Chicago Tribune - October 27, 2006
Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent, lgoering@tribune.com

South Africa's ruling party, under President Thabo Mbeki, demands "obsequious conformity" and has done too little to help the country's legions of poor, he has charged. Jacob Zuma, an ambitious populist politician who hopes to succeed Mbeki, has shown poor judgment and is ill-suited to be president, the cleric insists.

South Africa's comfortable whites have shown insufficient gratitude to the country's largely poor black majority for their forgiveness about apartheid, Tutu says. And too many citizens are proving "irresponsible" as South Africa continues to suffer some of the worst violent crime in the world.

In a nation where critics of government and of powerful people are often dismissed as disloyal, racist or misled, Tutu is a remarkable voice--a witty and kindly critic no one can dismiss or ignore.

"Everybody here is so preoccupied with looking over their shoulders and being careful what we say that we lack eminent personalities who can speak their mind without fear," said Xolela Mangcu, a leading South African social commentator. Tutu, he said, "is playing an absolutely vital role."

Taking over for Mandela

Former President Nelson Mandela is no doubt South Africa's most important voice of conscience, a man whose support crosses all racial and political lines. But as Mandela, now 88 and determinedly retired, increasingly slips from the day-to-day political scene, Tutu, the country's other beloved anti-apartheid icon, now a sprightly 75, seems to be stepping up to fill the vacuum.

"His role is evolving. He's someone who feels it's necessary to raise some of these issues, in support of a lot of ordinary South Africans, in a way policymakers and powerful people in the country can't ignore," said Kumi Naidoo, secretary of CIVICUS, an international civil society association based in South Africa.

Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his anti-apartheid battles and former head of the country's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is hardly a pessimist about South Africa. The diminutive cleric with the quick laugh begins nearly every public speech by pointing to South Africa's achievements--racial peace, a strong economy, one of the world's most progressive and respected constitutions.

But particularly in recent months, he has taken advantage of a series of national lectures and events surrounding his 75th birthday to remind South Africans of problems that still need to be addressed.

He has excoriated public servants who fail to provide decent service, railed against criminals and even chided litterbugs as lacking pride in their nation.

After years of disobeying unfair apartheid laws, now "we have an obligation to obey the laws made by our legislators," he said during a recent Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town. "We should be dignified, law-abiding citizens, proud of our beautiful land, proud of our freedom won at such great cost."

As for South Africa's runaway rates of violent crime, "What has happened to us?" he asked. "It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible."

Tutu also has become the most vocal public critic of Zuma, the country's embattled former vice president and would-be successor to Mbeki.

Zuma, who has made no secret of his desire to lead the country, has over the past year faced trial on charges of seeking bribes from a French arms manufacturer and of raping an HIV-positive family friend. The corruption charges were eventually dropped, and Zuma was acquitted of the rape charge.

But Tutu has questioned whether a man who by his own admission knowingly had sex with an HIV-positive woman without a condom, then took a shower to keep from contracting AIDS, has the appropriate judgment to be president. Zuma had served as head of the country's Moral Regeneration Movement and the South African National AIDS Council.

"What sort of example would he be setting?" Tutu said, suggesting that if Zuma cares about South Africa, he should drop out of the campaign.

Angered ruling party

Tutu infuriated Mbeki as well with a 2004 speech in which he suggested that the ruling African National Congress had done too little to improve life for the country's poor and was demanding unquestioning loyalty from party members rather than honest debate.

Leaders of the powerful party have not forgiven Tutu, political analysts say. But because of the cleric's stature and anti-apartheid credentials, they have not been able to ignore him either. At his recent 75th birthday party, the ANC issued a statement commending him for having "dedicated your entire life to the quest for peace, justice, human dignity and human rights in our country."

At the party, Mandela said of his old friend: "He's a pre-eminent voice of conscience in our nation, a voice that has spoken with consistence and integrity in all political conditions."

Because Mandela was "always a political leader, answerable to a political party," Tutu has been "freer in many ways than Mandela ever was" to speak his mind, said Mangcu, the commentator.

Tutu is hardly young himself, and in 2005 he suffered a recurrence of prostate cancer that he continues to battle. How long his frank criticism will continue remains to be seen, analysts say.

For now, "Tutu continues to be a bold and zestful force in our society, completely unfazed if . . . his interventions are unwelcome to the government," South African author Nadine Gordimer wrote recently. In the end, she said, "the honest test of loyalty to a regime surely is to have the guts to speak out when its actions are deficient."
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