Troublemakers

Before heading off to seminary I spent a year and a half editing the newspaper of the Diocese of Michigan.  Sometime in 1980 an Anglican priest from South Africa visited Detroit, and I arranged to interview him for an article in The Record.

His name has long since vanished from memory.  He seemed a perfectly ordinary clergy person, unremarkable in any way... until I asked him about Desmond Tutu, the black Archbishop of Cape Town.  The priest's face darkened.  "Tutu is a troublemaker," the man declared.  "Really?" I asked, quite taken aback.  "A troublemaker," he repeated, and then he refused to take any further questions.  The interview ended awkwardly.

An artifact of Apartheid.

That incident reminds me of a story told by a friend at college.  During the summer after his sophomore year, Webb took a sightseeing trip to Africa.  Soon after he arrived in South Africa, Webb met a young black woman.  It was a chance encounter on a street corner.  I think Webb asked directions.  They chatted for a few minutes and then went their separate ways.

Webb saw nothing unusual in this.  But the South African government did.  The next morning Webb was accosted by two burly, intimidating police officers in plain clothes.  They wanted to know how long he and the young woman had known each other, and what they had talked about.  Then they told him to leave South Africa by sundown; otherwise he would be arrested.  Webb left.  In those days (1967, if memory serves) a white man, even an American tourist needing directions, did not chat with a black woman on the street corner.

Nelson Mandela votes in
South Africa's 1994 election.

The death yesterday of Nelson Mandela — a political prisoner for 27 years, and then the father of his nation — reminds us that a generation of troublemakers is rapidly passing on.  These men and women, like Bishop Desmond in South Africa and many civil rights workers in America, opposed injustice by non-violent means and became the consciences of their countries.  Like Nelson Mandela, they did their duty, and we are the better for it. •••