Archbishop's priest daughter returns to guard his legacy

The youngest daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu has returned to South Africa to carry on her father's message.

After three decades in the US, the Rev Mpho Tutu will be the founding director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. It will preserve his papers, regulate the use of his name and continue to "call it like it is" on moral issues.

Having married US journalist Joseph Burris and while studying in Massachusetts, Mpho, now 47, helped exiles from South Africa and Namibia, ran a children's ministry near Boston, raised funds for African education, and eventually did what she had vowed she would never do - became a priest.

Like her father, she never considered theology in her youth. She entered the priesthood late in life and was ordained, by her father, in 2004.

Saying the foundation would perform a similar role to that of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, she said: "I'm humbled and honoured to be in this position, because it was the choice of my family as a whole, not a case of my parents inviting me on the sly. We hope to continue to hold true to the moral compass that has been my parents' guide. We won't be pontificating from on high, but my father never did that either. What he has done has been to use the platforms that he has had to call it as he sees it - and that I can do."

After spending their lives in northern Virginia, Mpho's two daughters have already found new schools in South Africa. Mpho expects her husband to join them later this year.

Archbishop Tutu this week told the Sunday Times he had only recently discovered Mpho's senior roles in US charities .

"I was surprised to discover she is honorary chair of the 9/11 Unity Walk in the US; and that she was also chair of the Global Aids Alliance. She has a passion, she knows how to get on with people."

Tutu said he would not dictate what his legacy meant. " You are the ones who have to say, 'I think this is one of the gifts he has given our country'.

"I hope it has [something to do with] a South Africa where we enter into the spirit of [ubuntu]; this affirmation of one another, that we had in the World Cup."

Mpho interviewed dozens of world leaders for Tutu's new book, Tutu: The Authorised Portrait. In his foreword, the Dalai Lama describes Mpho as "a warm and beautiful person, like her father".

Mpho is concerned about the effect of materialism on SA's youth. "What concerns me is a return to the market as the last arbiter of what's correct - this notion of, 'If it makes money it's good, if it doesn't it's not'; choosing an external compass for what is to guide us.

"Materialism is a threat to the nation we want to become."