Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a priest. His father was a schoolmaster, his mother a domestic servant. He wanted to be a doctor, but his parents couldn't afford the fees, so he trained as a teacher and then transferred to the priesthood in his mid-twenties. In itself, it's not a particularly unusual story, except that this priest was a black South African brought up in the system of apartheid. For the past 30 years, he's used his position in the Anglican Church to speak out against the injustices which oppressed his people. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, he's today recognized as one of the principal architects of South Africa's multiracial future. He is the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu.

Presenter1:13

You've spent a lifetime fighting the evil of apartheid, and this year in April, as we all know, black South Africans queued up to vote in their country's first democratic elections. Was that day a miracle for you, or was it something you had always known would happen?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu1:29

No words anywhere in the world would ever be able to describe adequately how we all felt uh on that day. And of course, I mean, we

Archbishop Desmond Tutu1:41

Recognize now. Yeah, it was a miracle.

Presenter1:44

But it has to be said, uh in I think it was 1979 you predicted that Nelson Mandela would leave South Africa when I mean you were five years out. Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu1:50

And I mean you

Presenter1:53

But that's what you said. So you were were you always so convinced that that the unbelievable would happen, or were you just understandably being encouraging?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu1:53

That's what you

Archbishop Desmond Tutu1:54

Said he.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu2:00

Yeah, I just

Archbishop Desmond Tutu2:02

Most of the time one had this as an article of faith.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu2:08

You know, the issue is not in doubt. If God be for us, who can be against us? But there were times when you had to hold on to that belief by the very skin of your teeth. And sometimes you repeated things like, we are going to be free, very much like whistling in the dark to keep your courage up.

Presenter2:33

But what are what are today on the streets of South Africa the physical manifestations? What do you see around you that again you might never have witnessed?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu2:42

In some ways, it's the same things that were there. You know, before April the twenty seventh, the white people owned eighty seven percent of the land. After April the twenty seventeen they still owned eighty seven percent of the land. But

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:01

You are looking at some of these realities.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:06

With different eyes.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:08

It's like when you are in love.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:10

Suddenly this flower, which was beautiful before.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:15

is exquisite now.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:18

There is a texture.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:20

In the atmosphere, you can even smell.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:24

It is different to be free.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:26

Not to have to pet your pocket when you see a police officer and wonder whether he's not going to ask you, have you got your pass on you? It's.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:36

Hey.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:38

I'm a human being.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:39

And this has been recognized.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:41

I have a dignity.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:43

It's just fantastic.

Presenter3:45

Well, as you know, what we do on this program is cast you away from it all on a desert island.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:48

from it all on a desert island.

Presenter3:50

Tell me about your music. What's the first record you play when you get there?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:55

Unforgettable.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:57

Ned King Cole

Archbishop Desmond Tutu3:59

They said he had a voice like a cat walking on velvet, sort of smoky.

Speaker 34:07

Unforgettable

Speaker 34:13

That's what you are.

Speaker 34:19

Unforgettable

Speaker 34:24

Though near afar

Speaker 34:28

Uh

Presenter4:31

Natkin Cole and Natalie Cole, his daughter, singing Unforgettable. Having threatened you, Archbishop Tooty, with this desert island, I know that you spend a lot of time alone anyway, don't you? You get up before dawn and spend hours without speaking, which must be very difficult.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu4:45

I was very fortunate in that I was trained for the priesthood by the Community of the Resurrection. And for the community, silence has always been a very important part of that life.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:00

I talk a lot.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:02

My young daughter, when she was three, she'd been annoying me because she she was chattering away and I said to her, Oh, Paul.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:09

You talk too much. Shut up

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:12

Who says Daddy?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:14

You talk too much too. You talk all alone in church.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:19

Uh but I think it's an important thing for me that I try and get up fairly early, maybe four o'clock.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:29

And just try to be

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:31

quiet in the presence of God.

Presenter5:33

You're also an exerciser, aren't you? You're a jogger. I mean, is it is it easy for an Archbishop to jog around Cape Town?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:40

I've I've stopped uh jogging. Partly, I suppose it is decrepitude. I've got a treadmill now.

Presenter5:47

But you don't attempt to prey on the treadmill

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:49

You

Presenter5:49

Uh

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:49

Uh

Presenter5:49

Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu5:50

Yes, I mean, that is when I usually am doing my intercessions. I I have in my m mind the the globe.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu6:00

And and I'm looking at the United States and Canada and pray for the people there that I probably know and and then move British Isles, uh Scandinavia, uh Europe, uh, Asia.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu6:18

Africa

Archbishop Desmond Tutu6:20

South America.

Presenter6:21

But how much has life changed for you now that the battle, the major part of the battle, is won? I mean, this spring, on May the ninth, you stood on the balcony of the City Hall in Cape Town and to tumultuous applause you introduced President Mandela. Were you not in that moment, as it were, handing over the mantle?

Speaker 16:33

Yeah.

Speaker 36:38

Well you

Archbishop Desmond Tutu6:39

Uh

Archbishop Desmond Tutu6:42

Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu6:44

I was hoping, hey, now take over, man, and let's be able to do most of the kind of things that one should be doing. But we've got to be very careful that we don't give the people the impression that the things we were doing were not part of what it means to be a Christian. It's in fact a question of balance. But we still find

Archbishop Desmond Tutu7:11

people calling on us, certainly in other parts of Africa, in other parts of the world, especially I suppose because of what has happened in South Africa, people think that South Africans now have a formula. Come to Liberia.

Presenter7:27

They think you can perform the miracles.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu7:28

Yes, come to Liberia, come to Rwanda. For the sake of the world, I want to be able to say to Bosnia.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu7:38

You are going through a nightmare.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu7:40

South Africa had a nightmare, the nightmare of apartheid. It ended. Your nightmare will end.

Presenter7:48

Let's have some more music. What's your second record?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu7:50

We are the world.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu7:52

That was incredible because uh listening to all those children singing made you say it's it's beautiful to be human.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu8:02

This compassion, this remembering that despite all the differences

Archbishop Desmond Tutu8:08

We are one.

Speaker 38:10

There comes a time when we heed a certain call when the world must come together as one.

Speaker 38:22

There are people dying.

Speaker 38:25

Oh, when it's time to lend a hand to life.

Speaker 38:31

Greatest gift of all

Presenter8:35

USA for Africa and We Are the World, conducted and produced by Quincy Jones. Let's go back to your beginnings in the Transvaals sixty three years ago. Apparently you were a very sickly baby and they thought you wouldn't live.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu8:48

Yes, um

Archbishop Desmond Tutu8:49

The end result is that now I I have a half paralyzed right hand. People don't usually notice this, uh but i if you if if you looked carefully you'd see that uh my right hand is uh a great deal smaller than uh my left hand. And and now I am left handed, but not maybe naturally so. And um

Archbishop Desmond Tutu9:13

Maybe as I was delicate, my grandmother gave me a name Mbilo, which means life. We want this child to pulsate with life. He is sickly, almost moribund. And it looked like it had not succeeded because much later I contracted TB. That's when I was so impressed by the caring of Trevor Harrelston. But the doctor told him on one of the visits that I was going to die.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu9:48

I wasn't going to pull through.

Presenter9:50

You were in your teens by then, weren't you?

Presenter9:52

Trevor Huddlestone w w was a parish priest then, wasn't he?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu9:55

In in in Sapphire Town, yes.

Presenter9:56

In a it was a a Johannesburg slum.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu9:58

But some.

Presenter9:59

And obviously he went on to become the the leading anti-apartheid voice in Britain.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu10:03

What's in Britain?

Presenter10:04

When had you first met him? Can you remember that moment?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu10:07

I didn't know the first time that it was he. My mother, who was not very well educated, I mean, she didn't do more than a few years in uh primary school, uh was a cook for blind uh black women.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu10:21

And and she and I were standing on the veranda, the stoop of uh of the hostel which housed these uh black women. I was about maybe nine or so, when this uh tall priest uh with a flowing cassock uh swept past and he was wearing a big black hat. Uh he doffed his hat to my mother.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu10:50

That that was sort of mind-blowing for me because a white man

Archbishop Desmond Tutu10:56

greeting my mother with such courtesy.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu11:00

This can't be true.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu11:02

I discovered subsequently that it this was Trevor Harlison. I got a c to to to know him a great deal better when um I then went to high school and then lived in in a hostel that the C L Fathers had started up in Sofia Town.

Presenter11:18

How aware were you as a small boy and then as a teenager that you weren't regarded as equal by the whites? I mean, what what were again your first impressions of that?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu11:30

We were living in a town called Fenterstop, and I was probably the only black kid who had a a bicycle, and and my father sent me to town often to buy him newspapers and things. And I I recall on one occasion going past a w a school for white children, a primary school.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu11:51

And and so

Archbishop Desmond Tutu11:53

black children scavenging in the waste bins uh of the school and and they're picking perfectly

Archbishop Desmond Tutu12:05

clean sandwiches and fruit which the the the white kids had thrown away because they were they were were they were being given

Speaker 112:10

Can do

Archbishop Desmond Tutu12:13

Free school feeding.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu12:17

Which they didn't want. They wanted to eat what their mothers had prepared for them. And here were most of the black kids whose parents couldn't afford, who didn't have free school feeding provided by the government. And maybe you didn't know then, of course, that this thing was etching itself on your consciousness. Well, there it was. Yet one other thing you would remember in later years.

Presenter12:48

Let's have your next record, number three.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu12:51

In the mode

Archbishop Desmond Tutu12:52

Now you you can see my vintage uh because this this was a great favorite just after the war, I mean the Second World War, and and we used to jive, and this is tremendous.

Presenter14:07

That was Glenn Miller and In the Mood.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:10

Well, you know

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:11

I can just

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:13

Still picture in my

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:15

Mind I.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:17

the chuke boxes that we had in a number of the stores in in our townships. And and I can just see all these young people

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:27

I was amongst them, driving away like crazy.

Presenter14:31

Out of the front of the the

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:31

I'm just a

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:33

On the on the on the stoop of the the the veranda of the of the of the store.

Presenter14:37

Of course, it was about that time, just after the war, when you were training as a teacher, that uh the the hardline government adopted apartheid, apartness, as its official policy. Did did you feel, I wonder then, any stirrings of the political activist in you, you know, the determination to challenge it?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu14:56

1948. No, I th there was just a deep sadness when uh General Smarts was defeated because we thought, yes, things were bad, but I mean, this this man was maybe the liberal. All these connections that he had with Great Britain meant that uh he he wouldn't be nasty to us. And here were these people who were coming to power, who were blatantly racist. They were saying when you put the black person in his place and they meant it.

Presenter15:29

And indeed in the end it it it was because of the apartheid policy that you gave up being a teacher. You resigned in protest, didn't you?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu15:33

Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu15:35

You present.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu15:36

I was very fond of teaching.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu15:38

I enjoyed seeing children opening up and blossoming. And then when Doctor Farwood introduced Bantu education, which was an education decidedly inferior, no they made no points about it. They were quite clear they were going to teach black children just enough English.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu16:02

and Afrikaans, the languages of the white people, for them to understand instructions that they were going to be given by their employers, white employers. They were being prepared for servantude, perpetual servantude. And I said, sorry.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu16:18

I don't think I could possibly collaborate with the this kind of gruel that was being fed to uh our children.

Presenter16:28

So you turned to the priesthood at that point. You would have been about twenty five. You you've described it since as like being grabbed, and I quote being grabbed by the scruff of the neck to spread the word, whether it was convenient or not.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu16:30

About 25.

Presenter16:40

I take from that that it wasn't just a vocation to serve God, but also to take on the system. And was that the turning point?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu16:49

I I have to be quite honest that

Archbishop Desmond Tutu16:52

when I abandoned teaching, I didn't go into the priesthood because I had a high sense uh that God was calling me. It is only much later that you realized, I mean, that there were some things that

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:07

Although yes, we all have a the the freedom to choose, there are times when, yes, it is almost like God grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and saying, That is what you are going to do, whether you like it or not.

Presenter17:26

Next piece of music.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:28

Beethoven.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:29

When I listen to this, two things.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:33

How is it possible that such incredible beauty could come from one man? I mean, you listen to all the pieces of music he's done, the other is

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:45

He was deaf.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:47

And uh be because I'm disabled to some extent too. It's such a great

Archbishop Desmond Tutu17:54

Inspiration and the piano concerto. I love playing Beethoven real loud.

Presenter19:04

Part of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, played by Alicia de la Rocha, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. You came to England, Archbishop Dutu, in the sixties, and you studied and worked here in London and in Surrey. The contrast between life as a second-class citizen, third-class, fourth-class in South Africa, and swinging London in the sixties must have been colossal.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:28

Unbelievable.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:30

Mind-blowing.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:32

to walk the streets of London, and we did that with Leah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:36

Just to savour this thing of being free uh and and it would be we.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:42

who would cross the street to accost a police officer and and and in the early days we would walk even very, very late.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:52

Which would have been careful time in South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:57

Us

Archbishop Desmond Tutu19:58

for directions, I always told people we we would ask for directions even when we knew where we were going, just for the incredible fun of having a police officer and a white police officer at that.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu20:13

speaking to you courteously, Sir, Madam, and that he was not going to ask, Why are you here? Where is your pass that gives you permission to be here at this time? Incredible. I mean again, how do you describe it to someone who's never had the experience, the other experience?

Presenter20:36

But you you had to go back to South Africa obviously eventually and and you lectured and then you you travelled again very widely in Asia and Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu20:39

Yeah.

Presenter20:44

But in nineteen seventy five, when you were forty four, you became the Anglican Dean of Johannesburg, and within a year it was, you wrote that letter to the Prime Minister, BJ Forster, an open letter, and it its message was was pretty straightforward, wasn't it?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:01

I just felt an incredible foreboding that uh things were going to explode unless the government did something pretty quickly, s pretty dramatic. It happened that I was in a retreat

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:14

And it seemed like God was saying.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:16

Maybe if you write this letter

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:19

This man may

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:21

respond and and this catastrophe may just be averted.

Presenter21:28

But he didn't.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:28

Uh

Presenter21:28

Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:29

He treated it with contempt and and in fact said that I couldn't have thought this up myself. I I had been put up to it by the white opposition party.

Presenter21:40

But the following month, of course, your prediction came horribly true.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:44

Yeah

Archbishop Desmond Tutu21:45

These children who revolted they showed us up, we, the adults, because we had opposed apartheid, but we had not been ready like they seemed to be, to be ready even to die.

Presenter21:59

But they were the children of Sueto, and indeed six hundred of them died, didn't they?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:03

The children died.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:05

The children died, but I mean you think now of what our Lord said about the grain.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:15

which, if it does not fall to the ground and die, remains alone but when it does fall to the ground and die, it germinates and blossoms.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:29

And it is in part because those children and others.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:35

did what they did that now the desert that was South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:41

is blossoming.

Presenter22:43

More music.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu22:46

Jesus Joy of Man's Desiring. I I've I've always just loved this. It it was played when I or sung when I I was made bishop in nineteen seventy six. Ever since, I mean, whenever there's been an important occasion in my life, I've I've wanted it played.

Speaker 323:11

Until the end of the day,

Presenter24:05

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring

Presenter24:09

From then on, of course, as everyone knows, you became an extremely effective fawn in the side of the white South African Government, openly criticising it, calling for sanctions against the country. How much did you therefore fear for your own life and those of your family?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu24:26

I don't think you you spend a great deal of time being o overwrought, as it were. You are aware that you are in a struggle and there are going to be casualties.

Presenter24:37

But there were death threats when

Archbishop Desmond Tutu24:39

Yes, uh and and you get scared, yeah, but you have to say, Well, if I am going to be killed.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu24:48

Hey God

Archbishop Desmond Tutu24:49

I'm doing your work, and you jolly well are going to have to look after me if you don't.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu24:54

Tough luck.

Presenter24:55

But it must be very difficult as a father also to feel that for your children. And some of those death threats came through your children. Your children were used when.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu24:57

Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:00

Yeah.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:02

I I have said to people that I don't usually think there are things that are unforgivable, but I'm very close to saying the attempts by the apartheid system and those who supported it

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:17

uh to get at me by getting at my family.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:22

Unnear things that I'm I find unforgivable.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:26

Plus, I choose, to the extent that one has chosen, I choose.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:31

This particular life, and chose it with my eyes open.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:36

I couldn't sort of drag my wife and children and say that willy nilly they are fortunately, yes. I mean, I I once asked Leah,

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:46

Would you like me to shut up?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:49

And it's been an incredibly affirming thing that she said, I'd much rather you were happy on Robin Island, the prison.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu25:58

Than unhappy

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:01

I would say.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:03

I don't think I've I could ever be able to thank her for for that. But I mean

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:08

Your child picks up a telephone.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:10

And it's a call meant for you. And you'd have thought that if someone wanted to give you a death threat,

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:16

And they heard that it wasn't you answering the telephone. They'd they'd say, Where is your father? I had wanted to talk to him and and and no, they would say, We're going to kill your father and I mean, you'd see your child almost seize up.

Speaker 326:29

Bye.

Presenter26:29

Uh

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:30

And that has made me very, very angry.

Presenter26:35

Record number six.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu26:37

The requiemist, whenever I drove from my office in town going to Soweto, I would have a deck playing and and and often these solemn pieces of music were just the right mood uh for the kind of situation we were in.

Speaker 327:07

Some people

Speaker 327:12

His song.

Speaker 327:47

Excellent.

Presenter27:59

Uh

Archbishop Desmond Tutu27:59

Beautiful.

Presenter28:00

The Sanctus for Mozart's Requiem Mass with the Academy and Chorus of Saint Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Mariner.

Presenter28:07

You never, of course, Archbishop Tutu, advocated violence, but you are no pacifist either, are you? You you do believe that killing can be justified.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu28:17

Oh yes. Uh that is the position of the the Church. I mean, otherwise you would never have been able to go to war against Hitler.

Presenter28:17

Uh

Presenter28:27

Do you think there is a lot in common between Nazism and apartheid?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu28:31

Well, I I I myself thought so. I said I mean, here was a a deliberate policy of a government not only just to denigrate a people. They they were seeking to destroy us. They may not have killed us off as in guest chambers.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu28:51

But I mean, when when a child starves and they are stunted as a result of malnutrition.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:00

What are you doing? I mean, maybe Hitler's was more efficient.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:05

But these guys were determined to be setting out to do the same thing, and we we said so to them.

Presenter29:10

And at the end of the day, if violence was the only catalyst for change, then violence you would advocate.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:15

Um

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:16

We we said.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:19

Our last non-violent

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:22

option was sanctions. And and we came here, begged your government here, please help us apply economic sanctions to force the Saddam Government to the negotiating table. They they they they were not particularly impressed, but oh, the people were marvelous. I I doff my cap to them and and say you are tremendous. I mean you you should have seen nineteen eighty eight when they were celebrating.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:51

Nelson Mandela's seventieth birthday, you remember?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu29:55

Quarter million of youngsters who had never seen Nelson Mandela. Many of them had not even been born when he went to jail. They all

Archbishop Desmond Tutu30:06

Converged on Hyde Park to celebrate the birthday of this prisoner. Credible!

Archbishop Desmond Tutu30:13

Exhilarating.

Presenter30:14

There there is a I mean, on a personal level, there is a lot of the showman in you, isn't there? I mean, you you enjoy all that, being up front, being popular.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu30:23

I love being loved.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu30:26

And and and one of the most traumatic things for me was to be the ogre, the m the the man most white South Africans love to hate. It was a traumatic thing.

Presenter30:40

Let's have some more music.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu30:42

Polero. Um I I just love this. It sounds almost African in in its repetitiveness.

Presenter31:41

Part of Ravel's Bolero, played by the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by Jan Pascal Tortellier. We prepare then, Archbishop, to cast you adrift for this desert island. How resourceful are you in the practical sense? I mean, can you fish? Can you swim? Can you build a shelter?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu31:51

Yes.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu31:57

Oh, I'm totally useless. Uh Leah is the one who is she's she's quite brilliant. I mean, if our car stopped and we were stuck, she's the one who will look under the bonnet. I just sit there and I'm totally cast adrift. Uh I really am.

Presenter32:17

But I'm sure you you'll sit there on your desert island and and contemplate the tumultuous lifetime that you've had and

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:23

And

Presenter32:24

Certainly the six months of true democracy which you've just experienced. The ongoing experiment.

Speaker 332:27

Yeah.

Speaker 132:27

You

Presenter32:30

In human relations that's going on in South Africa. And would you sit there and believe completely in its ultimate success?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:39

Absolutely.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:41

The word

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:42

wants us to succeed.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:44

There are not too many success stories around.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:47

God wants us to succeed as well, so that God can hold us up precisely because we don't deserve to be held up and say, Rwanda,

Archbishop Desmond Tutu32:57

You're not you're not too many ethnic groups. Look at South Africa, man.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:02

Look at all the languages that they've got there. Look at the differences in culture, etc., etc., etc.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:09

They're welding into one. You will too.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:13

Posh, dear?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:14

Look at the different faiths in South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:19

And

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:20

Extraordinary, improbably.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:23

They're working together.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:24

Don't you think

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:26

It can happen here in Bosnia.

Presenter33:29

So you are in that sense a

Presenter33:32

A beacon of light to the world, you are proof that good can come of evil.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:37

God has used us, God is using us.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:40

And all of you have been just marvellous.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:43

Making it happen.

Presenter33:46

Let's have your last record.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu33:47

Imilonjigantu is a choir that's been playing, singing at many of the things that were important in my life when I was made Bishop of Johannesburg, enthroned as Archbishop of Cape Town. They were prominent when the President was inaugurated. And this is a piece in Khorsa, my home language.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu34:10

Baundi Kole.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu34:14

Father, forgive me.

Speaker 334:22

Now we're all not

Speaker 334:24

About the beauty of your

Speaker 334:44

It's on May 11.

Speaker 334:48

It's an American war.

Presenter35:16

Bawau undikole, sung by the Imlonjikantu Choral Society.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:20

Beautiful.

Presenter35:21

Your last drag what did I pronounce it wrong?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:23

How wonderful.

Presenter35:24

Yeah.

Presenter35:25

Now if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would it be?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:29

We are the world.

Presenter35:31

And what about your book? We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What other book would you like?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:35

What are

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:37

Parting the Waters by Brunch Taylor, which is a description of the American civil rights struggle. Incredible.

Presenter35:49

And then of course you have one luxury, one luxurious item on this island.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:54

Uh

Presenter35:55

What would you like?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:56

May I may I tea.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu35:59

An ice cream making machine.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu36:01

and one that produces my favorite rum raisin.

Presenter36:05

A rum raisin ice cream making machine is yours. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, thank you very much indeed for letting us here on Desert Islandists. Thank you.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu36:10

God bless you.

Speaker 136:21

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.