Bishop Richard Harries

Good morning. I first got to know Desmond Tutu when I was Dean of King’s College, London and he came to give a lecture. He told us about his time there as a student: how he liked nothing better than to go out into the Street, find a policeman, and walk round him, simply enjoying the fact that he was in a free country and the police were not enemies. Archbishop Tutu’s mother was a cleaner and the young Desmond was first attracted to the Christian faith by seeing the great Father Trevor Huddleston lift his hat to her every time he passed. This led to the Christian faith becoming the mainspring of his life, and prayer being absolutely fundamental to it. He insisted on beginning every day with a good period of meditation and public prayer before any gathering was entirely natural to him. It was this spiritual life that lay behind his outspoken bravery during the apartheid years when he became the voice of the voiceless in the townships. It was also shown in acts of personal courage. In 1985 a black man accused of being an informer had his car burnt by a mob who were about to throw him on it, as they said, to make a funeral pyre. Desmond Tutu dragged the man away against the howls of those who wanted him killed. But his Christian faith not only led him to condemn injustice wherever it occurred but also taught him to love his enemies. As he said “Enemies are always friends waiting to be made.” And this points to his other great achievement, chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of Apartheid-a hugely ambitious, painful process of trying to tell the truth of what happened and work through to new better set of relationships. I will remember his bravery, desire for reconciliation, his deep spirituality, his personal courtesy to everyone and of course his humour. I have seen him literally roll around the floor with laughter, and he captivated every audience with his smile and humour, often with a sharp political thrust. As he used to joke: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” A favourite personal memory is spending an evening in his house in Soweto at the height of Apartheid-him drinking rum and coca cola, his standard drink- watching a satirical TV series. One scene showed the Second Coming-which turned out to be of Desmond Tutu himself. I imagine him still laughing now as he is gathered into that heavenly embrace. At a time when it is so easy to be depressed by human behaviour he was someone who showed us another possibility, a different model of what it is to be a human being.