Nadine Gordimer - Telling Times - Writing and Living, 1950-2008

Naguib Mahfouz has drunk the cup and gone, leaving us behind in the shabby grim presence of worldly power, but he’s left his wisdom, his writings, his inward testimony, the wisdom of great literature.

2006

I am an atheist. But if anyone could have launched me into the leap of a religious faith — any denomination — it would have been Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Being so respectful of others’ rights, even those of unbelief, he has never tried, on the occasions in my life when I have turned to him for personal but secular counsel. I am a Jew; for me, to be born Jew as to be born black are existential states not religiously determinate, and neither a matter for pride or shame, whatever the world tries to make of this. We are simply of the great human tribe.

If Desmond hasn’t caused by his matchless example as a man of faith to lead me to find my own humble way to one, he certainly has influenced my life. Truly vitally, in the complex and often confusing, dismaying choice of reactions and attitudes called upon for response in the second half of the twentieth century and the new millennium in our country, South Africa.

First impressions: he is not a man of whom that of one’s first meeting is going to have to be revised as one gets to know him. He has no façade. The open interest, the fellow warmth that radiate from him then are what he is . As he has risen to the Himalayas of public life, become world famous, this hasn’t been blunted in any way. I’d call his lack of self-consciousness one of his inherent gifts; the others have been developed by the exercise of character, the spiritual and intellectual muscle-building he has subjected and continues to subject himself to in service of the human congregation. He’s taken on no less than that.

His playfulness I recognised early as deeply serious. When he danced down the aisle after giving his sermon during our worst of times, it was not to be dutifully seen as symbiosis of conventional Christian forms of worship and traditional African forms. It was the assertion of sacred joy in life, the unquenchable force that no apartheid oppression could get at within people.

His playfulness was serious, for all of us; his sense of humour was directed often against himself.

He won’t mind if I have my particular memory of the splendid occasion when my husband Reinhold Cassirer and I were fortunate to be invited to the ordination of Desmond Tutu as Bishop of Johannesburg. We sat in St Mary’s Cathedral following the ceremonial process, the display of robed dignitaries, our spirits uplifted by the choir and awaiting in anticipation the speech of the newly mitred bishop. Such ceremonies are transformational; the individual enters with one public identity and emerges with another, whether the endowing authority is a religious one, such as this occasion, or a secular one, the induction of a president. Bishop Desmond Tutu smiled, but not down, on us all as if we’d just arrived at the door of his house in Orlando. After the formal acknowledgement to those who had received him into high office, he told us, ‘In our hotel this morning Leah said, I’ve woken up in bed with a bishop!’

Anti-apartheid activities brought me into contact with Bishop Tutu in the years that were to come. The recognition he gave to the smallest effort as much as the largest initiative against the dehumanising apartheid regime made me aware of hasty judgemental dismissals I held against the effectiveness not only of some others, but of my own efforts. His own boldness was never punitive; the power he always has had is to make it impossible for any group, any formation, any persons not to recognise their responsibility for what they do to demean and brutalise others.

What is a man of the world? What do we mean by that designation? Usually it implies sophistication, a certain easy ambiguity in matters of money, friendships and sexual love. Desmond Tutu is not morally ambiguous in any of those designations. But he has shown me there is another definition to be entered in the human dictionary. He is a man of the world in a different way.

We had a parental bond in that our sons, his Trevor and our Hugo, were schoolmates at Waterford-Kamhlaba School in Swaziland. As it turned out, there came another bond in our personal concern about a mutual friend, one both respected and highly expected — by those of us looking ahead, then, to who would take leadership positions after the end of apartheid — as a young man qualified by courage, intelligence and integrity in the liberation movement. The secret love affair of the man was suddenly no secret. It was news, printed in and heard on the media. When I came to Desmond with my concern that what was to me a private matter, as the law provides, between consenting adults, was being regarded as a betrayal of political morality and integrity, I was very uncertain of what Desmond’s attitude would be.

I found in him analysis and understanding of human sexuality. Not a judgement of its urges as sin. An acceptance that the unfortunate occurrence of submitting to such an urge while this causes pain and betrayal in the context of marriage, responsibility for which cannot be denied, must be borne; in the nature of humankind the happening is not decisive in the complete character of the individual. Desmond Tutu didn’t give in to disappointment in the behaviour of the individual, I think, because in his fearless dedication to truth he allows himself no illusions. He did not condemn; he said he wished the man had come to him. I do not know what he would have done for him; I only know the capacity Desmond Tutu has to make one deal with oneself.

Came the 1980s and a crisis in the milieu of the Congress of South African Writers, of which I was among the founders. The Congress had for some hard years proved itself in actions to defend freedom of expression, not alone against the banning of books but in support of those of us who were detained, arrested on treason charges, their typewriters seized, their employment as teachers, journalists, forbidden. With our extremely limited funds, we hired legal representatives for them, alerted the world to the enforced stifling of their talent and had examples of their banned writings published abroad. But the political attitude towards the efficacy of what might be called fringe movements against apartheid, movements in the arts, was changing. The black consciousness movement was in the forefront of the growing decision that any cooperation with whites, whatever their anti-apartheid record short of underground revolutionary activity, ran counter to the apparent evidence that such concessions were part of the failure of liberalism to deliver the goods — freedom could be grasped only by black solidarity in all aspects of public life. Our Congress was headed by a black president, our editorial board and trustees were black and white Africans who were close as colleagues and comrades who trusted one another in common cause. But the pressure on the black writers was strong; they withdrew from the Congress and the choice was to carry on as a white organisation or close down. There was anger among some white members; they wanted to continue as such. For myself, I saw that the move on the part of our president and other black colleagues was necessary at this urgent final phase in the freedom impetus, psychologically and tactically. But I felt abandoned, confused; if I could have no part as a writer in the freedom movement in which I was active in other ways, as a citizen, my usefulness seemed truncated.

I went to Desmond. He is such a good listener. You don’t sense him having snap reactions, making judgements, while you come to him in the full tide of your problems. He wants all the details, even those you think don’t matter; he knows better. He is the man of wholeness. I wish I could recall his exact flow of words. He told me that my position was not useless. It was the right one; on the one hand I recognised the need for those blacks who saw withdrawal from white cooperation as necessary to go it alone, to attain freedom; on the other hand I had taken my right to refuse to belong to a segregated organisation. That was my usefulness to the freedom movement. With this counsel I was enabled without any resentment to continue the personal relations my black writer comrades never ceased to maintain with me.