JOHANNESBURG Reuter: Nobel peace winner Laureate Desmond Tutu assumes leadership of the Anglican Church in southern Africa next week basking in popularity abroad but the target of bitter tirades from whites at home
For Desmond Mpilo Tutu enthronement as the first black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town will be the culmination of a crusade against the preachers of white supremacy over a black majority.
The Diminutive Tutu who will tum 55 next month has been propelled to the forefront of the war against apartheid as the church assumed a role left vacant by outlawed black political organizations.
His sermons of “hope against hope” while fighting raged in townships between blacks and white led security forces earned him much praise beyond South Africa’s borders crowned by the 1984 Nobel peace prize.
His calls for anti-Pretoria sanctions have brought accusations from White hard liners that Tutu who once grappled with a black mob to save a man they were trying to burn is increasing the danger of civil war in South Africa.
Despite his repeated warnings that South Africa where fewer than five million whites dominate 24 million blacks is heading for disaster Tutu has often said that Pretoria can prevent full scale hostilities by treating blacks as human beings.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 5, 1986
