By Rita McInerney

Bishop Desmond Tutu brought the anguish of his fellow blacks in South Africa dramatically close to Atlanta on Sunday, Jan. 19. The Anglican bishop of Johannesburg was principal speaker at the afternoon session of the National Conference Against Apartheid in Ebenezer Baptist Church, part of the weeklong observance of the 57^th birthday anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The world-famed foe of apartheid had a busy Sabbath in Dr. King’s hometown. He was homilist at the 9 a.m. service at the Cathedral of St. Philip of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and also for the 11 a.m. service at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

His message to the crowd attending the apartheid conference at the historic Ebenezer Church was dramatic and personal. He is among the 73 percent of South Africans who are excluded from any participation in the decision-making process in the land of his birth, he told his audience.

“In free countries you vote people out of power – they go out on their ear. This route is not available in South Africa,” the charismatic churchman said. “I stand before you as Nobel laureate, bishop in the Anglican Church and a rising 54 who cannot vote. In my country an 18-year-old can vote.”

He spoke with passion of the policy of “spurious independence” by which the South African regime of Pieter Botha has relocated millions of blacks to “homelands.” It is, he said, “denationalizing them and turning them into aliens in the land of their birth.”

Describing himself as South African as the South African sunshine and the South African krugerrand, he said his official government document that permits him to move about lists his nationality or homeland as “undeterminable at present.”

“They have destroyed stable black families and stable black communities, three and a half million people destroyed, dumped as if they were garbage.”

“They have placed children where there is very little food – by deliberate government policy. That is violence and terrorism, that children die of starvation in a land that exports food.”

Changing social or political situations by overthrowing the system violently was ruled out in 1912, Bishop Tutu said, when the black African National Congress espoused non-violent methods in the beginning struggle for racial justice in South African. He reminded his audience that the only two Nobel Peace Prize winners from his country have been black. Chief Albert Luthuli was the earlier recipient.

“Our people have been committed to peaceful change. But a peaceful protest against the ‘pass laws’ in March, 1960 ended with 69 of our people massacred, most of them shot in the back as they ran away from the police.”

“We keep going on against intransigent government,” Bishop Tutu said after mentioning the third way to change the system, by using peaceful means. Non-violence is difficult to preserve when “they use teargas, bullets, dogs, whips against children singing in the street. You have seen it on the TV screens,” he added.

When, he said, a four-year-old was killed by a police rubber bullet while playing in the street in front of her home, the inquest judge said. “No one is to blame. It just happened.”

“Since August, 1984, 1000 have died. These are children, husbands and wives of somebody. Our people are swatted down as if they are flies.”

“Help us change the moral climate…by political pressure but above all by economic pressure,” the eloquent Tutu pleaded. “I have said that unless the government makes significant changes by the end of March I will start a campaign of civil disobedience.”

“We need you because when black people engage in non-violence they provoke the violence on the other side. When are you going to listen to the victims of apartheid? All we want is what white people want for themselves. We are human beings created in the image of God. It’s impossible for any of us to be free until all of us are free.” Bishop Tutu concluded to enthusiastic applause from an audience standing in tribute to the man and his cause.

Dr. Eleanor Holmes Norton, professor at Georgetown University Law Center, presided at the conference. Opening the afternoon session, she recounted the beginning of the Free South Africa movement on Thanksgiving Eve, 1984, when she was among a small group protesting against apartheid at the South African embassy in Washington. The action was taken as a matter of last resort, she explained to show support for “our jailed South African brothers.” She and the others were jailed and the movement was born.

Norton “commended” President Reagan for “supporting” sanctions against South Africa and the King holiday because “both had most extraordinary support from the American people.”

Celebrities mingled with the everyday citizen around the King Center on Auburn Avenue on Sunday. Dan Rather and Jesse Jackson drew shouts of welcome from the crowd packed around the front door of Ebenezer Church waiting for Bishop Tutu to emerge after the morning service. There was a surge toward him as he appeared, with security people barely able to clear his way through the crowd. An energetic man of short statue, his crimson cossack made him easy to spot. His aura was one of friendliness and happiness at being with the people.

Across the city at the Cathedral of St. Philip at 2744 Peachtree Road, he preached to an overflow congregation in the large Episcopal Cathedral. One usher said the church was packed at 8 a.m., an hour before it began.

He was there, Bishop Tutu said in his homily, to say “Thank you, brothers and sisters for your love and your prayers.” Speaking of the exhilaration he feels to know of this love and concern, he told of receiving a letter from a Lutheran pastor in Alaska who wanted him to know “we here are praying for you.” The pastor had included with his letter a copy of the parish bulletin which had printed in it the names of all the members of the South African Council of Churches being prayed for.

“What chances does the South African government have against such forces,” he asked the hushed congregation.

He spoke with emotion of the great love of God for his people, “creating us because He loved us, not because he needed us. You and I are the result of the overflowing of His love. He didn’t come in blinding glory, God came as a baby in a manger. Can you imagine,” he asked the audience, awe in his voice, “he chose the village carpenter and the village lass. Not the high and mighty…”

“Through His coming in this humble way, He told the world I love all My people, but yes, I have a special concern for those the world pushes to the periphery,” he continued. “God hears and sees the burdens of His people. He hears their groans. He identifies so closely he took the form of a servant, obedient to the cross.”