‘My humanity is caught up in yours’ : How Desmond Tutu dedicated his life to greater good

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Now to the life and legacy of Desmond Tutu, archbishop, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a conscience for South Africa.

  His life spanned 90 years, most of it spent in striving against segregation, and then in reconciling the races.

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate:

  We say we are the rainbow people.

  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  We are the new people of a new South Africa.

  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Cape Town, 1989, a clarion call to freedom. Before more than 20,000 protesters, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu appealed for the birth of a new nation and an end to the iron grip of apartheid.

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  I want you to lift your hands. I want you to say, our march to freedom…

• Protesters:

  Our march to freedom…

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  … is unstoppable.

• Protesters:

  … is unstoppable!

• Amna Nawaz:

  Nearly five years later, in 1994, Tutu helped introduce the world to South Africa's first Black president, Nelson Mandela, and, in the process, he witnessed the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

  Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 in a small mining town, before his family moved to Johannesburg. It was an era when South Africa's white minority codified longstanding racial segregation into rigidly enforced apartheid, and deliberately de-emphasized education for Black people.

  That prompted Tutu to abandon a teaching career for the clergy. He joined the Anglican Church and quickly rose through the ranks, gaining notice as he spoke out against the white government and condemned apartheid.

  In 1976, unrest in the Black township of Soweto boiled over into riots. The government's brutal response left hundreds dead, mostly young and Black, and sparked an international outcry. The years that followed saw Tutu rise to become archbishop of Cape Town and gain international recognition as one of the anti-apartheid movement's strongest advocates behind the pulpit and on the streets.

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  The day anybody can show me that the Bible supports apartheid, that day, I will take my Bible and tear it into little strips, and I will stop being a Christian.

• Amna Nawaz:

  He rejected the U.S. policy of constructive engagement with South Africa's white regime, and instead vigorously supported economic boycotts of his own country.

  Those efforts earned him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984. Afterward, in an interview with the "NewsHour," he mused on the meaning of the award.

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  It is saying that the world cares about oppression and injustice, and it is saying to our people — and this is their prize — don't give up. Don't give up the struggle. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

• Amna Nawaz:

  The light grew ever brighter, as apartheid crumbled. Mandela was released from prison and ultimately elected president. Together, they worked to usher in a new era for South Africa. Mandela would later call Tutu the voice of the voiceless, and he named the archbishop to lead the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  In his 1999 "NewsHour" interview, the archbishop talked about that desire for reconciliation, even in the face of decades of brutality.

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  I am human because you are human. My humanity is caught up in yours. And if you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized.

  And anger and resentment and retribution are corrosive of this great good, the harmony that has got to exist between people. And that is why our people have been committed to the reconciliation where we use restorative, rather than retributive justice.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tutu became archbishop emeritus in 1996, but expanded his outreach, tackling issues outside of his home borders.

  He visited Rwanda after the horrific ethnic genocide in the early '90s, and he weighed in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at times likening Israeli actions to apartheid era South Africa. He later criticized the post 9/11 U.S.-led war in Iraq, calling it immoral.

  In 2009, President Obama awarded Tutu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. A year later, on his 79th birthday, he announced he would step away from public life, opting to spend his days with his family.

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

  I really want to engage in the contemplative life, because, you know, often, when people are in love, they just want to sit and be together. And I want to try to be a bit more of that with God, but to also have some quality time with the mother of my children.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Still, he maintained his interest in human rights at home and abroad, despite bouts of illness that had him in and out of hospitals in his final years.