They esteemed and respected each other, but they also criticized each other. Desmond Tutu, who died on Sunday (26), and Nelson Mandela teamed up to defeat apartheid in South Africa, but these two historical figures in the country did not always agree on everything.
“They had a complex relationship, based on the same commitment to justice and a deep friendship, which allowed them to disagree” with each other, explains South African political scientist William Gumede to AFP.
Tutu, a man of faith – Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Cape Town – who defended non-violence and a tireless persecutor of injustices, had the cross as a shield against the racist regime.
In turn, Mandela, 13 years his senior, decided to resort to armed struggle. Public enemy number one and political prisoner, he was imprisoned for 27 years.
The first died on Sunday at dawn, while the second died eight years ago, also in December, but on the 5th.
For a long time, both defended the same cause, but each on their own side. Mandela with the quiet strength that characterized him and Tutu with his fickle, charming style.
Both were tenacious and charismatic. Along with other comrades, their concerted action ended apartheid 30 years ago.
On leaving prison in February 1990, Nelson Mandela spent his first night freed at Desmond Tutu’s Cape Town home.
In his autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom”, Mandela says that he preferred to sleep in a poor Cape Town neighborhood than “a white neighborhood”.
Upon arriving at Tutu’s residence, Mandela walks hand in hand with the Archbishop, and the image of the two together entered history.
– ‘Sometimes shrill, often tender’ –
Elected the first black president of South Africa in 1994, Mandela appoints Tutu as head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission charged with clarifying the crimes of apartheid. One in charge of the country, the other busy with the reconciliation of the “rainbow nation”.
However, since the beginning of the post-apartheid transition, there have been disputes. The priest denounced salaries, service cars and other advantages of Mandela’s ministers.
Seeing in it the reminiscence of a system of privileges inherited from the colonial era, the archbishop of Cape Town accused who should be president of a new era of behaving like a “common politician”.
For Tutu, Mandela had an Achilles’ heel: the African National Congress (ANC) party. “A greater weakness in someone almost flawless,” the cleric once told a radio station.
The archbishop reproached the statesman for failing to contain corruption in the ruling party. Furthermore, Tutu’s distrust of the ANC only grew with Mandela’s successors, and he was also a big critic of Thabo Mbeki’s mistakes in the fight against AIDS.
Under Jacob Zuma’s corrupt presidency, Tutu swore he would not vote for the party again. When Mandela died in 2013, the ANC did not invite him to the funeral.
However, the scandal and humiliation of the archbishop became public, causing the party to reconsider. Tutu finally gave his blessing at a memorial service in Soweto, thanking God for the “wonderful treasure” that was Mandela.
On Sunday afternoon, President Cyril Ramaphosa, evoking Tutu’s criticisms of the ANC, appealed to Mandela, recalling his words about Tutu: “His voice is sometimes shrill, often tender, but never frightened and rarely humorless.”
Furthermore, Mandela also said: “If Desmond [Tutu] go to heaven and you can’t get in, then none of us will get in!”
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