The Laughing Bishop

摘要

ON sept. 25, 1977, 16 years before apartheid's end, Desmond Tutu stoodbefore a crowd of 15,000 at the funeral of murdered black-consciousness leader Steve Biko in King William's Town, South Africa, and declared that white rule was finished. "The powers of injustice, of oppression, of exploitation, have done their worst, and they have lost," thun-dered the then 45-year-old bishop of St. Mary and St. James, Lesotho. "They have lost because they are immoral and wrong, and our God... is a God of justice and lib-eration and goodness. Our cause ... must triumph because it is moral and just and right." Few could have known then that the unrest sweeping South Africa would be the beginning of the end of apartheid. But Tutu did. "That's the chief lesson I haverning in war, but he will not have an active role in its operations. His unofficial legacy will be his life and the story of how this tiny pastor with a huge laugh from South Africa became our global guardian.