MOUNT VERNON — Nontombi Naomi Tutu, daughter of Anglican Archbishop and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, gave the first lecture Wednesday evening in Mount Vernon Nazarene University’s “Reconciliation and the Kingdom of God” 2008-09 Lecture/Artist Series.
Tutu, born in South Africa and now living in Nashville, Tenn., spoke on “Truth and Reconciliation: Healing Our Wounds.” She told of South Africa’s journey out of 300 years of apartheid, the political system in which all power is held by a racial minority. In South Africa, that minority is white.
Tutu used as an example her country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — formed after apartheid ended and the first democratic election was held in 1994 — to explain reconciliation, and why it must always include truth.
The TRC, she said, included a committee on amnesty.
“People had to apply for amnesty for the acts they had committed. But the only requirements were to tell the truth and to show that there was political motivation for what they had done,” she said.
Tutu attended the hearings.
She said she was struck by how, over and over, people would not tell the truth, even though it meant criminal and civil charges could then be pressed against them.
“I asked myself why. Then one of the people who did tell the truth shed some light for me as to why others could not tell the truth,” she said.
Tutu told of Eugene De Kock, nicknamed “Prime Evil” for his torture prison and the atrocities he committed.
“He spoke about having to make himself two people in order to do what he did. He spoke about being a father, a husband, neighbor, friend, going to church. But then there was the other Eugene De Kock who killed and tortured and slaughtered entire families. He said he had to keep those two people separate in order to stay sane. I began to realize that was the truth for most perpetrators. They had decided it was too hard to tell the truth to the nation because it was too hard to tell the truth to themselves.”
Tutu initially believed she could never be such a person.
“But then I looked at the faces, and they were no different from me and you. They were human just like me. I stopped saying I could never be that person, and I started asking what could make me or you that person? It’s so much easier to look at people and see how different they are from us, but the more important question is how are they like us and how are we like them.”
Real reconciliation is not possible without truth, Tutu said.
“If you are about reconciliation, you have to be willing to listen to the truth in your heart and listen to the truth and stories of the group you know as ‘other.’ Only then can reconciliation begin to happen.”
In an interview prior to her talk, Tutu spoke of her commitment to human rights and devotion to her family.
Her father, 77, and mother, Nomalizo Leah Tutu, 74, are in good health. They taught her about community, she said.
“Without community, we would be nothing,” she said. “My parents lived a life of being grounded in their community. My father says that came from his mother. She saw the worth of everybody. She made sure that anyone who came to her house was treated with respect and was given what they needed to the best of her ability. My father was really affected by how she lived. Community is the core of my learnings from my family, that community is the foundation of everything.”
Her greatest joy, she said, is “Seeing South Africa on a path to becoming a truly democratic and caring country.”
“My grandmother would tell us, ‘One day you will live in a free South Africa. Don’t ever doubt that,’” she said. “When I was about 20, I started thinking, ‘Well, one day my children will live in a free South Africa.’ The government was so strong and so entrenched.
“Then going to vote for the first time, and having my 90-year-old grandmother alive to vote for the first time. And having my daughter, 2 years old, there. Seeing that my grandmother held out this hope for me and how I thought this hope was going to be for my children. And then, we’re all there together. It’s come.”
Tutu considers herself spiritual, not religious.
“When I think ‘religious’ I think you have to be in church every Sunday, and that’s not me. I’m one of those people who says, ‘Oh, God knows I’m thinking about her as I’m sitting in bed on Sunday morning with a cup of coffee.’ My faith is very important. I try and live as closely as I can a life that shows Christian faith in the way I understand it. That the core is to love God and love your neighbor. And that means holding people in esteem just because they are people.”
For Tutu, advocating for hunger and poverty rights is integral to her human rights advocacy.
“The reality is that we produce enough food to feed everybody on this planet. Nobody needs to be hungry, because there is not a lack of food. What needs to change is our view of what it means to be members of a world community. If what we said was, ‘We want people to have all their needs met,’ then what we would do is make sure that everybody has a living wage. Or, if they are not working, that they have a living subsidy. If we did that, we should not have anybody in this country hungry.
“If we really viewed ourselves as connected and caring about each other, all the barriers that we say exist to feeding and sustaining people would absolutely melt away.”
How does reconciliation happen?
“It’s like the fellow asking Jesus how many times he has to forgive,” she explained. “Seventy times seven. Who has that time to keep going and asking? And yet that is what we are called to.”
“My passion,” Tutu said, “is to work for a day when we are all able to live in dignity as human beings. Dignity means you are well fed, you are healthy, you are cared for, you are educated, you are being paid for the work you do. I struggle for a day when all people have their needs met and are treated with the respect and dignity due to those made in the image of God.”
