Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said apartheid had left South Africans suffering from “self-hate” which is partly to blame for the country’s vicious crime rate and road carnage.
“Apartheid damaged us all. Not a single one of us has escaped,” said Tutu on Aug. 11 during a book launch at Stellenbosch University’s Institute for Advanced Study near Cape Town.
The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate said the nation was no longer surprised by statistics of violent crime, murder, rape as “when you suffer from self hate you project it to others who look like you.”
As for …
Bishop Ivan Abrahams knows what it means to be denied full rights in the society where you live.
Born in 1956 under South Africa’s apartheid system, he was 7 years old when his family was forced to move from a section of Capetown suddenly declared a whites-only area. His classification by the government as a “colored” person both stereotyped him and limited his choices.
Those early experiences spurred his involvement in justice ministries, and the “black and white blood coursing through my veins,” he says, has made him a reconciler.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, often described as South Africa’s moral compass, officially retired on his 79th birthday saying he wishes to devote time to his wife, Leah, and family.
After South Africa’s success in hosting the first-ever soccer World Cup in Africa, the government needs to use the same determination to deal with the country’s social problems, say church leaders.
“We must use our considerable skill and learning to tackle the most pressing issues in our country: education, healthcare, and criminality and service delivery,” the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, said in a mid-July statement.
Napier said South Africa is a society in transformation and that the World Cup has given the country an opportunity to work together and prove that it is a …