3-04-09

+ with desmond tutu visiting the show, craig ferguson shares about his plight: 'south africa has a fascinating history which i will try to sum up for you quickly so you don't get the feeling im giving you 'information'- all the stuff you don't come to the show for. basically south africa, as i understand it, is like this: things were going fine for the people living there until the dutch showed up in about the 17th century and they started colonizing. by the way, 'colonizing' is an old fashioned word which means 'stealing stuff from countries that don't belong to you'. anyway, the dutch colonies of south africa suffered a horrendous catastrophe that made a bad situation even worse: the catastrophe known as the british arriving. the british, what they did was sail down to south africa and saw a land rich in diamonds and gold and said: 'i say, this place is splendid, i love it here, all we have to do is kill all the dutch people'. which basically lead to the first bore war, that leads to the second bore war called 'bore war 2: the legend of curly's gold'. yackity yack, stuff happened, world war 1, world war 2... 1948, i think, the national party takes over south africa, institutes apartheid, a great idea... by the 80's south africa was a racist hellzone.

nelson mandela was sentenced to life in a south african prison, so desmond tutu traveled all over the world making the argument that doing business with a racist south africa regime was immoral. there were a few holdouts, people who apposed sanctions against south africa, like margaret thatcher, darth vader, and goldfinger. what happened is that bishop tutu succeeded in getting dozens of nations to enact tough sanctions that hit the apartheid regime right in the trousers, in the end apartheid crumbled, mandela was released from prison, and was elected as president. mandela even invited the man who tried to have him executed to his election ceremony. that's got to be awkward! thats like inviting your ex wife to your wedding. 'so, hows things since you had me killed? chicken or fish?'

- archbishop desmond tutu