Foreword for Real Stories Gallery, July 2010
Twenty years ago, as we watched and willed each footstep Nelson Mandela placed away from the Victor-Verster Prison, we became reborn as a free nation. What we saw, said and felt on that day in February 1990, is imprinted in our spirit and has made us change our lives. It was the day we knew that our fight to dismantle racial apartheid had been won. It was a day for international celebration. Our friends around the world shared our joy, as together we stood up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. What a wonderful gift we created for our children and our grandchildren. We could look at them in the eye and proudly declare our legacy of freedom to them.
Today when I look back over the emerging years of our freedom in South Africa, I see a new nation. Sadly, though, I also see a menace that was not dispelled twenty years ago and lives in the shadows created by our silent acceptance. That menace is the scourge of HIV and AIDS, the scourge that today rushes through the bodies of our people, old and young. And everyday when we let our fears cast the shadow, we let the menace grow. Let us reach out to our brothers and sisters and not speak in hushed tones of shame; but instead let them know that we care. It is time for us to nurture kindness within our homes and to reach out for joy born of freedom and respect.
Today our international communities of storytellers are giving us the opportunity to come together and stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. I invite you all to join us, so we may harness the power of our humanity and our enormous capacity for creativity, to mobilize our imaginations and weave together through our stories, a vision that we shall reach for which will influence our thoughts and actions towards our kin.
God bless you
Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation (DTHF)
Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation is an ‘action-research' organisation with the aim to lessen the impact of HIV on vulnerable communities through innovation and a passion for humanity. The Foundation had its beginnings as the HIV Research Unit based at New Somerset Hospital, Cape Town in the early 1990's and was well known as one of the first public clinics to offer antiretroviral therapy to those living with HIV. In 2004 the Foundation, supported by Emeritus Archbishop Desmond and Leah Tutu, extended its activities to include HIV treatment and prevention, the training of health professionals in HIV management through distance learning, and tuberculosis treatment monitoring in some of the poorest communities of the Western Cape.
All the Foundation's activities are underpinned by evaluative and innovative academic research produced by the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre. The Centre, based at the University of Cape Town's Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, operates symbiotically with the Foundation's five field sites and its mobile unit, the Tutu Tester. Pairing community-driven development and internationally acclaimed research, the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation envisions a brighter future where HIV is manageable and its presence diminished.
The Foundation is guided by Professor Robin Wood, Director; Linda-Gail Bekker, Chief Operations Officer, Associate Professor. **Real Stories Gallery wishes to thank Lavinia Crawford-Browne, Marketing and Liaison Officer at the DTHF, for her friendship, wisdom and guidance.
"Hate Has No Place In The House Of God" by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Cape Town (March 2010)
Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity--or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity. It is time to stand up for another wrong.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.
Uganda's Parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi. These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.
Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.
And they are living in hiding--away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen, and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.
But they are sinners, I can hear the preachers and politicians say. They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished. My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?
The wave of hate that is underway must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.
God Bless You
