Je suis artiste pour la paix parce que quand je me monte sur scene, j'ai l'impression de faire la paix avec mon âme et celle du public. Je me retrouve là, en lieu sûr, pour explorer les forces et les failles de nos coeurs, sans danger, sans jugement ni discrimination pour célébrer la beauté de l'humanité. Et si la vie était toujours ainsi ?"
C'est la paix et la justice pour tous que chacun d'entre nous souhaite et recherche. Contribuons à construire un monde meilleur, avec notre talent, quel qu'il soit !"
Parce que la paix est toujours à faire, en nous comme avec les autres, et que c’est par l’art que c’est le plus merveilleux de la promouvoir, de la défendre, de la fêter !"
Les mots de Louise Warren sur le dessaisissement et sur l’intensité préalable à la création me conduisent à Mozart et à Beethoven, à ma fille et à mon fils : je leur souhaite la paix… et travaille tous les jours à ce que ce vœu se réalise !"
La paix est loin d’être acquise. Avec l’explosion de l’industrie militaire dans le monde, on aura besoin de nos mots, notre musique, nos films, de notre art pour faire contrepoids. La culture est arme de construction massive."
Je suis artiste pour la paix... Sans la paix, pas d'avenir pour la planète. Contribuer à bâtir une culture de la paix me semble un devoir."
Je suis artiste pour la paix parce que la paix justifie l'espoir ."
Desmond Tutu en 2000. Photo AP
Premier évêque noir de Johannesburg, puis archevêque anglican du Cap, il reçut le prix Nobel de la paix en 1984. Lorsque Nelson Mandela devint président d’Afrique du Sud en 1994, il nomma Desmond Tutu à la tête de la Commission Vérité et Réconciliation. Mandela passa d’ailleurs sa première nuit d’homme libre – après 27 années d’emprisonnement – chez Desmond Tutu au Cap.
Une semaine de deuil national est décrétée au Cap, avant les funérailles qui auront lieu à la cathédrale anglicane de St-George. La Table Mountain, équivalent de notre Mont-Royal, sera illuminée en violet pour l’occasion, couleur emblématique des soutanes épiscopales portées par Tutu.
En plus de lutter contre l’apartheid, Tutu milita pour les droits des LGBTQ et le mariage de même sexe. « Je ne pourrais pas adorer un Dieu homophobe, je n’irais pas dans un Paradis homophobe… Non, je dirais : désolé, je vais aller ailleurs. Pour moi, c’est aussi important que le combat contre l’apartheid » déclarait-il en 2013.
Tutu fut parfois critique du gouvernement de l’ANC, parti anti-apartheid élu en 1994. Ce gouvernement refusa un visa au Dalai Lama, invité à l’anniversaire de Tutu, à l’instigation de la Chine, devenue un important partenaire commercial.
Desmond Tutu fut lui aussi critiqué lorsque la Commission Vérité et Réconciliation accorda l’amnistie à d’ex- dirigeants blancs. Mais Tutu refusait toute forme de vengeance, voulant surtout éviter que le pays ne sombre dans la guerre civile.
Né en 1931 à Klerksdorp, Desmond Mpilo Tutu enseigna avant d’entrer au Collège de théologie St-Peter de Rosetenville en 1958. Il fut ordonné en 1961, et devint aumônier de l’université de Fort Hare en 1967. Il séjourna ensuite au Lesotho et en Grande-Bretagne, puis revint en Afrique du Sud en 1975. Il devint évêque du Lesotho, et le premier évêque anglican Noir de Johannesburg en 1985. Puis il fut nommé archevêque au Cap. Il fut arrêté une première fois en 1980 pour avoir participé à des manifestations, et on lui retira son passeport. C’est à cette époque qu’il réclama des pourparlers en vue d’abolir l’apartheid ainsi que des sanctions internationales, notament au Canada, contre l’Afrique du Sud. Cette lutte aboutit en 1994 à l’élection de l’ANC et la présidence de Nelson Mandela.
Mandela est décédé en 2013 à l’âge de 95 ans. Il fut co-récipiendaire en 1993 du prix Nobel de la paix avec F.W. De Klerk, dernier président du régime de l’apartheid, qui décéda en 2021.
Desmond Tutu et Nelson Mandela en 2008. Photo AP
Extrait d’un discours d’Adrienne Clarkson, gouverneure générale en 2000
lors d’une cérémonie accordant un doctorat (Université de Toronto) à Desmond Tutu
(merci à Phyllis Creighton qui nous l’envoie, après sa lecture de notre article)
“We were deeply offended by racism because we were of the generation that I would characterize as Pearson internationalists; I dare say as I search my memory, that we never just felt sorry for the non-white population of South Africa. We were indignant and enraged. In these earliest days of the twenty-first century, when, as a society we pretend that self-interest and greed are cardinal virtues, it is good and somewhat comforting to remember that time. I have to say that the boycotting of South African goods [through everyday] tiny gestures, those tiny refusals, those tiny fasts, linked us sacramentally to you, the « little people », as you have called your fellow black South Africans.
We were the generation of students whose lives and families had been touched by the war, the depredations of fascism and the Holocaust. In South Africa, we saw institutionalized racism which was formalized as a government policy. We watched with revulsion and horror as the oppressive regime asserted itself over and over again, brutalizing the black population. In March 1960, Sharpeville happened. Sixty-nine unarmed people were mowed down by out-of-control police while attempting a peaceful demonstration against the pass laws. Most of them were shot in the back as they attempted to flee the police. After Sharpeville, there were demonstrations here and at universities across Canada.
The next spring, South Africa, which had just become a republic, re-applied to be part of the Commonwealth. A group of graduate university students petitioned then-Prime Minister Diefenbaker attending the Commonwealth Conference asking him to veto the re-entry of South Africa into the Commonwealth. Mr. Diefenbaker, whether influenced by the petition or not, took the position that state-sanctioned racism was incompatible with membership and led the movement, ultimately successful, to shut South Africa out.
For our generation of students, that political action and our possible influence on it was not only of dramatic immediate validation but had a lasting effect on all our lives and our values thereafter. We learned that we could affect change and that politicians might be able to listen. It was South Africa that brought us to consciousness and with that awakening came the awareness that life was only of value if lived with a conscience.
Fifteen years later I went to South Africa to do a television documentary about apartheid (…). I had the opportunity to interview Pik Botha, then minister of the Interior. And while he was waxing eloquently on the marvels of establishing the black population in bantustans where they could live in a desirably separate world, I interrupted him and asked him, « If things are so wonderful for blacks here, how would you like to be black in your country? » When the camera captured him wordless and unable to answer, I have to admit I felt a sense of accomplishment, one of the greatest of my career until then, and perhaps for always.
In those years there was a lost of discussion about the white regime which made sustained efforts to convince self-satisfied elites that apartheid was the only bulwark against Soviet communism. Luckily, our university played its part in freeing our minds of simplistic arguments and ludicrous fallacies of logic. The discipline of our education meant that, by reading, listening and witnessing, we could judge apartheid for what it was – an evil, corrupt, distorting menace to the progress of civil society. We looked at that regime and dismissed wealth and power in the guise of racism; we realized that the wealth of forgiveness and the power of the human spirit were what mattered and what will always matter. We knew that all the dark horrors of the human heart had been formalized in that affront to humanity.
In the years since 1990 when the regime crumbled, you have shown us, Your Grace, the luminous example of a forgiving society that South Africa represents. The previously humiliated and tortured have been able to come to terms with their humiliaters and torturers. The reconciliation which you helped to bring about means that each individual, perpetrator and victim can get their humanity back.
You have taught us about the African concept of ubuntu which speaks of the very essence of being human. It means sharing what you are, what you have – my humanity is inextricably bound up in yours. It is not « I think therefore I am »; it is « I am because we are ». You have taught us that a person is a person through other persons. And curiously, you have taught us that forgiving is « the best form of self-interest since anger, hatred and revenge are corrosive and destructive » for individuals and for society.
Despite your long years of suffering, you resisted, as a society, imposing a victor’s justice, a retributive justice, in favour of a unique process brought about by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This process is in fact a moral redress in and of itself but it took great wisdom to realize this. Perpetrators were faced with the consequences of their actions and they could not turn away.
Your example of a forgiving society evolving from a punishing one is unique in history. Your example of a forgiving society makes it possible for other societies, like our own, to look at ourselves. Your example of a forgiving society shows us that healing is needed and that this healing must happen in a place where people, black, white and all shades between, live together and call themselves a country. In South Africa, you have been able to transform yourselves as a society. You defeated the predictions of blood baths and revenge when power came to you. You showed that it is possible to move beyond horror and darkness. You raised the conscience of people all over the world. Your legacy has still to be played out in our countries. We too have our dark and sorry injustices. We too struggle against trying to acknowledge them. Thank you for your example. Thank you for helping us become persons. Thank you for ubuntu.
En espérant que ses mots de sagesse soient médités par les colonialistes WASP qui refusent encore l’égalité aux autochtones, aux francophones et aux immigrants de couleur. P.J.