Impact

"Desmond Tutu meets to end dispute between police and mothers of children that have been arrested." (CNN Desmond Tutu: A Life in Pictures).

The first 5 years after apartheid had ended in 1994, Desmond Tutu was appointed as head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where he helped to impact the repercussions from both sides of apartheid (Biography.com Editors). Tutu was forced to face the many atrocities committed by South African police or bombings from those who supported apartheid (Biography.com Editors). In 1999, Desmond Tutu would also release his first of many books called No Future Without Forgiveness, where he gives a first hand account of apartheid, his faith, and how he was able to look to God in a time of oppression and suffering, with the hope of spreading a more global reaction to apartheid (God Is Not a Christian). Tutu shows the impact of the election of Nelson Mandela in his book No Future Without Forgiveness stating, “ it was like a festival. It was a wonderful vindication for all of those who had borne the burden and the heat of repression, the little people whom apartheid had turned into the anonymous ones, faceless, voiceless, counting for nothing in their motherland, whose noses had been rubbed daily in the dust” (No Future Without Forgiveness 6). Tutu’s impact on South Africa permanently changed the way that millions of South Africans live their lives today.