BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Lauren LeVern here, we're taking our Easter break so until we're back on air,

we're showcasing a few programs from our archive, as usual the music's been shortened for right

reasons. This week's guest is former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, who celebrates his

90th birthday this year. He was cast away by Sue Lawley in 1994.

My cast away this week is a priest. His father was a schoolmaster, his mother a domestic servant.

He wanted to be a doctor but his parents couldn't afford the fees so he trained as a teacher

and then transferred to the priesthood in his mid-twenties. In itself it's not a particularly

unusual story except that this priest was a black South African brought up in the system of a partate.

For the past 30 years he's used his position in the Anglican Church to speak out against the

injustices which oppressed his people. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 he's today

recognized as one of the principal architects of South Africa's multi-racial future. He is the

Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town the most reverend Desmond Tutu. You spent a lifetime fighting the

evil of a partate and this year in April as we all know black South Africans queued up to vote

in their country's first democratic elections. Was that day a miracle for you or was it something

you had always known would happen? No words anywhere in the world would ever be able to

describe adequately how we all felt on that day. And of course I mean we recognize now. Yeah it was

a miracle. But it has to be said in I think it was 1979 you predicted that Nelson Mandela would

lead South Africa. I mean you were five years out. Yeah. But that's what you said. So you were you always

so convinced that that the unbelievable would happen or were you just do understandably being

encouraging. Most of the time one had this as an article of faith. You know the issue is not

in doubt if God before us who can be against us but there were times when you had to hold on to

...