South African Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, donned full cycling gear and jumped on a bicycle to support doctors and researchers who took part in South Africa’s largest cycle race, to raise awareness of childhood TB.
Tutu, who said he loved riding his bike as a boy growing up in Ventersdorp in South Africa’s North West province, threw his weight behind the team, mainly from Stellenbosch University’s Desmond Tutu TB Centre.
They rode together in the 110 kilometre tour around Cape Town, (on Sunday March 11), which drew 35,000 cyclists from South Africa and around the world.

“Our children shouldn’t be exposed to conditions that make them liable to get TB. TB is a disease of poverty, because you have to have a good diet to combat it. Poverty clobbers us many times over. Poverty is expensive,” Tutu said to the group of doctors.

Around a million children around the world get TB every year, about 50,000 in South Africa alone.

Doctors and researchers cycled in T-shirts with the slogan: “1 million a year is 1 million too many. Childhood TB. It’s time to break the cycle.”

“World TB Day’s theme this year is to stop TB in our lifetimes. We thought what better way to advocate for children with TB than to cycle this race and create advocacy and awareness,” said paediatrician and researcher at the Desmond Tutu TB Centre, James Seddon.

The centre is involved in research to find better ways of diagnosing and treating children with TB. Tutu said he had contracted TB as a teenager boy and it had made him determined to do more to combat the disease.

“I wanted to be a physician. I was determined to become a doctor to discover a cure for this horrible ailment.”

Now, as patron of the Desmond Tutu TB Centre, he has spent a lot of his time raising awareness about the importance of getting tested and treated for TB.

He paid tribute to doctors, particularly those working at the Tygerberg Children’s Hospital in Cape Town for the “passion and commitment” they showed towards their patients. “It is so heartwarming to see that in our country,” he said before signing the doctors shirts.

Director of the Desmond Tutu TB Centre, Nulda Beyers, said it had taken a long time for attention to be directed towards children suffering from TB, but it was now finally happening. She encouraged employers to be understanding when people needed to go to the clinic to be tested and treated for TB.

“We need to support the young mothers who have TB. We need to support them to complete their treatment and not to stigmatise them.”

While acknowledging that the message about TB is a serious one and needs to be tackled passionately, Tutu and the cyclists found time to joke about their training and the Archbishop’s sporty outfit. “Don’t you think I have sexy legs?” Tutu quipped as he stepped up to the bicycle in his lycra shorts. The researchers gave him a quick lesson about the gears while he adjusted his helmet. The Archbishop said he had cycled on holiday in Sweden about five years ago and loved having a bike when he was young, often riding to the shop to buy the local newspaper.

Report by Kim Cloete