The Desmond Tutu interview was first published in August 2010's issue of One in Seven, RNID's membership magazine. Become a member of RNID to receive One in Seven magazine every two months.

"...there is a kind of being ostracised and pushed to the edge of a group, of a community."

Learn to love vuvu, says Tutu, proclaimed The Sun when the famous anti-apartheid campaigner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, urged people to stop worrying about the loud vuvuzela horns blown during last month's World Cup.

The instruments are so loud – hitting those nearby with 125 decibels of sound, much louder than a road drill – that RNID called for caution and urged football fans to wear earplugs to protect their hearing.

What most people reading Tutu's words didn’t know is that the man himself has been hard of hearing since the 1970s. So it might seem strange that he did not criticise the ear-splitting trumpets.

The cover of issue 78 of One in Seven magazine featuring Desmond Tutu

But it seems typical of Tutu to wish people to enjoy themselves and not to worry. After all, Tutu has some other things on his mind – the small matter of world peace, for instance. Or ending apartheid, which he did, successfully, despite the many who said it would never happen.

This is the man whose brave campaigning helped to end a regime where black people were treated as second-class citizens, and all in our time: it was only in 1994 when he and other black people in South Africa were granted the right to vote. Tutu himself became the first black head of the Anglican Church in South Africa in 1986, when he was elected Archbishop of Cape Town. He has survived death threats by far Right groups, and harassment and dirty tricks by the South African security services.

For his achievements, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and chosen by Nelson Mandela to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which gathered evidence of apartheid-era crimes and recommended whether those confessing their involvement should be granted amnesty.

Excerpt from Desomond Tutu interview, Issue 78 of One in Seven magazine

Today he continues to campaign on an array of issues. He is highly critical of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, and likens the treatment of Palestinians to the way the apartheid system treated non-whites in South Africa. Recently, he condemned, together with Mandela, the deadly Israeli attack on a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza. He has spoken out against homophobia in the church, and said it should stop focusing on sexuality and concentrate on campaigning against poverty.

So this is, without doubt, a man who knows that when the chance comes along to enjoy life, it must be grabbed, happily, with both hands.

At the opening ceremony for the World Cup in South Africa this summer, Tutu was ecstatic with joy, dancing in his green and yellow shirt, scarf and bobble hat, the colours of the South African team, Bafana Bafana. "Just fantastic... Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's unbelievable. I'm dreaming, man... Wake me up. What a lovely dream..." he said at the concert, launching the World Cup matches.

Talking to Tutu, he is as joyful as he seems in public. He giggles and guffaws frequently; he is polite and charming; his use of English is old-fashioned and plain, without jargon or pretense. Most striking, on top of his understated intelligence and ability to grasp problems too daunting for most of us to contemplate, is his humility – not a false attempt to seem genuine, as beloved of some public figures, but the very rare, 100% kosher sort.

For instance, when I ask about whether he has been involved in campaigning for deaf people in South Africa, he not only answers honestly, but suggests he could do more – though he is unlikely to have spare time on top of his demanding workload. "I have not, maybe as prominently as I should have, I think, supported some of their campaigns," he says. "I think I could do a great deal more as, being 'one of them' myself, you know, I should be making us more aware, just like people are beginning to be more sensitive about accessibility – people in wheelchairs and so on. Provision should be made for (disabled people) as a matter of course. It is their right, you know."

Tutu, who is 79 this October, has experienced hearing loss since childhood, and now wears two hearing aids. "The first time I got a hearing aid was quite a while ago, in the 70s, 80s, I can't even remember now," he laughs. "I'm not as young as I look!" He laughs harder. He recalls problems with his ears even in childhood. "I've always had trouble, at least in one ear.

As a child, there would sometimes be pus oozing out, and I discovered that I could hear better in one ear than in the other. And you know, I found that I used to have to turn my head in order to hear someone properly." He is blunt about its effects. "It's got worse (he giggles again), and I'm gonna tell you that it's a great handicap, especially when you are with people."

Missing the joke

A big part of his life has involved addressing crowds, which can be easier. "I speak a lot (laughs), so it is easier than if I am in the crowd listening to a public speaker," he says. Chatting at a busy dinner table with lots of people is harder. "For instance, people are sitting at the table, and you suddenly see most of them burst out laughing because they've heard a joke that you didn’t hear or you didn’t hear all of it. It is a great embarrassment. It also makes you feel, you know, that there is a kind of being ostracised and pushed to the edge of a group, of a community."

His hearing is worsening with age. "Now, when I'm not wearing my hearing aid, I have to ask (my wife) Leah, or whoever is my partner, to tell me what somebody has said. And, more often than not, in a group when, say, people start laughing, I almost invariably have to turn to my neighbour and say, 'What was that?' (he starts to laugh) and you know that a joke doesn’t get retold very well by a second person. You look the odd man out.

"People sometimes think, maybe he doesn't have a very good sense of humour," he says. "I feel so sorry for children in a classroom when no one has noticed that they have defective hearing, who are condemned as being stupid or very slow on the uptake when, in fact, their performance actually improves the minute it is realised they have (a hearing loss) and they get a hearing aid. (Then) they are seen to be actually very, very bright children."

"It's a very, very great handicap and it affects one's social participation. As I've said frequently, maybe people think you are not quite as humorous as they thought you were, because you don’t catch the joke," and he laughs again.

At home, he does not always realise he has not heard his wife. "I repeat an observation and I think I've been very smart and my wife says, 'But that's exactly what I was saying just two minutes ago. You are repeating it,' (and) I say, (he puts on a surprised tone), 'Did you?’'"

Has he discussed hearing loss with Nelson Mandela, who is also hard of hearing? He laughs. "Well hardly, but what I do know is that he wears hearing aids, I think, in both ears. "But you know, Nelson Mandela has a wonderful wife in Gracia (Machel). She tries to position him in such a way that he does not have to keep turning his head because that’s quite disorientating. So she makes their guests sit on one side of him.

But even so, you can see he's missing a lot of the conversation, jokes and things like that. You feel sorry (for him), because he's pretty sharp, you know." Tutu himself, though he can appear cuddly, is sharp too – sharp enough to have taken on the apartheid state in South Africa. He has defused many confrontations between angry mobs and armed security police, as well as lobbying hard-nosed world leaders.

Disability discrimination

He has little experience of palantypists (who type a speaker's words onto a screen so people with hearing loss can simply read off it). "I've seen that just once, you know, at a conference that I attended and I thought it was a very good idea!" he says.

In the wider field of disability, Tutu notices how wheelchair users are treated because his wife sometimes uses one at airports. "They don’t ask her about something that affects her, they ask me instead," he says. “We still frequently think that when somebody has a physical disability, somehow that means they must also have a mental disability. We talk about them, in their presence, in the third person.”

Thinking of his experience of meetings where there are no palantypists and he struggles to hear, I wonder if he would like to be more assertive about his hearing loss. Is he shy about it? "No … no no no no, I’m not, I can assure you that’s the last thing I am." And he laughs. Time's up. "Bye-bye."