![]() Both men foresaw the inevitability of liberation. In more than one sense Tutu became Nelson Mandela’s precursor. “So my gratitude to England and my gratitude to King’s is that I have discovered who I am.”ĭesmond Tutu with Nelson Mandela in 1994. The turning point on that score, said Tutu, came when everyone at King’s College London treated him like anyone else. In spite of passport restrictions, in the early 80s Tutu was probably the most travelled churchman in the world after Pope John Paul II. He had seen the uglier side of Africa, and although his travels separated him from the struggle in his own country, they also moulded him, giving him a wider outlook, more self-confidence and a growing revulsion against race discrimination. That appointment effectively marked the end of Tutu’s political innocence. From 1976 to 1978 he served as bishop of Lesotho, returning to Johannesburg to take up the high-profile post of general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), from which the pro-apartheid Afrikaans churches had cut themselves loose. He served as a curate in Golders Green and at Bletchingley, Surrey, where initially standoffish Tories took him to their hearts.Īfter teaching at the Federal Theological Seminary in the town of Alice in the Eastern Cape province, Tutu went back to Britain from 1972 until 1975 as associate director of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches. From 1962 until 1966 he was in London, where he secured a master’s in theology at King’s College. His entry into the liberation struggle followed the years he spent abroad. Ordained a priest in 1961, he served in an African township. ![]() He taught at high schools in Johannesburg (1954) and Krugersdorp (1955-57), before leaving to train at St Peter’s theological college, Rosettenville. Tutu obtained a teaching diploma in 1953 and a BA degree by correspondence a year later. The Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie shares a joke with Bishop Desmond Tutu at Lambeth Palace in 1981. At the age of 14 he contracted tuberculosis and over the course of 20 months in hospital he developed a lifelong friendship with Father Trevor Huddleston, the Anglican missionary priest from Britain who, as one of the most prominent opponents of apartheid inside and outside South Africa, became his religious inspiration and mentor. Later, Tutu also learned Afrikaans and English. The children were all given both European and African names and spoke Xhosa, Sotho and Tswana. His mother, Aletta, a Mosotho, was a domestic servant. His father, Zachariah, a Xhosa, was headteacher of the local Methodist primary school. Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, a predominantly Afrikaner farming town 100 miles south-west of Johannesburg. His contribution to the liberation of his people had been in becoming a good priest.” ![]() When Tutu became the first black Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975 he was, according to his biographer, Shirley du Boulay, “less politically aware than one might have expected. Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists and others condemned apartheid, while the Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa defended it. Church and state were locked in combat, however, and choices had to be made.
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