Do you think Apartheid was cruel? According to Desmond Tutu Apartheid was very cruel. He spent his whole life fighting against it. According to Dictionary.com Apartheid in South Africa means “a rigid former policy of segregating and economically and politically oppressing the nonwhite population. He refused to compromise his nonviolent ways even in the face of conflict. Desmond Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, a poor black township near Johannesburg, the richest city in Africa. Tutu’s dad (Zacheriah) was an elementary school principal. His mom (Aletta) worked as a cook and janitor for a school for the blind. He had a brother and sister, but his brother died when he was a baby. Tutu, as a baby, contracted polio. The disease …show more content…
After he had left school he trained first as a teacher at Pretoria Bantu Normal College and in 1954 Desmond Tutu graduated from the University of South Africa. Three years after teaching high school, he decided to study theology at Saint Peter’s Theology College in Johannesburg. There he became active in the fight for equal rights. Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960, following in the footsteps of his longtime hero Trevor Huddleston. Two years later Desmond Tutu traveled to the United Kingdom, where he studied at King’s College London from 1962 to 1966. After he obtained his Bachelors and Master’s Degree in Theology, Tutu was so impressed by the freedom of speech and easy access to books and other knowledge in the western world that he wanted these same rights for the people in his beloved South …show more content…
He wanted equal civil rights for all. He wanted the abolition of South Africa’s passport laws. He wanted a common system of education. Finally, he wanted the cessation of forced deportation from South Africa to the so-called “homelands.” After Desmond Tutu’s return to South Africa, he started lecturing and creating awareness about the very poor living conditions of the Black population in South Africa and the whole African Continent. In Tutu’s efforts to create awareness, he reached out to John Vorster, Prime Minister of South Africa; but he never got a response back from the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister refused to answer his arguments and wrote back accusing Tutu of trying to “make propaganda.” The terrible events Desmond Tutu had predicted came to pass even sooner than anyone in South Africa and all of the world had thought possible. “Apartheid comprehensively contradicts the Bible and Christian teaching. That is why it is totally evil and totally immoral” (Winner 40). The quote shows how strongly Tutu felt about Apartheid. His beliefs were based on the Bible and God’s holy word. Tutu was appointed the first Black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches or (SACC). He remained a bishop, but without a diocese. He held the highest position in the South African Anglican Church. It was a time when South Africans again felt unrest, and the churches were becoming