Desmond Tutu Walks on Water

This is an excuse to post a video of Desmond Tutu learning how to swim. His instructor: Richard Branson. Just enjoy.

Video still.

Desmond Tutu can’t do much wrong. He’s up there with Nelson Mandela. The latter complimented Tutu recently as “the voice of the voiceless.” Tutu restores our commitment to fight for decency and what’s right. On countless occasions he has called South Africa’s ruling class into line like he did its previous white rulers. When he stands up for and with gays and lesbians, celebrates when we feel the need to, and takes on intransigent regimes that remind him of Apartheid (“Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people”) or the American behemoth with their endless wars on terror.

I’ll cut Tutu slack for the empty justice of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (that’s some expensive slack, I know) which defines his early 1990s legacy,  the stale jokes he tells on the US lecture circuit or, in this case, below, for fraternizing with Richard Branson, who has a history of dodgy politics (for example, he is quite the fan of Margaret Thatcher, who wasn’t particularly fond of  Tutu and black South Africans) but has managed to squeeze nine lives out of the rest of us.

But this clip below of the Archbishop swimming – from Sundance Channel’s “Iconoclasts” series where two famous people hang around and chat – is worth just for seeing Tutu, in his swimming trunks (he learns how to swim). We won’t spoil the moment with a long social history of swimming in South Africa and why it is not unusual that black people of Tutu’s age never got a chance to learn how to swim or how this is sweet given Tutu’s leading role in the campaign to desegregating beaches near the end of Apartheid. Watch.

Further Reading