Naomi Tutu arrived back in the United States from South Africa on Sunday morning, having spent two weeks leading a group of women through her homeland.
"The trip to South Africa was a wonderful opportunity to bring African-American women into connections with South African black women to talk about their shared experiences, their different experiences, their frustrations, challenges, victories, that kind of thing. It's so important for changing our world, to bring people together," said Tutu, the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning Anglican Church Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Facilitating such connections is only one of her passions. She's also devoted to creating a world in which the worth and dignity of every person is recognized.
Preview: Naomi Tutu
What: Women's Center of San Joaquin County luncheon
When: 11:30 a.m. Wednesday
Where: Stockton Arena
Admission: Tickets are sold out
Information: womenscentersjc.org
That's why she's coming to Stockton as the keynote speaker at Wednesday's Women's Center of San Joaquin County's 31st annual luncheon at the Stockton Arena. The organization's annual fundraiser is sold out for the first time executive director Joelle Gomez can remember.
"It speaks to her name, that people can't wait to hear her speak," Gomez said.
She's heard Tutu speak twice before, including at a conference for leaders of organizations such as the Women's Center.
"She speaks from first-hand experience, understanding people who are oppressed, and she speaks from experience knowing how to get beyond that, how to keep the fight up, how to engage people," Gomez said. "When you listen to her speak, she moves you, because she speaks in such a meaningful way. You have to hear her voice. There's something powerful in the words she chooses, the pace she speaks."
Tutu's lilting dialect - which stems from her birth in South Africa, boarding school education in Swaziland and England and college education in the United States - is warm and gracious. Her words are eloquent, and powerful, as they will be on Wednesday before a packed arena.
"I speak as a woman who has been in an abusive relationship herself," Tutu said. "This is my story. For me it is important that those of us who have had that experience speak out about it and let people who are in that situation know that you can get out, and you can get out with not just your sanity and sense of self worth, but also with a larger purpose in your life."
The 50-year-old single mother of three, who makes her home in Nashville, is one of millions of women who have suffered in abusive relationships. She's worldly, well educated, and bears one of the world's most recognized names, but she was a victim of abuse for six years.
"Very few of us start off in an abusive relationship," Tutu said. "When the relationship starts, it's not abusive. It creeps up on you. By the time you realize how unhealthy and violent the relationship is, so much of you has been taken away bit by bit. Finally, being in that place, rebuilding yourself to the point of having the courage to walk away is a huge undertaking. I think it's important that that story be told."
Tutu has been speaking out since she first arrived in the U.S. in 1978 as a student at Kentucky's Berea University. The 1,500-student campus was dedicated to cultural diversity, even if the surrounding community was stuck in Jim Crow sensibilities. She was among students speaking out against South Africa's apartheid rule, and administrators began a class on South African policy for all freshmen students.
She followed that by forming a foundation to help victims of apartheid who'd moved to other countries, and after graduation worked for an American-based company creating economies for sub-Saharan African nations. Today, in addition to leading groups to South Africa to bring people together, she represents her father on the board of directors of Peace Jam, which brings together high school and college students with Novel Peace Prize winners. She also speaks.
"Public speaking, when I first started, terrified me," Tutu said. "I still get very nervous before a presentation, but I enjoy it completely. It's something that in a way, I step away and it's not me. It feels wonderful to be able to reach people with my voice and with my words. I use that gift for encouraging and challenging people to be the best people they can be in terms of relationships with others; to be those who stand up against racism, s*xism, homophobia; to be those who will stand up to say that diversity is a necessary and a wonderful thing."
She admits, as a black woman who grew up in apartheid South Africa, her speaking out about racism and s*xism are a bit self-serving. That doesn't diminish the power of her words, though.
"When I connect my personal story, I also connect with the story of our world, our story of struggling for justice in so many places, in so many ways, whether in our homes, or in our communities fighting against racism, or the whole country like South Africa trying to end apartheid. All struggles are connected," Tutu said. "They are about recognizing the worth and dignity of each human being and violence against women, particularly intimate violence, is a core place of injustice, oppression, and dehumanization. I think it's important to make that clear. It's not some little thing. We talk about oppression of apartheid, that huge dramatic thing people struggling against. It's exactly the same oppression of human beings, exactly the same dehumanization. You cannot say that you're opposed to oppression and turn a blind eye toward violence against women."
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Tuesday, March 29th 2011 at 1:35PM
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