A great fighter for peace



Prosecutor, admonisher and reconciler: Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1998
Image: Reuters

It is also thanks to Desmond Tutu that South Africa left the apartheid regime behind. Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his work – we are publishing excerpts from his Nobel Prize speech.

I.In South Africa in the years after 1948 he had no prospect of life that seemed somehow tempting. His biggest “flaw” was of course his skin color. The government advocated strict racial segregation. And there the hierarchies were clear. The whites had to rule, everyone else, especially the blacks, had to obey. Desmond Tutu defied this social order with passion. But he did this, in this he differed from many of his fellow combatants, always by peaceful means.

And although those who oppose any violence in political disputes are often and gladly smiled at, there are always examples that, in the end, not only in nature, constant dripping wears away the stone. It may have been particularly difficult for Tutu to cling to non-violence after the overcoming of apartheid. In front of the Reconciliation and Truth Commission, which he heads, perpetrators and victims of yore reported on all the horrors of the old regime. That there were no revenge campaigns afterwards borders on a miracle.



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