I was crestfallen to hear of the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa (SA). He had been one of the architects of the movement against the Nazi-like apartheid government that kept blacks and “colored” people (5 classes of race division) cruelly subjugated. And he was my friend. I ended up doing a number of projects with him.
In 1987 one of my sculptures, “I Shot an Angel by Mistake”, was to be awarded to Tutu at a global gathering of the United Methodist Church in Louisville, KY. I was asked to make the presentation to him. It just so happens that my political satire group, The Montana Logging and Ballet Co. (MLBC) was also performing at the same event, so they of course wanted to sing at the presentation. When we did so we made a great connection with Tutu (who was so moved by the sculpture he wanted to take it with him on the plane!) The next day as he passed by us on the way to give his speech he said he wanted to have us sing for him at some event.
This was during the worst of the apartheid violence, when the white SA government was slaughtering protesters and torturing political prisoners. All of us were doing what we could to support the anti-apartheid movement. So we arranged for Tutu to come to Washington D.C. for a small fundraiser. There we performed a concert and he spoke. I remember the VIPs there––senators and a presidential candidate–– had to wait for Tutu to greet and thank all the help before he greeted anyone else in the room!
The MLBC went on then to invite Tutu to come to Helena, MT to do another fundraiser in 1990. Again we performed and he spoke, in his unforgettable combination of fiery rhetoric and humor, and we raised almost a million dollars in cash and scholarships for black South Africans.
Tutu wrote the liner notes for our first album, Take the Barriers Down, (Listen to the song.) the and I went on to do more sculpture projects with him. After the fall of the apartheid regime and the election of the great leader Nelson Mandela, he invited my manager Bob FitzGerald and I to SA to help raise money for a peace center outside the Cape Town prison where Mandela was a political prisoner for 27 years. There we stayed with Tutu’s secretary, got a private tour of the island prison, and I got permission from the new government to use stone the prisoners quarried for sculpture bases!
I ended up creating the bronze “Welcome Home” for that center (installed a year later) and also creating a bronze for Cape Town’s bid for the 2004 Olympics. That would have been a great party to celebrate SA’s relatively peaceful conversion to democracy, but it was not to be. After the 2004 Olympics were awarded to Athens for a few days my Olympic sculptures (“Olympic Africa”) were embroiled in a front-page controversy as the Cape Town businesses that funded the bid scrambled to recoup some of the money they’d spent and so tried to seize my bronzes. I told the press that I’d given the sculptures to Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (I hadn’t until that moment!) and they were saved.
Despite the success in SA the new leaders were embroiled in the sad corruption that has plagued the nation since, which Tutu’s secretary has struggled to counter as Tutu aged and suffered health issues. But she did tell me that Tutu, when he went to his private chapel during the worst years of apartheid to do his daily devotions, lit a candle before my bronze, The Rumble of Release. For me this is the greatest compliment I’ve ever received! Tutu, a tiny man, will always be a monument.
