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New Archbishop of Cape Town Elected as Desmond Tutu Steps Down

Episcopal News Service. June 26, 1996 [96-1500]

Noel Bruyns, Correspondent for Ecumenical News International

(ENI) At an elective assembly held June 4, 1996, Bishop Winston Njongonkulu Ndungane was chosen to succeed Desmond Tutu as Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.

After the announcement of Ndungane's election, Tutu reminded South Africans that their country's president Nelson Mandela was, during the apartheid era, a political prisoner for many years on the infamous Robben Island. "So was the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of South Africa, so was Bishop Njongonkulu -- there must be something about the air on Robben Island," he quipped.

He expressed his great pleasure at the election of Ndungane to succeed him as Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (CPSA). Although retiring from office, Tutu will continue as chairman of the government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission which is unearthing atrocities perpetrated during the apartheid era. He has postponed plans to study in the United States and write books on theology.

Currently bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman in the Northern Cape, Ndungane, aged 55, will be enthroned in Cape Town on September 15. In 1960, he was involved in anti-apartheid demonstrations while a student at the University of Cape Town. In 1963, he began a three-year sentence on Robben Island as a political prisoner.

"We have emerged from a crucible of fire where many people have been wounded and scarred," Ndungane said in a statement after the election. "An urgent task for the church is the transformation of agents of brokenness into angels of healing."

He also urged South Africans to address the problem of poverty, calling it "one of the greatest challenges in our country." As Christians, he said, "we have to pledge ourselves to work for the elimination of poverty in our society and to ensure that people have all that is necessary for a fully human life.... We must commit ourselves consistently to put before people the values of society as ordained by God."

Tutu steps down at the end of this month after 10 years as head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and the island of St. Helena. About 7,000 people bade him farewell at a marathon three-and-a-half-hour church service in Cape Town in early June. In his final sermon as leader of the CPSA, he made an impassioned plea for peace, and warned that crime, corruption and greed could destroy the democracy for which so many people had fought. "The worst thing we can do for democracy and freedom is to become docile lapdogs," Tutu warned.

Diane Porter, senior executive for program, represented the Episcopal Church at international observances in South Africa in late June, marking Tutu's retirement. "His laughter ringing out has given courage and confidence to a down-trodden people," said Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey at the event.

During the service, Carey presented to Tutu the inaugural Award for Outstanding Service to the Anglican Communion. "It has long been my intention to introduce a special award, which would be made only very rarely, an award to individuals from around the Anglican Communion who, through their lifetime, make a quite outstanding contribution to the life of the communion," Carey said. "There could be no more suitable person to receive this first award," he told Tutu.

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