In 1999, guests arriving at the wedding of Stewart Ting Chong and Marsha Minasian at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hingham were surprised to find none other than Archbishop Desmond Tutu officiating.
But the groom and the Nobel Peace Prize winning nonviolent activist had a shared history. Ting Chong, who is Asian, grew up in apartheid South Africa, where he was classified as “non-white,” living in a restricted area and unable to attend white-only schools. Ting Chong was accepted into the priesthood in 1987, where he and Tutu crossed paths. Ting Chong worked closely with Tutu for many years as part of the archbishop’s media team in their fight against South African apartheid. When Ting Chong moved to the US in 1999 to marry his fiancé from Rockland, Massachusetts, Tutu agreed to officiate.
Tutu, who died Sunday of cancer in Cape Town at age 90, visited the Boston area many times throughout his life for various reasons other than that wedding. He gave speeches and held small group discussions — sometimes impromptu events to shocked groups of students, activists or admirers. Following his death, local leaders reflected on Tutu’s legacy as a spiritual leader who helped end apartheid in South Africa and lead reconciliation efforts throughout the 1990s.
“He taught me what true courage is”
Ting Chong worked with Tutu at a time when it was particularly dangerous to be an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa.
“He taught me what true courage is,” Ting Chong said. “Courage to defend the downtrodden and to speak against injustice and racism. To be able to witness that, to be able to see one man stand in front of thousands of people and say, ‘Stop,’ and they would stop.”
Working in media for Tutu, Ting Chong recalled how the apartheid government restricted access to international press. “His office and a small media team, which included myself, were the only people that were truly getting information out,” Ting Chong said.
Ting Chong recalled that the work was so risky, he stopped visiting his own brother at the time, who also lived in Cape Town. “I said, ‘It's just too dangerous, just by association, I can't involve you,” Ting Chong recalled telling his brother. “We have our phones tapped … first thing in the morning before we drive, we look under our cars. Before we go to bed we look outside to see if there's any vehicles that we don't recognize in the streets.”
One time at the airport — where Ting Chong recalled Tutu and his family were regularly searched — he saw a person inching toward Tutu.
“I immediately, without even thinking, moved myself between the Archbishop and this person,” Ting Chong said. Nothing happened, but he did not regret his decision. “That’s the kind of thought that goes through one's mind when there's a person that you’re working for that is so large and so influential.”
"His sermon was around two cultures coming together and becoming one and therefore taking the richness of different cultures in order to welcome others."Stewart Ting Chong, friend of Archbishop Desmond Tutu
When apartheid fell and former South African President Nelson Mandela appointed Tutu as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ting Chong resigned as new leadership took Tutu’s place. He remained involved as part of a nonprofit called the Human Rights Commission until he moved to Massachusetts in 1999 to marry his wife, Marsha Minasian. The two had met at a cafeteria in JFK International Airport in 1995, where they began talking South African politics.
Tutu agreed to officiate the wedding, but since they were worried about threats to his life while the Archbishop was involved with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, no one other than immediate family and the church minister knew about Tutu’s role until the wedding itself.
“My wife is Armenian, I'm South African, so she's white, I'm Asian,” Ting Chong said. “And so his sermon was around two cultures coming together and becoming one and therefore taking the richness of different cultures in order to welcome others.”
"It was almost magical," Minasian said of the wedding. "People were just kind of stunned, because he just speaks to people."
In recent years, Ting Chong has lived in Canton, working in business and IT, as well as teaching as an adjunct faculty member at Northeastern University and Boston University. His said his anti-apartheid activism and relationship with Tutu stays with him.
“Hopefully, I can walk in his shadow and try and make this world a little better place to live in,” he said.
“He was a voice and a force”
Ting Chong was not the only person in the Boston area with a connection to Tutu. The Archbishop visited the city many times to give talks and speak with local leaders.
In 2007, Tutu gave the keynote speech at a conference on Israel and Palestine, hosted by Friends of Sabeel, a Christian group that advocates for peace and nonviolent resistance on behalf of Palestinian Christians.
The event took place in Old South Church in Back Bay, and was met with protesters outside.
“My memory is it was hard not to smile in his presence, even when he was addressing the most painful and contested matters,” recalled Old South Church Senior Minister Nancy Taylor. “He laughed, he giggled, he even danced. While that might feel or seem incongruous with a human rights activist who's literally experienced and witnessed the worst of humanity, somehow, in him, it was no contradiction.”
Despite the controversy surrounding the topic, the sanctuary was packed. “While the subject is contested and difficult, I fully believed that he had earned his right to say his piece and speak his mind,” Taylor said. “He was a voice and a force … as a young minister, he was somebody that I was in awe of, in terms of his ministry, his courage, his incisive thinking, mostly his deep, deep spirituality.”
Tutu made many other visits to Boston. In 2008, he spoke at a private event with Harvard Nieman fellows, as well as at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, where he talked about the role of social justice in environmental equity.
"A man of faith using that faith to be a change agent"
Former Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson met Tutu multiple times, most recently in South Africa in 2017. Jackson recalled taking part in dialogue sessions with the Archbishop multiple times in Boston, through their shared work with a racial justice organization called Global Citizens Circle.
“These events were called circles, and the interesting part was, it was people having courageous conversations,” Jackson said. “He had attended as a discussion group leader multiple times, and each time was one of those mountaintop experiences, when you get to listen, hear and most importantly feel his presence, his knowledge and his guidance in the room.”
Reflecting on his experiences with the Archbishop, Jackson emphasized the impact Tutu had across the world.
“The legacy of Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks to the embodiment of a man of faith using that faith to be a change agent,” he said. “Being unwilling to be silent in the most difficult of times, and also using the opportunity and privilege that he had to not stay neutral in situations of injustice."
