TRIBUTE TO ARCHBISHOP DESMOND MPILO TUTU (“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”)

   As we reminiscence on the closing of the curtain by a cohort of leadership in our country and the World, we are saddened to hear about the passing on of one of Africa’s epitome of leadership, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the former Archbishop of the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa.

One of the four Nobel Peace Price Laureates that define the towering peaceful nature of our country and its people. A pioneer of peace and reconciliation, a committed believer in the freedom of both the oppressed and the oppressor as a condition for peace. A priest of the Word of God, a father to his family, a loving husband to his wife Mama Leah, and an intercessor to many a nation and great leaders.

In the ilk of  Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Salim Salim, The Dalai Lama, Mwalimu Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Ntate Masire, Kenneth Kaunda, Samora Machel, Oliver Tambo, Jomo Kenyatta, FW de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, and Barack Obama, he, like them, remains an institution of leadership we continue to learn from as enrollees in the open University called Africa.

Their selflessness, as demonstrated in their ability to be removable as the ecdysis process unfolds, distinguishes them as a necessary cohort of leaders to point to, for those amongst us that want to be traditional leaders in a leadership change etched democratic paradigm. Their ability to have what they did as standing monuments for generations beyond them to benefit, makes them a benchmark of leadership that instructs to all of us the following dictum: when its time to hand over please do so. The Arch, as he was affectionately referred to, refused to make himself history, he allows history to let him become who he was when duty called on him.

Like many in his generation, as they ascended the podiums that required their institutionness as persons, they brought into those roles, positions, and other podiums, themselves in a manner that made us, the served, greater than them. We were to the generation of The Arch, what defined their existence as leadership.

It was their moral fortitude that lit the lighthouse of leadership on the shores of Africa. They trail-blazed to many a direction we might not be able to reach in on a lifetime like they did. To the world, they redefined African leadership and drew lines in the sand that some of what we have and had is not all about Africa.

As we mourn The Arch, we should do so understanding that for every tear shed, it waters the tree of the leadership institution he was. Leadership in Africa is in abundance, we must just shift when we have served, in order to allow the new to emerge. We must also believe in the new for the old to be remembered and revered.

The Arch had to be in the offices he occupied for African leadership excellence to stand up in the world’. Like the ancient Pharaos of Egypt that shaped the civilizations of the Mediterranean, he towered for Africa a new reconciliation path through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which entrenched peace as a condition to building new and prosperous nations, for posterity’s sake

As a Moses of our times he traversed the corridors of Apartheid power, post-Apartheid power, Global power, and anywhere he saw injustice, sin, corruption, and all such like, with one emphatic and single message; 'Let my people go'. He was not fearful of truth, and fearless to speak the same truth to any power. 

Like a flag, his leadership is a polyvalent symbol of the various meanings ascribed to it. As our national flags will be flying half-mast, his flag will forever be a full mast. He represented in himself the many facets of being South African, African, and worldly. 

Rest In Peace Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, you ran your race.

Nkosi Sikelel' Africa. Hosi katekisa Africa.