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book Reviews
Desmond Tutu rabble-rouser for peace by
John Allen. Pub Random House, pp480, ISBN 1844135713, £18.99
Desmond Tutu, 75 this year despite three
cancer operations, has lived through, and crucially contributed to, the
second most dramatic change in a social system in the 20th century after
the fall of communism.
This authorised biography is almost a warts and all portrait, though the
quoted criticisms are usually answered. But no-one lives such a life
without making enemies and drawing exasperated comments even from
friends. Allen paints a sensitive picture of his childhood, his mothers
influence and his fathers drinking. His acceptance by the Community of
the Resurrection and Trevor Huddleston in particular, his bouts of polio
and tuberculosis (God must have wanted him to live!) and his educational
progress to become a teacher in 1954. Desmond married Leah in 1955
though there is not much about family life in this book. Tutu was
ordained around the time of the Sharpville massacre in 1960. He did
further study in London 1962-66 and again worked there 1972-75. His
reputation was rising both within the church and on the world scene.
The drama of three contentious elections for Anglican posts is carefully
and entertainingly told, as is the story of his emergence onto the
international scene, until Tutu was elected in 1986 as Archbishop of
Cape Town: cometh the hour, cometh the man. By this time there had been
plots on his life and he had won a Nobel peace prize though his most
effective peace-making was yet to come.
His leadership years are well documented in three stages. The struggles
of the late 1980s tested his public and private gifts almost to breaking
point. The make-or-break years between Mandelas release and democratic
elections in 1994 were extraordinarily demanding for Tutu, struggling to
mediate at a time of frequent massacres and inter-tribal strife. Then
came the unforeseen highest peak of achievement, the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, the carrot & stick of post-war restorative
justice, neither Nuremburg nor amnesty.
Others will write more considered and analytical books about one of the
great Christians of our time. But here is the life of a man called and
kept close by God. His longest lasting legacy will not be his
rabble-rousing but his faithful integrity. Desmond Tutu held out to the
world ? an African model for expressing the nature of human community,
truth and reconciliation, what we might call justice and peace, the word
of Christ for our vulnerable century.
PB
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