TUTU'S GALAXY
BISHOP Desmond Tutu's decision to in- vite a 'galaxy of international stars', and prominent foreign opponents of the South African government to his enthronement as Archbishop of Cape Town will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the bishop's career. But there is a strange irony in his desire that American personalities should attend the ceremony. It was Tutu who, in one of his more recent outbursts, told the West to 'go to hell'; it is Tutu who calls regularly for the total isolation of the South African government through econo- mic and cultural boycotts. If Western governments and actors' trade unions took the measures demanded by Bishop Tutu, no one in South Africa would have heard of Stevie Wonder or Bill Cosby, except of course for those, like the bishop, who are fortunate enough to spend much of their time in the United States. But the decision to invite Senator Edward Kennedy is the most puzzling of all. His last visit to South Africa was such a disaster that the United Democratic Front, who had originally in- vited him, had dissociated themselves from the Senator by the end of the visit. Indeed, Mr Kennedy was booed off the platform as he rose to address one audience in Soweto, thus achieving the almost unparalleled feat of temporarily uniting the South African government with one of the more radical opposition groups. Bishop Tutu must be one of the very few people left in South Africa who would believe that Mr Ken- nedy's public concern for the black major- ity is unconnected with his own political ambitions. In the past the bishop has dismissed suggestions that he might himself have political ambitions. But then again, he denied he was in the running for the archbishopric of Cape Town until a couple of days before his election. The more the tubulent archbishop-elect behaves like an aspiring American presidential candidate the less sympathy there will be for the less prominent and more vulnerable opponents of apartheid. He helps neither the Angli- can Church, nor the political cause he has espoused, by his latest stunt.
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