Cape Town, (South Africa) – Just days after taking aim at former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has slammed his own government for its incompetence.
Tutu, who was attending a book launch of Father Michael Lapsley's autobiography, Redeeming the Past, in Cape Town on Monday night, queried: “How can we have children 18 years after apartheid who go to school under trees.
The Nobel Laureate also asked how the country could have children go to school when their education “is being crushed as the attend schools without textbooks and no one is held accountable? Have we so quickly forgotten the price of freedom?”
The outspoken clergy was addressing the text book scandal where thousands of children never received their government-issued books.
“People are going to sleep hungry in this freedom for which people were tortured and harmed," he said, adding: “It is hard to believe people are getting such money and benefits, and are driving such flashy cars while the masses suffer in cramped shacks.”
Tutu made global headlines last week he pulled out of a summit in Johannesburg because he refused to share a platform with Blair, over the latter’s support for the Iraq war which Tutu said was “morally indefensible”.
