Without forgiveness, there's no future - Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Irish Independent Editorial)

ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu said: "I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.” Although diminutive in stature, being only five-foot-three, he was a giant politically, morally and socially, who played a central part in smashing the profoundly unjust apartheid regime in his native South Africa.

His death, at the age of 90, leaves people all over the world with a sense of loss at the passing of a truly great person whose teachings remain valid for his own still-troubled homeland and many other centres of unresolved conflict, including Ireland, for which he had a great affinity.

Archbishop Tutu was a true pacifist who abhorred violence, but argued that people must look at the causes of violent action if they are to have any hope of stopping it. "We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in,” he famously said.

Raw courage and moral conviction guided his international action promoting economic and cultural boycotts of the politically bankrupt minority white South African rulers. However, clarity of thought and expression were his calling card. "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument,” was a frequently uttered maxim.

He was for decades the international face of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa as great leaders such as his contemporary, Nelson Mandela, languished in prison or were in exile. Like Mandela, his calls for defiance of apartheid were suffused with messages of hope and an emphasis on the need for forgiveness if there was to be a new shared future.

"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness,” he said often amid some considerable recurring awfulness.

Forgiveness was his constant message. "Without forgiveness, there's no future,” he said. Archbishop Tutu felt everyone had a role to play.

His special relationship with Ireland, which he visited several times, came from his admiration for the tens of thousands of Irish people who mobilised in the anti-apartheid campaign.

He had special affection and regard for the Dunnes Stores strikers who refused to handle South African produce, and in 1984, en route to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize, he met with some of them in London.

His connection to Northern Ireland came through the global group of Anglican Church leaders.

As early as 1990, on a visit to Newcastle, Co Down, to meet his fellow senior clergy, he insisted that any attempt at building peace needed the most inclusive talks.

"Any group, however small, with grievances, real or imaginary, must not feel excluded. Otherwise, you can kiss goodbye to peace,” he told a congregation at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.

Ireland's quest for peace, he would say, is incomplete without a lot more work in discussing past wrongs and hurt.