Tutu lauds 'compassionate whites'
Thursday, August 15, 2002 Patrick Leeman. The Star, August 14 2002. Reprinted courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
Anglican Archbishop-emeritus Desmond Tutu says one of the most heart-warming features of the campaign against HIV/AIDS has been the "remarkable number of whites" who have committed themselves to work with those who are suffering.
He was delivering the annual Alan Paton Memorial Lecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday night.
In a speech entitled Celebrate, The Beloved Country, the archbishop said South Africa had experienced some "quite extraordinary" examples of compassion and dedication associated with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The country needed to celebrate that.
South Africa had a "vibrant" civil community, said Tutu, noting that HIV/AIDS activists had taken on the government on the issue of anti-retroviral drugs and had won, building on the "splendid tradition" of the non-governmental organisations which were so active in the anti-apartheid days.
He said another issue to celebrate was that South Africa was no longer the pariah of the world.
"Our president is held in high regard, although he vitiates that standing with his unconventional views about HIV/AIDS."
Tutu asked who in his right mind would have touted South Africa as a beacon of hope before 1990.
The nightmare called apartheid had ended, he said, and nobody could now say that South Africa had an intractable problem.
Extraordinarily, Tutu said, many in the world now looked to South Africa - a nation formerly in disrepute everywhere - as an inspiration and sign of hope.
The archbishop said South Africans ought to be grateful for the remarkable level of stability achieved in the country.
However, the government had not helped its case by wanting to purchase arms worth R40- or R50-billion.
It was totally inexplicable and the country should not be in the armaments business at all, except for its own domestic defence.
Tutu said SA had let down the people of Zimbabwe, especially after the grossly unfair, unfree and wholly illegitimate elections.
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