Tutu: Moses of Africa
By DAVID KAIZA
The East African, Nairobi

TWO DRAMATIC PICTURES capture the spirit of this book; one blurred shot taken in 1980 in the Eastern Rand, South Africa, shows Desmond Tutu struggling to stay upright as a man about to be lynched clings to his legs.

The second shot, taken nine years later in Gugulethu, Cape Town, shows him in his cassock outside a church, with four other men silhouetted against a rising cloud of tear gas.

The black and white prints tell of the drama, urgency and danger of life was under apartheid. They also …
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Pick of the paperbacks
Telegraph.co.uk
29/09/2007

John Allen was close to Desmond Tutu, his right-hand man indeed, for quite a number of years and is therefore a good person for this official biography. His title sums up the Archbishop’s ability (rare in South Africa) to excite huge crowds to love peace rather than violence.

The warts are there in the picture too, with Tutu’s occasional moments of despair and, saddest of all, his failure to convince some of his fellow-clerics that it was right to mix politics and religion. NB

Mountain Echo,  News from the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont
By John Morris

In November of 2006, my wife, Susan, and I had the opportunity to be in South Africa for two weeks. We visited our daughter, who has been studying there for three years, and we toured some towns and cities, met a lot of her friends, and saw some beautiful countryside and ocean shore. One of the last things I did before we returned home was purchase a copy of the new Rabble-Rouser for Peace: The Authorized Biography of Desmond Tutu, by John …
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Book review: Rabble-rouser for peace
28/09/2007  – City Press, Johannesburg

John Allen’s authorised biography of Desmond Tutu, entitled Rabble-Rouser For Peace, is a 400-page book that paints a picture of how this man of the cloth’s patience, open-mindedness, assertiveness and diligent efforts helped lead to the peaceful downfall of the former apartheid system.

The book starts by showing how the former Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town’s intelligence and photographic memory helped him to secure tertiary qualifications that allowed him to get a mere three hours sleep each night. But his studies were nearly derailed …
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FaithInSociety blog, November 2006
http://faithinsociety.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_faithinsociety_archive.html

Despite a daft headline (presumably it was meant as ironic), there’s an interesting review by John Carlin of the new Archbishop Desmond Tutu biography, published in The Observer. The key point is, Tutu communicates an interest in others and a vibrancy for life not centred on himself, a ‘religious in-group’ or the church as institution. Rather, he invites us to experience the possibility of the Gospel as a generous, capacious, inviting and domination-free adventure which treats others with dignity and respect. This, not defensive whingeing about “loss …
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