Desmond Tutu turns 80, remains the "voice of the voiceless"

By Shabtai Gold Oct 5, 2011, 12:03 GMT

Johannesburg - His wife says her first impression of him 'was that he was the stuck up headmaster's son,' but Desmond Tutu, who celebrates his 80th birthday on Friday, would go on to be 'South Africa's moral conscience.'

Tutu used his position as an Anglican priest to support an economic boycott of his country during the apartheid era to weaken the white minority government. An icon of South Africa's struggle for democracy, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

He retired as archbishop of Cape Town in 1996, after serving in the role for 10 years, and announced in 2010 he was stepping down from public life. Nevertheless, Tutu continues routinely to criticise both the domestic government and world powers.

South Africa's first black president Nelson Mandela described Tutu as the 'voice of the voiceless,' for never keeping quiet in the face of injustice.

After the introduction of democracy, Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created in 1995 to uncover past wrongdoing. The commission was instrumental in helping South Africa move away from its discriminatory past and start healing.

His birthday celebrations have been marred, as his friend and fellow Nobel laureate the Dalai Lama is unable to attend. The South African government failed to issue the Tibetan spiritual leader a visa, in what critics say was a move to placate China, a major trading partner.

In typical fashion, Tutu did not mince his words, slamming the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and threatening to pray for its downfall, as he did in the 1980s when he wished for the demise of the apartheid government.

'We betrayed our struggle. All the people involved in our struggle are turning in their graves,' he said.

Tutu warned the ANC that Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Moamer Gaddafi in Libya both thought they had firm majorities, only to fall from power.

'Watch out, I am warning you,' the archbishop said angrily.

His concern for human rights and democracy has increasingly extended beyond his own country's borders, as he demands freedom for the people of Myanmar and Palestine, often irking pro-Israel lobby groups.

'Sometimes taking a public stand for what is ethical and right brings costs, but social justice on a local or global scale requires faith and courage,' he wrote to a Palestinian advocacy group this year.

His latest campaign, championed through The Elders - a group of senior global leaders - is to fight against child marriages.

'These girls are invisible and voiceless, making them some of the most vulnerable, disempowered people on our planet,' Tutu said after visiting the Horn of Africa, where the practice is common.

'We men have to be bold, to speak the truth and stand up for the rights of girls and women to equality, dignity and the rights we all share.'

His opinions are not meant to earn him friends, Tutu has admitted. With his usual humour he commented that despite his record of fighting for a free South Africa 'I am not their (the government's) blue-eyed boy.'

Gifted with a unique disposition - including an easily recognizable laugh and powerful oratorical ability honed at the pulpit - Tutu is able to both criticise and love at the same time.

'Despite all of the ghastliness in the world, human beings are made for goodness,' he famously said.

His work continues to be recognized world-wide and in 2009, US President Barack Obama awarded him Washington's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Nomalizo Leah Tutu, his wife, said in an interview for the recently published 'Tutu, the Authorized Portrait,' that she knew from early on in their marriage that the young priest was a progressive man who danced to the beat of his own drum.

'I think he is one of the few African men of his age who used to wash nappies,' she said, noting 'he was far ahead of his time.'

Never satisfied with the state of his country, Tutu rarely refrains from criticizing policy, whether on HIV/AIDS or the ANC's dominance of politics, cautioning and pushing for a healthy democracy.

But he balances fiery outlooks with optimism.

'This was a country where we had police peeping through windows and rushing to see who they could catch together,' Tutu said about the apartheid era rules, in an interview with the Mail and Guardian newspaper in September.

'Now mixed (race) couples walk about and it is people like me who take a second look: Is this really so? But, as far as I can make out, the sky is still firmly in place.'