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I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL WITH TUBERCULOSIS when I was 13 or 14. And I had seen that almost every patient who coughed up blood ended up being carried to the morgue. I remember going to the restroom and I had a flow of blood from my mouth. And when it stopped for a moment, I sat down on the floor and I said to God, Well, if I am going to die, it’s OK. If I live, OK. I was suffused with a peace that I was not expecting. And I always say to people I am living [on] bonus time.

MY FATHER USED TO SEND ME TO TOWN to buy him newspapers or cigarettes. I was about 8. I recall being shocked when I went past the school for the white kids. Beautiful grounds, well-manicured lawns. And I saw two black kids scavenging in the dustbin of the white school. With a perverse logic, the government was providing free school feeding for whites. A lot of the white kids dumped the food they received because they preferred the lunches their mothers had prepared for them. I can still see those two kids rummaging in the dustbin.

I WALKED AWAY [from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission] with something that I had not expected: the exhilarating fact that we are creatures made for goodness. That’s one of the most fantastic things. When one looks at all of the ghastly things that are happening in the world—in Darfur, in Burma, in Zimbabwe—one is reminded that there are many instances of people doing good. And good will ultimately prevail.

Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is archbishop...