BOOK REVIEW: Michael Battle’s ‘Desmond Tutu: A Spiritual Biography of South Africa’s Confessor’

“We cannot say that we believe in God if we hate each other–much less say we love God and do the same.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2021.

This quote by Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of the Anglican church summarizes his message to the world profoundly captured by Michael Battle in his biography of him. This quote is in the afterword of Battle’s biography.

I grew up assuming the presence of an Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that spoke out against one’s own government while at the time encouraging the revolutionary elements to negotiate with the South African government supported by Neo-Nazi elements.

Since his passing in December 2021, I’ve wondered if my country’s government will in fact succeed in ignoring voices like Tutu’s. Michael Battle’s biography necessarily documents the significance of Tutu’s voice for a new generation.

The study of Desmond Tutu’s life is so important because in his lifetime, he criticizes not only the Afrikaner colonial leaders from the 1980s, but also he criticizes native South African neocolonial leaders.

The books is divided into three units: purgation, illumination, and union, each a phase of what Battle calls Christian mysticism. Purgation being Tutu’s formation as a church leader, an illumination which is acceptance of the light which is his leading role as chair of the South African government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The third stage is “union” which Battle writes his Tutu being designated as a global Elder and sage. The single MOST important quote of this entire biography was in the twelfth chapter:

“Tutu helps us see how Western imperialism can no longer shape how Christians engage the world” (284).

The first five chapters make up the first unit, “purgation,” where we learn how Tutu grew up. An important group for Tutu was the Anglican Community of the Resurrection, as well as Trevor Huddleston: Battle wrote that Tutu learned from both that “there should be no effort to ease the tension between his religion and his political activity” (28). Battle would write in this chapter that “getting the oppressor to see God in common with the oppressed was Tutu’s greatest contribution and what Tutu will be known for throughout human history” (34). In the third chapter, Battle writes that for Tutu it seems as if there is a conspiracy “among certain Western countries and big businesses to keep Blacks in South Africa forever in bondage” (65).

Battle details Tutu’s thorough class and color analysis when he writes that “Tutu believed that the South African government provided substantial privileges and concessions to certain blacks in urban areas thereby co-opting them to form a buffer between the white capitalist haves and the Black have nots.” Battle reminds us that Tutu shows us that society is a result of hard work of the Afrikaner (Dutch-descended South African) making the African-descended South African feel inferior. In this formative stage of Tutu’s development, Battle writes that Tutu was thankful that Beyers Nande emerged because he was a leading Afrikaner cleric who challenged the status quo. Battle would write that Nande lost his Anglican parish for “refusing to retract his signature from the 1960 Cottesloe Consultation. The most profound point Battle makes ending this unit is that “the more vilification he got from the government, the higher his stock rose in the Black community and overseas” (98).

Battle begins his fifth chapter equating the election of Nelson Mandela to the “end of apartheid” (127). However the writings of John Pilger and Ali Mazrui tell us that apartheid did not die after the election of Nelson Mandela, it simply changed forms. This is the only part of the book, where Battle did not thoroughly enough describe the consequences of Tutu’s choices. In this fifth chapter, he writes that Tutu “looked forward to international financial investments and he hoped, aid, which would help “our infant democracy to succeed, because South Africa will be the locomotive to drive Africa’s economic train” (127).

However these foreign investments came at a cost. According to John Pilger,

“with Mandela’s reassurances, foreign capital, led by American companies, surged back into Southern Africa, tripling its stake to $11.7 billion. The unspoken deal was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule: the ‘crown of political power’ for the ‘jewel of the South African economy’ as Professor Ali Mazrui put it” (Freedom Next Time p.221)

Tutu’s choice to go to the West asking them to fund the South African government contravened what Malcolm X warned in his 1964 speech to the United Nations warning leaders of African nations not to take foreign aid. As I finished reading this book, I wondered if I would be reading it if Tutu had not chose to appeal to Europe for their funding the South African government.

In his second section called “illumination,” Battle describes Tutu’s role as a mediator and how he was seen by some South Africans as a traitor: “he is viewed by Black South African scholars such as Itumeleng Mosala as betraying the struggle of the oppressed with too close a tie with European theology” (154). Battle describes Tutu’s theology as one of Ubuntu, a concept of Bantu cosmology that means “human beings need each other in order to be human” (46). Battle writes that “for Tutu, God takes the side of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien” (197). Tutu played a supportive role in the South African Council of Churches that helped the Anglican church. Although he played a helpful role, he made it clear that “Tutu remained reluctant to be a member of any political organization” (197).

His ninth chapter entitled “Leaving Church” that ends the second unit of “illumination,” Battle describes how Tutu’s work went beyond the Anglican church and that “the Christian must be more aware of how the church cooperated with colonialism and how historically white churches had a lot to gain by separating human beings on the basis of race” (214). This recalls Fidel Castro’s interview with Frei Betto in the book “Fidel and Religion” where he says that “imperialism doesn’t allow social changes to take place; it doesn’t accept them and tries to prevent them by force” (186).

In his last unit called “Union,” Battle describes Tutu’s influence on the world. Battle cites Tutu saying that Blacks would welcome the Russians as their saviors from the evil of apartheid. Battle writes that he was sought over the world to lend his help, from: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, the Congo, Gambia, Honduras, Mauritius, Ireland, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the Solomon Islands. Although Battle says that Tutu “never supported the invasion of Iraq on grounds of just war theory,” Battle does not question enough the role the West plays in its setting up “democratic governments” across the world (238). Although Western media calls these “democratic,” the intrepid work of journalists like Marcus Garvey and Julian Assange reveal to us that these governments are “military dictatorships” that absolutely contravene those principles Tutu espouses. Battle comes closest to questioning the role of these dictatorships when he writes what Tutu says about Nicaragua: “The USA supports quite vigorously those called Contras in Nicaragua” (238). Battle comes even closer to the U.S. support for military dictatorships when he asks the question to Christians: “when Christians go to war, what are we defending?” A hierarchy that was set up by Western interests that does the same this former colonial masters did? This should NOT be what we set up.

In his 1986 speech at the National Press Club, James Baldwin said that the European vision of the world is obsolete. This vision relies on supporting military dictatorships. Battle makes clear that Tutu does defend the work of revolutionaries who defend freedom from colonial oppression when he writes that for Tutu “violence may in certain situations be necessary” (243). Battle underscores this point when he writes that “what is most required by spiritual leaders is a prophetic stance against the ready assumption of Western capitalist triumphalism” (251). Battle writes that the Western church “needs unity” so it can address the “sin of an international economic system that depends on an indebted developing world” (252). This speaks to why Tutu appealing to the European banks to fund the South African government is a contradiction.

Because of the Anglican church’s conservatism, Tutu was not able to lead the Church to unity over same sex blessings. And Battle describes South Africans’ resistance to Western feminism which is seen as “just another form of Western imperialism” (259). Battle describes one’s Christian walk as a battle in which one is fighting on every front: ” Those who followed Jesus sought union with God by defeating those forces endemic in the breakdown of human relationships…Jesus discipled those around him to move toward the demonic forces in order to cast them out from the world” (275).

In the twelfth chapter, Tutu writes that “every praying Christian must have a passionate concern for who is neighbor because to treat anyone as if they were less than children of God is to deny them in the validity of one’s own experience” (278). Although Tutu understands where violence can be used, Battle writes the holds up Tutu as a model of a Christian spirituality of liberation, because Tutu shows us how to refuse violence as the normative means by which to rescue the oppressed.

In the last chapter Battle describes differences between the “Western perspectives” and the “African perspectives” but does not describe what he means by “African perspectives.” What he described recalls the work of the Black psychologist Kobi Kambon in differentiating between African and European worldviews.

In his conclusion, Battle writes that “we learn from Tutu that we must oppose injustice and oppression as religious people, even at the cost of personal freedom, or life itself.” By writing this, Tutu recalls from the radical Christian tradition, abolitionists David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Pauline Hopkins and many others, all of whom opposed “injustice and oppression as religious people.” Battle is absolutely accurate in his assessment that “those who live in the Global North are far more socially isolated today than in any other time in history.” Therefore it is incumbent to be intentional about working with others to “oppose injustice and oppression” after a global pandemic. Tutu’s Afterword in Battle’s biography are his last published words: “I pray that I would have made a contribution in forming both a mature consciousness and conscience for those who say they believe in God.” Tutu did just that. Thank you to Michael Battle for documenting this. THIS REVIEW IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A FELLOW CHRISTIAN AND MY FORMER COLLEGE CLASSMATE CALVIN LIONEL NICHOLSON (1978-2022).

-RF.