square representing, first Christians and soon becoming the voice of all the voiceless masses in the land, whatever their faith. He played this role with forceful impact and it was for this period of witness that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, as Archbishop of Cape Town, while the UDF took over the main task, he remained the leading Church voice of defiance until political prisoners were set free.
An obvious difference is that Tutu, although not a pacifist, unlike perhaps Mandela, stopped short of embracing the “armed struggle”, calling instead for every other possible strategy – especially sanctions and disinvestment. Mandela had his share of dubious characteristics, such as that he was a Knight of Malta invested as Bailiff Grand Cross, Order of St John by Madiba and Duke of Gloucester, on 23 November 2004 at St James’ Palace. Indeed, the closest that these two world icons came to each other was the fact that they practically lived as neighbours in the Soweto area. Tutu never had any political ambitions, which freed him from the constraints of political expediency to call things exactly as he saw them. The power of his pronouncements was that they simply told the unvarnished and unspun truth. No one could accuse him of saying and doing the things he did because of personal ambition, something that was often attributed to Mandela. As soon as the people’s recognised political leaders were freed, Tutu stepped back from the role he had been drawn into by the physical vacuum of their absence.
There was more to Mandela that raised more questions than provided answers. Mandela's birth name was Rolihlahla. In his Xhosa tribe, the name means troublemaker. When Mandela was eluding authorities during his fight against apartheid, he disguised himself in various ways, including as a chauffeur. The press nicknamed him "the Black Pimpernel" because of his police evasion tactics. Bloody sports intrigued him and he was not removed from the US terror watch list until 2008, at age 89. He and other members of the African National Congress were placed on it because of their militant fight against apartheid. Mandela, in contrast with Tutu, was not one to regard ethics and morality as more fundamental than law and politics.
Tutu and Mandela are no more. In their own different ways, they remind us about the essence of being human and remember that we can only be human through and in association with other human beings. But without Tutu and Mandela, is South African moral exceptionalism dead, and can the country still achieve genuine racial justice after its moral giants have left the stage? Is there anyone left with a functioning moral compass among South Africa’s leaders or was Tutu the last of his generation to regard ethics and morality as more fundamental than law and politics and was Mandela the last to fight for civil liberties and political freedom?
The state of South Africa today is a national economy still dominated by the white minority. A few black South Africans have become millionaires, although it is assumed that most made their money through corrupt political dealings. Meanwhile, the country is still a study in stark contrasts. There are rich natural and mineral resources and widespread squalid human poverty. There is the luscious, breathtaking wild landscape and the urban shantytowns and dangerous streets.
The South Africa Apartheid struggle is a warning sign of where triumphalism can lead; of how unsustainable it is.
Dr Mark Said is an advocate