I<$>F anyone has the moral right to chastise a nation that requires chastising, then that person would have to be South Africa’s Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu. He is the only man aside from Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black elected President, who has the unimpeachable authority, respect and nation-wide standing to be able to stand before his country and tell them where they have gone wrong. When Bishop Tutu speaks, not just people but an entire country listens.

In the aftermath of the peaceful transfer of power from his country’s white minority to its black majority, the South Africa of today must present a profound disappointment for a man like Bishop Tutu.

For recently he made a damning indictment against the direction his own country is moving in. Given he was in the forefront of the struggle to liberate South Africa from the racial situation which saw its black majority caught in the trap of the white minority’s oppressive apartheid system, it cannot have been easy for Bishop Tutu to have condemned the freedom fighters-turned-politicians who now control his country’s destiny.

Many had expected the new South Africa to go the way of so many other countries in Africa, afflicted by the rule of a dictator, beset with internal conflicts of tribal origin, oppression on every level and hobbled by corruption from the top leadership down to the civil servants and the policemen and soldiers — each in their own way continuing to fleece the long-suffering African peoples long after the last trappings of colonialism had been eradicated.

At first, under Mandela’s principled and wise leadership, it looked like the dream of the creation of a truly non-racial, multi-party democracy was about to become a reality in one of the most unlikely areas of the world.

You had to appreciate how such a prospect indeed looked nothing short of miraculous when you considered the history of South Africa under apartheid. It had required a long and bitter struggle by the African National Congress to overthrow the white minority which sought to keep control of this rich jewel at the very tip of the African continent.

The black population had waged a sometimes bloody struggle to gain their human rights and had to make great sacrifices to bring about the new South Africa, which came into existence with the first free general election in 1994 when the black majority was finally granted the democratic right to decide who would form the government of the country.

From the earliest attempts to organise South Africa’s non-white population in the aftermath of the defeat of the last armed revolts of such warrior peoples as the Xhosa and the Zulu to the beginnings of the black South African trade union movement, to the so-called Rivonia treason trial of 156 activists (including then-lawyer Nelson Mandela) and the promulgation of the Freedom Charter which set out rights for South Africa’s black majority to the Sharpeville shootings of unarmed black protesters who had attempted to march on the South African city of Cape Town to protest segregationist laws; it had been a long struggle.

The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 led to the African National Congress’ (ANC) adoption of an armed struggle and the setting up of its military wing,Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the National). For the next 34 years the black majority continued its political struggle to end apartheid. Things reached a critical mass in the 1970s with the formation of Steve Biko’s black consciousness movement (which led to his death in police detention) and riots among secondary school children in the black township in Soweto who were protesting the use of the language of Afrikaans in their schools (the language they considered to be the language of the oppressor). The Soweto riots resulted in the deaths of hundreds of school children, shot down by South African police in a slaughter which led directly to the campaign to make the black townships ungovernable and finally — in 1990 — led to the release of Nelson Mandela and the advent of black majority rule.

Throughout the anti-apartheid struggle, Bishop Tutu had been in the forefront. Whether it was using his pulpit to denounce the apartheid system on moral grounds, comforting the wounded or burying the dead, he spoke out fiercely against the oppression of the non-white peoples of South Africa.

But as a Christian, he embraced non-violent resistance and never supported the armed struggle. One particular form of violence became a symbol of black resistance against the apartheid regime but, ironically, it was often directed against blacks by other blacks. Mandela’s then-wife, Winnie Mandela, a leader and political activist in her own right (who people at one time called her the Mother of the Nation) made an inflammatory speech at the height of the campaign to make the townships ungovernable.

Calling for the liberation of the oppressed masses of this country, she said: “We worked in the white man’s kitchen, we bring up the white man’s children, we could have killed them at any time we wanted to. Together, hand in hand, with our sticks and our matches with our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.”

The “necklaces” she referred to (and popularised as a result of her speech) were rubber tyres filled with petrol and forced over the victim’s head and shoulders, trapping his arms against his side. It was then set alight.

Needless to say, it was a brutal way to die and usually reserved for black collaborators with the apartheid regime. Consequently, many a black policeman met this awful fate. The apartheid government accused Mrs. Mandela of threatening the white population with incineration in her speech. She denied that this was what she meant but the use of necklaces was said to have been sanctioned by her and the popularity of this method of execution increased.

Bishop Tutu was adamant in his opposition to this type of violence being used and one unforgettable picture shows him in the midst of a crowd who were about to carry out this act, protecting the potential victim and pleading with the mob not to engage in what he considered to be an act of inhumanity.

Still, whatever her shortcomings, it was Winnie Mandela who would later warn the people that once South Africa got a black majority government they needed to keep the government close to their chests because otherwise they might find it walking away from them. This is a profound observation in view of what has happened since.

The wealth gap between black and white in South Africa is vast, very much larger than anything that exists between black and white in Bermuda. The government has been accused of moving too slowly to change that. And the trade union movement, once a strong ally of the ANC liberation organisation, now finds itself estranged from the ANC as the government. In fact, a new black elite finds itself increasingly separate from the black poor in South Africa, as they make new friends among the corporate and industrial power brokers who are only interested in the colour green. Even though South Africa has embraced an affirmative action policy the process is still too slow to close the black/white wealth gap. In rural areas, just as in Zimbabwe, the issue is land ownership and the disproportionate amount that is white-controlled.

The ANC government has not taken the path that Robert Mugabe has taken in terms of confiscating white-owned land. But, increasingly, the black rural population in South Africa, impatient with the government’s slow pace of land reform, have taken matters into their own hands. Increased numbers of white farms are being attacked and many white farmers and their black employees have been killed.

Violent crime, as cited by Bishop Tutu in his recent denunciation of the country’s direction, is a great concern in South Africa with a murder rate that is now one of the highest in the world.

But perhaps one of the biggest failures of the government is its policy on Aids, South Africa having the highest incidence of this disease in Africa and one of the highest in the world. For a long time President Thabo Mbeki refused to allow the the life-saving anti-retroviral drug therapy for Aids sufferers to be part of the care regime in his country, claiming that poverty was behind the epidemic.

His government also has a Health Minister who has made some very curious statements concerning the treatment of Aids. If these dark and negligent remarks did not constitute grounds for criminal charges being pressed against her, then certainly they should have resulted in her being removed from her position as Health Minister.

Bishop Tutu must have looked at the state of his country and become increasingly concerned, hence his harsh indictment of where his country is going. The problem is, does anyone hear him — and more importantly, is there the will to change things?