President Thabo Mbeki, who has in the recent past crossed swords publicly with Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, on Friday launched a spirited defence of Tutu, who recently urged former Deputy President Jacob Zuma to stay out of the race for the presidency.

Tutu earned the wrath of the school learner organisation, the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) for his remarks against Zuma. In his letter on ANC Today, the ruling party’s online journal, Mbeki labeled Cosas’s rebuke of Tutu as a “truly distressing personal attack" on the archbishop, whom he praised as “one of our national heroes”.

The row started with Tutu’s remarks in delivering the Harold Wolpe memorial lecture last month that he would not be able to hold his head high if African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma, who was dismissed as the nation’s deputy president last year, became president of the country. Zuma is currently on trial for corruption.

Tutu went on to say he wished some of Zuma’s advisors would dissuade him from standing for the presidency of the ANC and SA. Zuma’s admission that he had engaged in unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman late last year, earned him widespread condemnation. Tutu also lamented the fact that the woman was half Zuma’s age.

On Friday Zuma’s camp hit back at Tutu, but his key backers avoided a direct public confrontation with Tutu. Personal adviser Elias Khumalo pointed out to Tutu that Zuma had apologised for his “wrongdoing”.

However the most bizarre response came from Cosas, whose president Kenny Motshegoa said: “We are now not sure of (Tutu’s) mental status (sic) as it leaves much to taste. His public behaviour is reckless and he is a scandalous man who cannot impose his moral views."

Motshegoa demanded that Tutu make public details of his own sexual history before condemning Zuma for his wayward behaviour.

All of this did not sit well with Mbeki, who was up in arms at the spectacle of “children” demanding to know the sexual histories of their “grandfathers”.

“How is it possible that these children become so emboldened that they can easily dismiss the views of their grandfather by describing him as “a scandalous man?,” Mbeki asked in his outrage.

But ironically, the question can be answered by referring to Mbeki’s own public attitude to Tutu early last year, when he virtually accused the archbishop of lying when the latter lamented the lack of rational and open debate in the ranks of the ANC.

“One of the fundamental requirements for the rational discussion suggested by the archbishop is familiarity with the facts relevant to any matter under discussion, as well as respect for the truth,” Mbeki shot back, in the same ANC Today letter he used this week to defend Tutu as a national hero. Tutu had never been a member of the ANC and knew nothing about the party, Mbeki said.

In contrast, Mbeki was this week asking how the “children” of Cosas had come to think they could speak on behalf of the ANC against Tutu. Last year the ANC proved it could belittle Tutu without any outside help. In a series of articles in ANC Today titled The Sociology of Public Discourse in SA, the ruling party cast Tutu and even former president Nelson Mandela as constructs of the white liberal media.

In an ironical riposte to Mbeki’s attack, Tutu wrote: “Thank you, Mr President, for telling me I am a liar with scant regard for the truth and a charlatan posing as a champion of the poor, the hungry, oppressed and voiceless. I will continue to pray for you and your Government by name daily, as I have done and as I did even for the apartheid government. God bless you."

With acknowledgement to Karima Brown, Vukani Mde and Business Day Weekender.