Voicethread+script

1. Biographical information

Desmond Tutu was born the son of an elementary school teacher and a domestic servant on October 7, 1931 in the gold mining town of Klerksdorp, South Africa. South Africa had been colonized by various European powers, including Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. During Tutu's childhood, South Africa was rigidly segregated. Black Africans, who represented the majority of citizens then and now, were denied the right to vote and were forced to live in specific areas. After World War II political and economic power became even more tightly held by whites when the white supremacist National Party of South Africa won control in the 1948 election. New laws were passed to further institutionalize racial segreation and to preserve white dominance, and these collective policies were given the name, "apartheid," which means, "separate," in Afrikaans.

Desmond Tutu followed in his father's first steps and became an elementary school teacher. However, early in his teaching career, the government passed a law which reduced funding for schools serving black students and lowered standards for black students. The law, which was intended to ensure that black students learned only enough to prepare them for a life of servitude, drove Tutu from the classroom, as he was not willing to participate in an educational system deliberately designed to promote inequality.

Desmond Tutu became an Anglican priest. He studied and worked in many parts of South Africa and in London as he rose to positions of power in the Anglican Church. He used his influence as a religious leader to speak out against apartheid on the national and international stage, drawing the attention of the world to the injustices perpetrated in South Africa. In 1984 Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent opposition to apartheid and his leadership role in the struggle for black liberation. In 1986 he was chosen to serve as the Archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the South African Anglican Church.

In the early 1990's apartheid officially ended when a lengthy negotiation process resulted in the establishment of a democratic political system in which blacks were provided the right to vote. In April 1994 South African citizens elected African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned by the previous government for 27 years. Pictured here are Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela on May 10, 1994, the day of Mandela’s presidential inauguration. President Mandela appointed Tutu to head a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" formed to investigate and report on, "the atrocities committed by both sides in the struggle over apartheid.”

2. Opponents

The primary opponent of Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the South African government that created and enforced apartheid, which imposed profound limitations on the freedoms of black South Africans and concentrated wealth and power into the hands of powerful white citizens. The white elite opposed an end to apartheid because the apartheid system provided whites the highest standard of living. Also, many whites were afraid that they would be confronted with violence by blacks if the apartheid system was ended.

Pictured here is apartheid era South African President Pieter Botha who was in power between 1978 and 1989 during South African’s worst racial violence and international isolation.

3. Legacy Desmond Tutu será recordado como uno de los activistas de derechos humanos más importantes. Él es a menudo comparado con Mohandas Gandhi y Martin Luther King, Jr. por haber promovido la resistencia no violenta, la práctica de perseguir metas socio-políticas sin violencia. Tutu aprovechó su posición de influencia para dirigir la atención del mundo a la desgracia de apartheid. Debido a su coraje y liderazgo muchas otras naciones se unieron en la meta de acabar las injusticias de apartheid. Muchos gobiernos y negocios de todo el mundo impusieron sanciones económicas a Sudáfrica y retiraron sus inversiones de Sudáfrica, eventualmente forzando un cambio.

4. Connection to the present South Africa today is experiencing many serious challenges, including continued discrimination against blacks, an unemployment rate above 40%, a rising crime rate, corruption in government, and an extraordinarily high HIV infection rate (one in nine South Africans is HIV positive). Some charge that a "neo-aparthied" or "NEW apartheid" has come into being in which the government favors the goals of rich and powerful transnational corporations over the needs of the people who have already waited centuries for justice and full participation in society. The conflict consists of a battle over priorities: the profit goals of large corporations versus a society in which citizens are free from hunger, poverty, disease, homelessness, and discrimination.

5. Inspirational words. People are a glorious creation; that just as much as we have the extraordinary capacity for evil, so we have a remarkable capacity for good.

For much of his life Desmond Tutu witnessed grave injustices that were perpetrated in a brutal and systematic manner. In his role as a social justice advocate and in his leadership role in the reconciliation process after apartheid ended Tutu gained personal experience with extreme evil and extreme good. He witnessed brutal oppression and violent responses by the government to any attempts to change the system. He witnessed violence perpetrated by both sides of the struggle. He also witnessed great courage and forgiveness He witnessed extremes of the human spirit and came away from these experiences optimistic that the compassionate human impulse stands a chance of winning out over fear and greed. This quote expresses that optimism and conveys a message of hope for peace and reconciliation with regard to countless conflicts which threaten the life and well-being of many people around the world today.

6. Artwork/Photography – A.) Students include an image (e.g. photograph, work of visual art, etc.) that is symbolic of the life and work of their biography subject. B.) Students provide analysis of the image (e.g. artist information, medium, year created, artist commentary). If the image is the work of an IAMS art student, commentary about the artwork by the student artist is included.

Artist Hollis Chatelain This image is a quilt of cotton fabric with wool/polyester batting entitled “Hope For Our World” created in 2002 by artist Hollis Chatelain. It measures 82 inches by 82 inches. It is hand dye-painted with thickened fiber reactive dyes using six values of purple dye on cotton fabric, machine quilted with over 200 different colors of thread. The artist offers the following commentary: In February 2002, I dreamed “Hope For our World”. The dream was in purple and Archbishop Tutu was standing in a field. Children from all over the world were approaching him like he was a Pied Piper. The dream seemed to be speaking about World Peace and the Future of our Children. Desmond Tutu represented Hope.