Desmond Tutu: Clichés don’t describe Arch

In psychology, projection is a process where people attribute to others what is in their own minds.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s death has prompted much projection, with people displaying clichéd assumptions. Tutu was a remarkable figure who influenced events over many decades, but it is fatuous to describe him as “respected and loved by all”, and narrow-minded to view him as a “sell-out”.

Those who didn’t love and respect him included the ANC leadership, who snubbed him at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. There are still people who don’t love him because he campaigned for sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Nor was there universal acclaim for Tutu’s 2014 call for a global boycott of Israel.

In the same year, SA’s Christian Democratic Party called Tutu a “hypocrite and a son of Satan” because of his support for abortion, same-sex marriages and euthanasia. The falsity of the projection that Tutu was “loved by all” has been illustrated by supporters of former president Jacob Zuma, with whom the cleric clashed repeatedly since the 2006 rape trial.

After Zuma failed to repudiate those who terrorised the woman who accused him of rape, Tutu declared him unfit to rule. Before Zuma’s 2009 inauguration, Tutu noted there were unresolved allegations of fraud and corruption.

Given the death, torture and exile suffered by many in the struggle against apartheid, Tutu wondered whether a Zuma presidency was what they had fought for.

In 2011, Tutu warned Zuma: “You and your government don’t represent me. You represent your own interest…”

The ANC let Tutu down.

He steadfastly opposed rampant corruption which has not been stemmed. Perpetrators, in effect stealing from the poor, walk free. Perhaps it was Zuma who sold out the struggle.

The unloving EFF don’t like the way Tutu treated Winnie Madikizela-Mandela at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC should have been Nobel Laureate Tutu’s crowning achievement. Yet the governing party, under then president Thabo Mbeki, brushed aside its core recommendations on reparations for victims and prosecution of offenders. So there is hypocrisy in the way the ANC is capitalising on Tutu’s death.

Those who project warm and fuzzy impressions of Tutu are only partially correct. He was indeed possessed of a loving nature and infectious good humour. There’s footage of him giggling, including with his friend the Dalai Lama. And his emotional lability was laid bare at TRC sessions.

Tutu was acutely aware of his own need to be appreciated. John Allen, who worked with him for decades, quotes the Arch as acknowledging: “I love to be loved.”

But he also had a tough side. From breaking through a police cordon at Fort Hare University in 1968 to pray with protesters; to confronting “necklacers” who had just murdered a woman in Duduza, Ekurhuleni in 1985, Tutu was brave.

Love or hate whatever image you prefer. But Tutu was too complex for simple projections.

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