Barney Pityana, one of the Fort Hare students who was suspended, recounted Tutu’s courageous act as follows: We had been surrounded by police, with dogs snarling at us. We were petrified, for nearly two hours. Some people were crying . . . The staff of the university, the white people—some of them armed—these professors were watching and nobody said a word, nobody . . . Desmond [came] almost from nowhere, in a cassock . . . broke the police cordon and came to be among us. I recall moving scenes of young women kneeling to pray with Desmond for blessings. Even today when I recall that I get very
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