Keywords

South Africa, healing, humanism

Abstract

In an article dated 13 March 2006, the British weekly New Statesman reported on the latest social intervention of the “most popular priest on the planet” (Campbell), former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Tutu, famous for his chairmanship of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was negotiating a series of televised meetings between former Protestant paramilitaries from Northern Ireland and the surviving family members of people they had murdered. A reality TV spin-off with a suspiciously voyeuristic strain, the three-part BBC2miniseries “Facing the Truth”—an obvious reference to the South African TRC—was deemed “daring” by the New Statesman’s Beatrix Campbell, “remarkable” by UK-based Ekklesia theological news service, and a “degrading . . . media circus” by Roy Garland of the Irish News. Absent state sponsorship which might have added an element of legitimacy and perhaps shed light on the degree of state involvement in the erstwhile violence,1 the shows were, not surprisingly, a mixed bag.

Original Publication Citation

Eastley, Aaron. “Soyinka, Tutu, and the Globalization of African Humanism.” JALA: Journal of the African Literature Association 1.1 (2007): 88-104. Print.