Desmond Tutu Quotes
Archbishop, Activist
Desmond Tutu was archbishop, activist from ZA
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”— Desmond Tutu
Tutu said this phrase hundreds of times. It became his signature. Behind it was concrete experience: in South Africa silence meant complicity. Police killed children in Soweto. To stay silent meant to approve. Tutu refused to be silent, even when it risked prison.
The Story of Desmond
After Apartheid
In 1996 Nelson Mandela appointed Tutu chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission investigated crimes by both sides: the regime and the liberation movement. Tutu wept at hearings listening to testimony from victims. He believed in forgiveness but not in forgetting. Tutu died on December 26, 2021, in Cape Town. He was ninety.
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