In the Footsteps of Desmond Tutu & Nelson Mandela

By Michael Spath

In October 2025, 26 travelers from ten US states and Scotland, representing ten Christian denominations and other voices of conscience, embarked on a journey "In the Footsteps of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela" in South Africa. Fort Wayne participants were: Anita Dortch, Anna Sevier, Abby Niederman, and tour co-leader, Michael Spath.

Each of the members of the group are activists on behalf of Palestine and/or activists on behalf of justice and civil, political, and human rights in their own communities.

Co-leading the group with Michael was South African Anglican priest, Rev. Edwin Arrison, one of the leaders of Kairos South Africa and a close personal friend and colleague of Archbishop Tutu, Deon Kitching, Embrace South Africa Tours.

In addition to experiencing the beauty of South Africa's people, we whale- and penguin-watched, wine- and fynbos-tasted, saw the Big Five on safari, and drummed with young people we support in one of the townships. But the overriding goal of the trip was to learn lessons from their anti-apartheid struggle and their leading the world in support for Palestine for our Palestinian activism and our resistance to racism and authoritarianism in our country.

Included in the trip were rich – and sometimes disturbing in their similarities to what’s happening in Palestine as well as what’s happening in our country – visits to: the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation Museum, the District 6 Museum (we learned of the destruction of an entire neighborhood in the service of apartheid, with its population replaced by a colonial power), Freedom Park, and the Apartheid Museum, where you were given tickets to enter through gates marked, “White” and “Non-White.”

Particularly moving were: a tour of Robben Island, led by a former prisoner and visiting Nelson Mandela’s cell; Constitution Hill, where both Mandela and a young Indian lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, were imprisoned. And the group walked through Soweto, where in 1976, 20,000 school children rose up against being forced to learn their oppressorsAfrikaans language; during their demonstration, police opened fire, killing 600 children and youth, an important turning point in their struggle against apartheid.

Among all the things we learned, three stand out: (1) the apartheid South African government so resisted its grip on the government, there were more deaths to violence between 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and 1994, when apartheid was legally abolished, then in the years of 1948, when apartheid was established, and 1990 – colonialism dies hard and not without a struggle; (2) post-apartheid South Africa still has an incredibly large gap between the wealthy and the poor – it has been one of the highest priorities for the government in the last 30 years; (3) Ruth Bader Ginsburg lauded South Africa’s constitution as a “great piece of work,” “a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights.”

We met with Law professor, Dr. Hugh Gorder about South Africa’s successful genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, as well as from anti-apartheid activist, Rev. Allan Boesak who challenged us, “Gaza is the rock against which all pretend democracies are smashing themselves. The integrity of our politics, the authenticity of our faith, the authority of our witness demands it.”

We had two conversations with South African Bonhoeffer scholar, Dr. John deGruchy, who compared the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany to the Black South African Church rising up against the racist apartheid government as well as the Palestinian Christian community’s witness to the genocide happening in their country, supported by a complicit US government.

And we heard from pastor-activist-politician, Rev. Frank Chikane, who had undergone torture and assassination attempts from the apartheid government, who served as Director General in the office of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki under Nelson Mandela, who was a co-author of the seminal 1985 Kairos South Africa document calling apartheid, “a Christian heresy.” He challenged the group: “Colonized peoples have three options given them,” he said. “’Submit, Leave, or Die.’ We chose to stay and fight. Even then, they would have committed genocide against us, but they didn’t because the world didn’t allow them to violate international law.”

Those of us who are activists for Palestine, we couldn’t help but make the parallels. None of us could miss the connection between the anti-apartheid activism in the last half of the 20th century in South Africa and the need for a similar resistance today against the powers in our country.

The people, the culture, the history, the struggles of South Africa resonated deeply in the spirits of the travelers. And we took away many lessons for our lives and our continued work for justice in our communities