South Africa Needs Him

"I don't come as a know-all who is going to pontificate and tell you Canadians what you must do."
"I think I can almost say, without fear of contradiction, that you do know what you should do."
"The Bible says God said to Adam, 'Till it and keep it'. Not 'Till it and destroy it.'"
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"He has a little bit more credibility than the actors and the players. Desmond Tutu has a lot of political experience and the public's ear. I hope he uses it well."
Melvin Campbell, Syncrude employee, Alberta

Archbishop Desmond Tutu gives the keynote address during the conference, As Long as the Rivers Flow: Coming Back to the Treaty Relationship in Our Time, in Fort McMurray, Alta. on Saturday May 31, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson ORG XMIT: EDM104
 
Canada has been given a special gift, a visit by now-retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu whose work alongside that of former South African President Nelson Mandela drew world attention in their fight against the racism of white-dominated South Africa's apartheid regime. Their political party gained power. The ruling African National Congress never managed to live up to its mandate nor its promise.

South Africa's dismal poverty level is as critical as ever, housing for the underprivileged is abysmal, unemployment is high, government corruption is endemic, and criminality is out of control. It is considered one of the murder capitals of the world. According to the Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, between 28 and 37% of all men in South Africa admit to having committed rape.

The police are impotent and are themselves corrupt and brutal. Their president, Jacob Zuma, is a rapist, so ignorant about HIV/AIDS, an epidemic in his country -- where men believe that raping a virgin child will protect them from contracting AIDS --  that he felt showering after raping an HIV-positive woman who regarded him as an avuncular family friend, would protect him against AIDS.

He is accused, with good reason, of siphoning off public funds for his private advantage.

Furthermore the incidence of child and baby rape in Bishop Tutu's country is one of the highest in the world. Now that's quite the social, cultural, political background for any country. South Africa has failed, time and again, to speak out against travesties of justice when someone like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe brought his country into ruination.

But he has most generously given of himself to help prevent the economic and trade exploitation of the Alberta oilsands, equating the efforts by those such as himself to bring development to a screeching halt to aid the environment, to the equally global effort to bring down the apartheid South African regime.

He has pledged himself to taking emphatically energetic stands on climate change and to refute the Keystone XL pipeline, signing a petition against the project, considering it appalling that Canada proposes to move oilsands bitumen from Albert to the United States; or anywhere else, for that matter.

Appalling?

Not the human rights violations, slavery, mass rapes, forced mass migrations leading to refugee homelessness, child abductions and violent tribal conflict renting asunder much of Africa?