Desmond Tutu interview with Dr. Franklin
The complete transcripts of interview conducted by Dr. Franklin with Desmond Tutu. Tutu was the chairman of the TRC in 1997.
Tutu and Franklin: The Present | Tutu and Franklin: The Past | Tutu and Franklin: The Future
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Our country decided that it wanted to look back at the past for the sake of the present and the future, and we said we were going to look at the past for only a specific period, and then we would close the door on that past, not allow it to hold us hostage.
And I think one of the first things you might want to say to people who want to deal with the future, prepare for the future, is you have to acknowledge your past. Any country that wants to have a secure future has got to say we acknowledge our past, warts and all. The good and the bad. The light and the dark. And then we, we said to our government, to our president, what we hope would be applicable to many situations, post-repression, post-conflict situations in the world. That you need to have a government authority that is accountable.
Because many of the human rights violations that we were able to look at in the history of our country came about because authority was not accountable. They, they did very much as they liked. The security police could abduct people, kill them. There was impunity. And so we are saying for the future, ensure that you have accountability.
DR. FRANKLIN: But the question of, of the past, as a historian I have problems with shutting out the past, and closing it down at a certain point.
You suggested that in your country, you hope that the present and future would not be held hostage by the past.
How does one declare that this door to the past is now shut? It hovers over the present in such a profound and powerful way--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --that I don't know how you can close it out, as it were.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: There is in fact a, a clear way in which that can happen. Imagine if we had not dealt with our past in the way that we did, exposing the gross violations of human rights that happened. That past would then be able to hold us hostage in so far as people could, when it was convenient for them, make an expose. Do you know this man who is today our prime minister? This and this is what he did.
Whereas, in our country, now, we will be able to say, yes, they acknowledged it, they applied for amnesty. It was horrendous acts, but we have accepted that. So in that sense, it would not have the power of holding you hostage with people making revelations when it suited them in order to undermine the new dispensation.
That is what I meant. Ob--obviously we couldn't shut it out, because one of the things we were saying is we must not forget, because if we forget we are likely to repeat what we did.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes. Santayana--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah. Now, now are you, are you happier? [Laughter.]
DR. FRANKLIN: Not altogether happier, but I'm placated, placated to some extent.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. No; no. I didn't mean, I didn't mean--we couldn't possibly--because as human beings, even if we were to have tried to do that, that past, if you dealt with it in a cavalier fashion, would return to haunt you.
DR. FRANKLIN: One of the problems which we have, and we undertake, as you have undertaken, to, to deal with the past as--and, and use it in a certain way, and then to move on.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: One of the problems that we have with respect to our moving on is that so much of our--so much of our perpetrators, so much of the people who were really responsible for what has been happening are in the past, that is, they--our government was set up as a, quote, democracy, unquote, and yet, at the same time it built into its very system a constitutional arrangement which placed certain people at a clear disadvantage,--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of not in slavery, that--and all the rest of it. Now we, we came to the end of that period, more than 130 years ago, but we started another period--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of segregation and discrimination and degradation, which has had its ups and downs, its variations. But all of the time it tends to persist--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --in one form or another, and our problem is that eve--even if we make amends, as we did at the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --in '65, eight, '68, or even if we make amends such as we did, say, with the Civil Rights Act--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of 1965, and the Voting Rights--1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we still have a--not an elimination of those things, but, but a transition to another form, where subtlety is there, and where the realities are also there.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I think this is one of the areas where our situation is different from yours. Ours is al--is the immediate past.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: And it's a shorter period. And the government is a government made largely of people who were themselves victims, and are determined to have a new and equitable dispensation. But even, even then, one, the perpetrators, by and large, were available, and many of them, not all of them--but many of them came forward to say they had committed these atrocities, these violations, and so you were able to have dealt with that by saying because you have made a full disclosure, we will give you amnesty.
But, you see, we've also had in this particular process the element of reparation.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Where we are saying we know that you could never compensate anyone for a gross violation, that they have experienced the death of a son, being tortured, and so on. But you do say we are making reparation, the nation acknowledges that something wrong was done, and we are symbolically saying with this check, with--and some of the people were asking for things like, Can we have a tombstone? Can we have a school named after the person? That in that way, reparation would be made as you were trying, as they say, to level the fields. It is going to take a very, very, very long time for that in fact to take place.
But another of our recommendations is to say to the various sectors of our community, the business sector, the health sector, the legal profession--all of these who, in one way or another, benefited from the apartheid dispensation--You have a particular role to play in the new society, the new South Africa.
For instance, we are saying that the business sector benefited from cheap labor provided by black people, and, to some extent, contributed to the poverty that so many black people experience, and the gap between the rich and the poor is too wide, and it is dangerous, even for the affluent. It is in their interests, that that gap is narrowed, and so one of our recommendations is that you, you've got to do something, urgently, to, to get, to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes. We looked to the same prospects ourselves. The difference is that the advisory board, of which I was chairman, did not have itself the authority--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --to do any of these things. We could make recommendations, and, and we, we viewed the future in, in a similar fashion that you viewed it. But all that we could do was to recommend, for example, that the president establish a, a permanent council for the purpose of, of--of trying to realize the objectives and the goals that we were seeking. A, a President's Council on the 21st Century. President's Council on Race; whatever it would be called.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: But this council, then, would undertake to do some of the same things to encourage the business community, to realize its own involvement, its own obligation, its own well-being--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah. Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --to, to take steps to level the playing field in the economic sphere. The same thing we hope to do in, in, in housing--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --and in health, and in the general administration of justice. We were very disturbed, for example, at the widespread discrimination against minorities with respect to the meting out of justice--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --the meting out, the dispensing of justice. The profiling of young black people who look a certain way and act a certain way. The profiling which causes the cons--the, the, the enforcement officer to conclude that these people--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Must be.
DR. FRANKLIN: --are involved in something shady--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --or illegal.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: We, we make the recommendations. Our vision of the future is clear. Our power to create the kind of future that we want is very limited.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yeah. Although we were a statutory body in the sense that we were brought into being by an act of parliament, not as, in your case, where it was an executive--
DR. FRANKLIN: Order.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: --order; yes. We, too, in the sense, ultimately, could only make recommendations to the president, which he would then take to parliament, and then perhaps implement. But the act, the law, that brought us into existence, did put down as one of the things that we were to do, as part of our mandate, the granting of amnesty, and then, also, the recommendations with regard reparations. And so, in a sense, this makes the government be under obligation to do something, and they have already begun making out those payments.
But the other thing that we, we spoke about in the new society we envision, was one where the judiciary was not as it was under apartheid, where it, it collaborated with apartheid and its injustices. In fact one, one judge, a former judge, president, has apologized for the way in which the judiciary colluded with the executive arm of, of government when they were not as aggressive in defending the minimal rights that were still available to people.
For instance, when someone would come along and say, "I have been tortured," the, the judiciary tended to believe the police as against the evidence of the person who said, "I have been tortured, and what I said I said under duress." And we, we are saying--it's a blessed word but it is an important word for us, coming out of a situation where things were hidden so much, where, where there was so much secrecy. We, we say for goodness sake, government must be transparent. It must be quite clear what is happening, and that links into the accountability thing.
But we also recommended that, as a matter of urgency, there should be a summit called on reconciliation, because our process, although it has assisted recommendation--reconciliation to some extent, has also, I think, perhaps exacerbated the alienations and the tensions, because when you, when you hear all of these stories about atrocities, it doesn't then make you want to stretch out your arm of friendship to the people who were responsible for the atrocities.
And we're saying that it would be important for people to try to find ways of building bridges.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes. There is--this other difference, namely, that so many of the perpetrators of the worst practices are no longer living in the United States--they're--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --no longer alive.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: And, therefore, amnesty cannot be held out to them.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: Nor can we get any, any, any expression of remorse, or, or contriteness on their part. So we have to depend on, on other, other ways of getting at this, and what has happened in our country is that while the, the government, now, has turned its attention to legislation and practices that may be, that may be just, such as the Civil Rights Act, and so forth, and such as executive orders that improve housing conditions, at the same time the reaction of groups that are literally opposed to this--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --not only remain, but increase.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: But increase in such a way, that it's difficult for our, our legislative, or, or law enforcement arm to get at these people.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: Subtle practices--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of, of, of a thousand different kinds. So that you've got this kind of--this sort of situation. Take the employment picture, for example. We have clear proof that, that young white boys with a high school education have a better chance of getting a specific job that's described and advertised than a minority with a college education.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Is that right?
DR. FRANKLIN: With four more years. Yes. There's plenty of evi--there's plenty of evidence of that. We also have evidence that, that if you--if a young minority couple is attempting to rent or purchase a home, the owners, or the real estate company, will simply say that home is not available, it's been sold, or it's under contract to be sold, or the owner has changed his mind. And the only way we know that that's discrimination is then the--then we send out a white couple--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --to seek the same property, and they get it.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: You see.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: But of course this is a long--a long--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --and difficult--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --process.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: You can then secure justice for the aggrieved party, but it's sort of one by one by one, like Churchill says he's going to battle the invasion of the Nazis block by block--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --by block, you see.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I, I would want to say two things to that. I believe that there is significance in someone representatively saying we are sorry, we are sorry for what our forbears did to you. I mean, it is, it is not--it is not a legal thing, and yet its impact is phenomenal. Your, one of your presidents, I think, George Bush, apologized to Japanese-Americans for what happened to them after Pearl Harbor, and sent--I, I gather sent checks, after he had, he had spoken in a representative capacity.
In Germany, one of the German presidents, at one time--now, 50 years, more than 50 years after the Holocaust, he, he might or might not have himself been involved. But he spoke in a representative capacity, going to Auschwitz, or, or wherever, one of the concentration camps, and the symbolic value of that gesture--"We are sorry for what we did, we Germans did to you Jews"--you can't compute the worth of it, and, and I believe myself that there is something to be said for some of those, in your society, who come out of a background that was privileged, in that kind of way, who--whose forbears did some of these things.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: To, to, to say: "Sorry."
DR. FRANKLIN: You see, while the president is even setting up the advisory board on race, implied, clearly, that there was a responsibility, a public responsibility for what had happened, and despite the fact that he has specifically referred to apology, and that sort of thing, there are so many people in the United States who feel that enough has been done.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: Not only do they say enough has been done. They will also say--and we got scores of letters on this--that they who live today are not responsible--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --for the past.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: They are not responsible, at all. So that a woman who, whose forbears arrived here in 1906, wrote me and said, "How are you going to hold me responsible for anything that happened in the 19th Century, when my people came here for the first time in the 20th Century, from Europe?"
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: In the 20th Century. And I, I humbly responded to her by pointing out that already, as she landed--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --or as her forbears landed, they had advantages--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --that day, which people who lived here for a half century--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Didn't have.
DR. FRANKLIN: --did not have.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: Did not have.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: And that, that--that refrain of hers has been repeated--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I know.
DR. FRANKLIN: --over and over--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I know.
DR. FRANKLIN: --again by, by various people who, who simply absolve themselves--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of any responsibility--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, we, we--
DR. FRANKLIN: "You can't, you can't--you can't hold me responsible--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: We have that. I mean, you could--you would say maybe there, there is something to consider in some of your peo--the people who were saying this, but in South Africa, I mean, people who--we are talking about things that happened in 1960, and, and, and--and there are very many who say, "For goodness sake, can't you stop this obsession with the past and let us get on with the, with the future?" And, and it, it is the same--
DR. FRANKLIN: Sounds like the United States.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. Is the same people who, when the government says, "Look--these people were disadvantaged, not accidentally. They were disadvantaged, deliberately." I mean, the government of the day spent seven times on a white child, on education, per annum,--
DR. FRANKLIN: Right.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: --what is spent on a black child. Now you can't say that when we now have a democratic dispensation, equity is treating these two on the same basis. This, this one has, for a number of years, had seven times what this one has had. In order to, to become equitable, we are going to have to try and balance out these inequities by concentrating on this one as many resources as we can to help them--and they say, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Is now apartheid in reverse."
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: You know--
DR. FRANKLIN: Oh, yes. We say reverse discrimination.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: We have the same problem. The very same problem.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: And, and so the, the, the other thing that I, I, I thought I, I wanted to say, which is not very comforting to you, is that in our new dispensation, any of that kind of discrimination that you are talking about, where accommodation is available, it's advertised, a black couple goes and they are told no, and a white couple goes and they are told, oh, it's available, that is totally, totally outlawed, and we, we now have legislation that ensures that the rights enshrined in our constitution are becoming actualized for people. At work, it's the same.
DR. FRANKLIN: That's--it--we have laws against--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: Well, the point is that we've got so many people in the United States who, who believe that they've done enough, who believe that this refer--reverse discrimination, as they call it, is unjust, and they are attempting, now, to roll back--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --the, the executive orders and the legislation that would--that did propose to create a kind of com--a level playing field.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: So that you've got anti-affirmative action laws--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --which apply not merely to education, where they were trying to catch up with that disparity that you mentioned in South Africa. It's the same as in the United States where they spend a dollar on education of a black child and five dollars on the education of a white child.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: We've, we've sought to make am--make amends for that through legislation, and through affirmative action practices, but the reaction to that--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --is enormous, now, so that you've got reaction not merely at the university and college level. You've got it also, now, in the primary and secondary school levels, where there is opposition to doing anything that would give minority children equal opportunity.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: So that the, the resistance is strong, and it's, it's strong in, in--in employment, too, where we now have subtle ways of, of rejecting minority candidates for employment and that opportunity is passed on to, to whites.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. What I thought we--I would like to say as, as my closing, or of this particular part of our conversation, is really a plea, a plea to the privileged, a plea to white people to hear the cry that comes from the hearts of so many of the fellow citizens, black citizens.
That just as we used to say to them, they would really never be free until black people were free in South Africa, and now they're experiencing it. Now, they are participating in international sport, which they were not able to do in the days of apartheid. Now, they can travel to all sorts of countries. They, they can enjoy exchanges, cultural exchanges with very, very many countries in the world. They are realizing that it was not a slogan. So, also, a new dispensation, a more equitable dispensation is ultimately in their best interests. That true reconciliation will not happen, certainly not in South Africa, unless transformation takes place, unless the person who lives in a shack, who, who lives somewhere where they don't have running water or electricity.
Unless those people actually see that freedom means being able to get a decent home, to have a good job, to, to be able to take your children to a good school, to have access to adequate health care. But unless those things happen, then we jeopardize reconciliation. Those people will say to hell with Mandela, and all his reconciliation. To hell with Tutu, talking about the Rainbow People, when it's four years, now. I lived in a shack before the election four years ago. It's four years now after democracy and I still live in a shack.
That stability will require that the material condition of the poor is changed, is alleviated.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes. Not only in the material conditions, and that's the same--the same thing is true in the United States. The disparity between the rich and poor is, is unbelievable. But not only must we have some equity there. We must have some equity in the way in which people treat each other.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Absolutely. Absolutely.
DR. FRANKLIN: And on a day to day basis.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Absolutely.
DR. FRANKLIN: And their regard for the, for the human equation, the human character of a fellow human being, and we don't seem to be able to arise to that--rise to that point. It would be--it would be wonderful, as we look to the future, if we could say that despite--in the United States--despite the fact that the minorities have been in the minority for X number of years, for many centuries, that--that those who are in the majority ought to see the advantage--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Absolutely.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of equity, of decent treatment. And the point is that, demographically, the minorities today constitute a real threat, numerically, for in the foreseeable future they will be in the majority.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: The darker peoples have never been in the majority in the United States, but by 2025, or so, they will be in the majority. I would hope that the people who are now in the majority would find it in their best interests--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --to extend equity and decent treatment to all peoples, for they will expect and they will certainly want that kind of treatment when they are in the minority, in the foreseeable future.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: And one can, one can hope and fervently pray that the realization on their part will come, for I would hope that they wouldn't have to wait until they are in the minority, and I would hope that the present people, the people in the present minority, would have the--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Humanity.
DR. FRANKLIN: --magnificence and the humanity to carry on this aspiration for their fellow whites, that they ser--that they desire for themselves.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: So that in the foreseeable--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Change.
DR. FRANKLIN: --future, we will have the kind of change--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --that will be good for all.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Good; good. Thank you
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