JRD TATA MEMORIAL LECTURE: BANGALORE. DECEMBER 2005

IS THERE HOPE FOR HUMANITY?
Desmond Tutu

Preamble

It has become a cliche that the 20th Century was one of the most violent in living memory. 'That ~ saying quite a mouthful when one has regard for how past centuries have been red in tooth and claw, when people were burnt at the stake on suspicion of being witches and those who were regarded as heretics and mavericks who bucked whatever system held sway in that particular status quo, who refused to toe the line rocking the boat of the prevailing orthodoxy, were given short shrift. imprisoned. scourged and drawn and quartered. Those past centuries were indeed gory, but though many. many thousands were killed those figures pale into insignificance in contrast to what we managed to do with such brutal efficiency. The numbers get to be mind boggling. There have been two so-called World Wars. In the Holocaust in Germany alone 6 million men. women and children were done to death simply because they were either Jewish, or homosexual. or gypsies.

Previous centuries did not have at their disposal the devastating power of weapons of mass destruction. The 20th Century saw a civilized Christian nation unleash the horrific death dealing power of the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killing over 80,000 civilians at one fell swoop. Many survivors are still suffering from the after effects of radiation 60 years after August 6th 1945.

It has seemed as if we want to prove the cynic right who declared we learn from history that we do not learn from history. World War II happ'ened only twenty years of World War I. We have demonstrated it appears the incapacity to learn from our mistakes repeating them almost with gay abandon.And so the holocaust in Germany was followed by the so-called ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia:"' The atrocities committed during that bloody chapter in the Balkans almost defy description - ,""omen raped as a deliberate weapon of war, many being callously infected with the HIV/AIDS virus, family members mown down in front of their relatives and we are now being appalled by the mass graves being uncovered. It just seems as if there are no depths to which we cannot sink in our depravity and inhumanity to one another.

There have been episodes such as the Armenian genocide and the ghastlinesses that happened during the Rwandan genocide. But the catalogue does not end there. We learned during the processes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that we have a remarkable capacity. all of us, to commit some of the most gruesome atrocities for the perpetrators did not have horns or tails. They were seemingly ordinary human beings who to all intents and purposes behaved like most of us. The banality of evil indeed.

And we have not mentioned the many regional or intranational conflicts. We know what happened after India gained her independence which led to the partition that spawned Pakistan and Bangladesh, fuelled by sectarian disagreement between Hindus and Muslims and which is still simmering today with an uneasy troce between the two major nations. We know of the awful things that have happened between Indonesia and East Timor and the civil war in Sri Lanka. And then there has been the conflict in the Middle East and the strife between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. And you might want to say tell us about only the countries that are not in turmoil in Africa, don't tell us about Algeria, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, DRC, Sudan, Angola, Zimbabwe, etc. etc. No, don't tell us about the turmoil in Latin America.

And then there has been the scourge in so many lands of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is mowing down huge sections of the population especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

We had hoped that the end of the Cold War would usher in a period of peace, stability and prosperity for all. We felt a euphoria when the nations of the world adopted the Millennium Development Goals, so idealistic and yet apparently achievable. But it has all been shattered by the immoral invasion by the USA with her satellites. Britain and others of Iraq for the spurious reason that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When this turned out to be a lie, the invaders scrambled to find other excuses and so they concocted the notion of a beneficial regime change. What would happen if countries decided there had to be a regime change in their enemy's territory; would we not have monumental global chaos? A new century that had promised much began with a horrendous totally unnecessary war which has left Iraq in a shambles. The first post Saddam Hussein prime minister, Mr. Alawi, has declared that human rights violations are as bad as in the days of Saddam if not worse.

And here is the blot on the world's only super power's image of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the erosion of the rule of law represented by Guantanamo Bay. I never thought I would live to see the day when I would hear the rulers of the USA and Great Britain use the same argument for the use of detention without trial that the apartheid Govemment employed and that there should be so little outcry in the lands that we thought were paragons of democratic values.

Today the world seems a great deal less secure and far more violent than before September 11th and its aftermath. Now there is a war against terrorism and some u~e the unfortunate paradigm of the West versus the Muslim:oworld and we glibly speak of Muslim or Islamic terrorism. No one ever described the IRA or the Protestant para-militaries in Northern Ireland as Christian terrorists. And the world is now as polarised as it ever was during the Cold War period and the tensions are growing.

So is there hope for humankind in this dolorous situation?

The Stark Realitv

There is no doubt that the situation is fraught. There are riots in Manchester and Birmingham and in France and at their heart is the frustration of an under class of those who have been left behind, the poor. the marginalised, the voiceless who almost always are people of colour. It was revealed so starkly that there were gross inequalities in some of the most affluent nations ­hurricane Katrina revealed that this was so in the USA. Yes. we cannot pretend that it is otherwise. What is the case in many nations is replicated globally. There is a chasm between the haves and the have nots and that gap between the rich and the poor is widening. There is poverty and disease and ignorance abroad in the global South as there is plenty and affluence and prosperity and good health in the global North. But just as the riots in France and the United Kingdom demonstrate, those inequalities will spawn instability, no, not will spawn, but are already causing instability and turmoil. 50 we should heed the warning lights flashing, there is no way that we will win the war against terror as long as there are conditiors in so many parts of the world that make people desperate. People want to know and feel that they matter and in the world of big business and the G7 they know that on the whole they count for very little. They are very small beer indeed. They are of little account. they feel humiliated and sidelined and that can't be good for the world. The eradication of poverty and disease and ignorance by those with the means to do so is not altruism. No. it is the best form of self interest. We can be free only together. We can be secure only together. We can be prosperous only together.

A Moral Universe

Yes there are without any doubt many horrendous things happening and that have take place. But is that the whole picture? When we were involved with our TRC we were often devastated by the gory details of the gruesome atrocities perpetrators revealed, showing the human capacity for committing great evil. But we were exhilarated to discover that this was not the whole story. nor the most important. When we witnessed those who had suffered grievously not consumed by bitterness. not baying for the blood of their tormentors. It was oh. so wonderful to witness the magnanimity of victims as they offered forgiveness and not retribution. Yes it said. we wonderfully. also had this remarkable capacity for good.

We realised afresh that indeed we inhabit a moral universe. that good and evil. right and wrong matter. that there is no way that injustice and oppression. lies and evil could ever have the last word. We had seen just how the perpetrators of wrong had strutted over the stage of the world seemingly invincible and oh so cocky and then. and then. as sure as anything they would bite the dust comprehensively and become the flotsam and jetsam of history. Where are Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. Franco. Amin. Boukassa. Verwoerd. Malan. PW Botha and myriads of others of their ilk? They have become l"Qainly footnotes to history.  

We are shocked when we see evil happening and we are even more appalled if it goes unpunished. We are distressed to witness suffering on a huge scale as that caused by natural disaster and war. Witness the amazing outpouring of compassion and sympathy for those who are'victims of man-made or natural disasters. There was such an outpouring for the people of the United States after September 11th. a wave of sylhpathy they dissipated wantonly and  quickly when they behaved so badly in their desire for revenge. Witness the amazing sympathy for those hit by the tsunami disaster and Katrina. It seems odd that we should care so much about evil and wrong and disaster if it was..not.that we believe we know that they cannot be the norm. they are aberrations. The norm is the good. the just. the beautiful,  the right

Even in hardnosed cynical cultures it is amazing that those we admire. indeed revere. are not the macho. The aggressive. the successful. No. the people we hold almost universally in high regard are such as a Mahatma Gandhi. the Dalai Lama. Mother Teresa. Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther King Jr. and why? because they are good. We have internal antennae which home in on goodness because you see we are created for goodness. for love. for gentleness. for compassion. for sharing. We are almost the ultimate paradox. the finite created for the infinite. St Augustine of Hippo said. "Thou (God) hast created us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee." We ,are created by God. like God. for God. We have each a God hunger which only God can satisfy:- We have a God shaped space which only God can fill. The Upanishads declare about the human soul that it is ultimately divine: Tat tuam asi (that thou art the divine).

Yes, and so I believe fervently that there is hope for humankind.