South Africa: Tutu slams political enrichment; voices concern about poverty

Former Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu was a thorn in the flesh of successive apartheid regimes in South Africa until the demise of white rule in 1994. Now, with apartheid gone, Tutu is directing his desire for social justice elsewhere. "We were involved in the struggle (against apartheid) because we believed we would evolve a new kind of society: a caring, a compassionate society. At the moment many, too many, of our people live in gruelling, demeaning and dehumanising poverty. We are sitting on a powder keg," Tutu said this week. More than 40 percent of South Africans, most of them black, live below the poverty line of a dollar a day according to Statistics South Africa, a government agency.