CLIVE ABDULAH

retired Bishop of Trinidad and Tobago

WE JOIN with millions the world over to mourn the passing of a great person, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was small in stature (you didn't have to be a Michael Jordan or a Muhammad Ali to tower over him) yet he was very vocal in his fight against all forms of oppression - against those least able to defend themselves, especially the women, children, the poor, and those who fled their homelands in a desperate search for freedom.

It was his deep faith in his God that enabled him to be fearless and strong in the struggle to end that odious system of apartheid. And he rejoiced in the historic first democratic elections in South Africa that ended white minority rule. This is how Archbishop Tutu described that momentous occasion:

'27 April 1994 was the day for which we had waited many long years, the day for which the struggle against apartheid had been waged, for which so many of our people had been tear-gassed, bitten by police dogs, struck with quirts and batons, tortured, banned, imprisoned, sentenced to death and driven into exile...

'We wanted things to be as normal as possible on this extraordinary day in the history of our beloved, but oh so sad land whose soil was soaked in the blood of so many of her children...I prayed earnestly that morning that God would bless our land and confound the machinations of the children of darkness.

'There had been so many moments in the past, during the dark days of apartheid's vicious awfulness, when I had preached, 'This is God's world and God is in charge!' Sometimes, when evil seemed to be about to overwhelm goodness, I had only just been able to hold on to this article of faith.'

For his relentless campaign against injustice and especially against apartheid, Archbishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

During his work in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to which he was appointed chairman, both Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa and FW De Clerk as vice president and the last president under apartheid felt that Tutu was the best person for the task, which was a heavy burden on the diminutive archbishop. He himself admitted that 'There were many moments when I thought that I should have had my head examined for agreeing to take on the job of chairing this particular commission.'

But his heart was big. On one occasion as he heard the terrible atrocities which both sides meted out to those who were seeking a better place to live, Archbishop Tutu put his head beneath the table and cried. How could any human person do such things to another? Again his faith was his guide. As he said:

'Perhaps we (the commissioners) had not realised just how wounded and traumatised we all were as a result of the buffeting we had all in various ways taken from apartheid. This vicious system has had far more victims than anyone had ever thought possible, because it is no exaggeration to say that we have all in different ways been wounded by apartheid...this universe has been constructed i