The Three Big Ideas - and why I structured my project this way
Early in my research, it became clear that Desmond Tutu's life and influence were too large to cover evenly in a single report. There was simply too much information: speeches, political events, Church leadership, international reactions, and decades of activism. One of the biggest challenges was not finding material, but organising it and deciding what was most relevant to the questions that I wanted answered - the topics I was most keen on learning about.
To manage that, I built the report around three main pillars: Tutu's role in the Anti-Apartheid Movement as Archbishop of Cape Town, his Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, and his chairmanship of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Each one is a separate chapter of the same story, and each one builds on the last. The Nobel made him impossible to silence. Being impossible to silence allowed him to become Archbishop. Being Archbishop gave him the platform to lead the TRC. Once I could see that chain clearly, the whole structure of the project followed from it.
Of the three, I decided to drill down deepest on the Nobel Prize, and I think that was the right call. It's the hinge everything else swings on - and the questions it raises are genuinely interesting ones that the surface-level version of his story doesn't often ask, and yet gives us some interesting answers that lead to even greater insights into this legend of a man.
What I enjoyed most about this project
The personal connection made it feel real in a way that most school projects don't. The stories my Mom told about meeting Archbishop Tutu and all the things he got up to - I could hear the fondness in her voice and the passion with which she spoke about him, which peaked my interest even more. It felt like I wasn't just reading about a historical event in a textbook. I was reading about a place my family knows, a man my Mom met, and buildings that she walked past every day as a teenager. It was lovely sharing those memories with her.
I also really enjoyed the research itself, which surprised me. I expected it to feel like homework. It didn't. Every time I found a new source it opened up something I hadn't known. The bit about him writing a letter to Prime Minister Vorster six weeks before the Soweto Uprising, warning him that a "bloody catastrophe" was coming - and then being proven catastrophically right - he called it almost to the week. That's not hindsight. That was someone paying close enough attention to see what was coming when the people in power refused to.
The walking tour section was probably my favourite part to write. The idea that you could trace his entire life story by walking through Cape Town in about an hour - the cathedral, the Arch for the Arch, Bishopscourt, the City Hall balcony - made history feel like something you could actually touch. I'd love to do that walk with my Mom one day.
What I learned
What I learned most from this project was not just the history of Desmond Tutu, but the kind of person he was. What stood out most was how consistent he stayed throughout his life. He did not change his beliefs depending on what was easier or safer. Even when the country was angry and divided, he kept standing for nonviolence, fairness, and human dignity.
The project also changed how I think about influence and leadership. Before this, I probably thought real power mostly came from politics, money, or force. But Tutu showed that one person can have a huge impact just by being courageous, trustworthy, and consistent over a long time. People listened to him because he had earned respect through his actions.
Another thing I learned was that big change usually does not happen all at once. The moments people remember most, like the Nobel Prize or the TRC, only happened because of years of work before them. It made me realise that real leadership is built slowly through your actions and the way you treat people over time.
Overall, this project showed me how much impact one person can have if they stay true to what they believe in and keep pushing for change, even when it is difficult.
What surprised me
The thing that surprised me most wasn't a fact - it was a concept. Ubuntu.
"I am because we are."
Once I understood that idea properly, I understood why Tutu's whole approach was so consistent across sixty years of public life. He wasn't just opposed to apartheid because it was cruel to Black South Africans. He was opposed to it because dehumanising other people destroys your own humanity too.
That's a different argument from most political ones, and it explains why he could criticise the apartheid government and the ANC government in exactly the same breath without being contradictory. He only ever had one standard.
What I learned about the role of a historian
I think the biggest thing I learned is that historians don't just collect facts - they make choices about which facts matter and why.
Every section of this project involved deciding what to include, what to cut, and how to frame things. The same event can look completely different depending on which angle you approach it from. The Cape Town Defiance March is a story about courage and protest if you're writing from Tutu's perspective, and a story about a government losing control of its own narrative if you're writing from the apartheid regime's perspective. History is always told by someone, from somewhere, with their own point of view and bias.
I also learned that primary sources and secondary sources aren't equally useful for every question. The Nobel Committee's actual announcement speech is far more useful than Wikipedia if you want to know exactly what they were rewarding and why. Tutu's own Nobel lecture is far more useful than a biography if you want to understand his voice and his priorities. I found myself going back to primary sources more and more as the project went on, because secondary sources - even good ones - always filter the original through someone else's interpretation first.
The other thing I realised is that historians have to be honest about what they don't know and can't confirm. There were things I wanted to include but couldn't find solid enough sources for. Learning to leave things out because the evidence isn't strong enough, rather than just putting them in because they sound good, felt like an important discipline.
What I'd do differently
The main challenge was scope. So many things I came across in researching this project - apartheid, the Nobel, the TRC, the theology, the Cape Town geography - could be its own CBA. Cutting things that were interesting was difficult.
I'd handle that earlier next time: decide the three pillars first, before I've already fallen in love with material that doesn't fit into the narrower scope of this specific CBA.
I'd also engage more seriously with the criticism of the TRC. Tutu is not a controversial figure in the sense that most people agree he was on the right side of history, but the TRC wasn't without its critics.
A lot of victims felt that amnesty for confession wasn't justice - it was letting people off the hook. I touched on that, but I think I could have engaged with it more seriously. Good history doesn't just make the case for the hero; it sits with the difficult questions too.
Research skills and source evaluation
Finding sources on Desmond Tutu was actually not that difficult - he's famous enough that there's a lot out there. The Nobel Prize website alone gave me three primary documents that were central to the whole project: the official biography, the 1984 presentation speech, and Tutu's own Nobel lecture. Those were all free, publicly available, and directly from the source.
The challenge wasn't finding sources - it was evaluating them. There's a big difference between a Wikipedia article (useful overview, written by many hands, not always perfectly accurate), a Britannica entry (more reliable, peer-reviewed), a newspaper article (specific moment in time, particular angle), and a primary source like Tutu's own speech (what he actually said, in his own words, on the day). Learning to think about where a source comes from, who wrote it, when, and for what purpose made me read everything a bit differently.
The South African History Archive (SAHA) and South African History Online were two sources I wish I'd found earlier. They're more specifically focused than the international sources and contain things you won't find easily anywhere else - like the detailed record of the Cape Town Defiance March, or the SACC archive at Wits University. For Irish students researching South African history, those sites are genuinely invaluable and worth knowing about.
The one area where finding sources was genuinely hard was the personal and local detail - the stories about Bishopscourt, about what the neighbourhood was like under apartheid, about Mandela's first night of freedom being spent there, about how apartheid made people feel and the genuine feelings people had towards the Arch. That kind of granular local history isn't always written down in a Google-able format.
Some of it came from my Mom, my Nan and my Dad who fortunately could all give me different perspectives based on different generations, different cultures and different lived experiences. I had to treat that as an oral source - important and real, but not formally citable in the same way as a published document. Historians deal with that all the time, apparently. Now I understand why.
What I'll take away from this project
Three key things:
Ubuntu
"I am because we are." I keep coming back to it. It's a fairly simple concept but it has a lot of weight if you actually apply it. The idea that what you do to other people you also do to yourself, that cruelty diminishes the person being cruel, that you can't really separate your own humanity from the humanity of the people around you. That's not just a nice thought. It's actually a useful way of looking at the world.
Moral consistency
The hardest kind of courage isn't facing the obvious villain, it's calling out your own side when they're wrong - and Tutu did that his whole life.
And the hat-tip
A small act of dignity can change everything for the person who witnesses it. It matters more than you think. Respect and kindness goes a long way.
"Ultimately, the good is going to prevail."
~ Desmond Tutu
Conclusion
I want to end this reflection the way I probably should have started it - by just saying outright what I think about this man, in plain language, without academic framing. Desmond Tutu was remarkable. Not in the watered-down, everyone-gets-a-trophy sense of that word. Remarkable in the literal sense: worth remarking on. Worth stopping and pointing at and saying, look, that person was different.
By every statistical measure, the world was set up to make sure Desmond Tutu stayed small. And then he went and helped dismantle one of the most brutal political systems of the twentieth century using nothing but a Bible, a microphone, and a laugh that could be heard from three rooms away.
The legacy he leaves behind is not just the end of apartheid, or the Nobel Prize, or the TRC model that other countries have borrowed for their own healing.
It's the proof that moral authority - standing up for what is right, in a calm and steady way - can be one of the most powerful forces in the world.
He didn't get a statue. He got an arch you walk through. Even that, in the end, says everything.
Humble. Powerful. Unforgettable.