Nobel Prize-winning activist for racial justice, South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, a retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town has died aged 90.
Tutu, a known veteran of South Africa’s struggle against white minority rule reportedly died peacefully on Sunday, December 26, 2021 at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town.
His death was immediately announced by South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa who told the nation that the passing of Desmond Tutu marked “another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South African”.
Ramaphosa continued that Tutu who is a well-known figure both at home and abroad helped bequeath “a liberated South Africa”.
Apart from President Ramaphosa’s announcement, the Presidency did not give details on the cause of Desmond Tutu’s death.
There had been report of Tutu being diagnosed with prostate cancer in the 1990s and, in recent years, was hospitalized on several occasions to treat infections associated with his treatment,
Tutu, an uncompromising foe of apartheid, South Africa’s brutal regime of oppression against the Black majority, worked tirelessly, though non-violent, for its downfall.
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a buoyant, blunt-spoken clergyman who used his pulpit as the first Black bishop of Johannesburg and later Archbishop of Cape Town as well as frequent public demonstrations to galvanize public opinion against racial inequity both at home and globally.
Until his death, Tutu has always been considered as South Africa’s moral conscience and the great reconciler of a nation divided by decades of racist politics. In 1984, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent opposition to apartheid.
Ten years after winning the prize, he witnessed the end of that regime and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up unearth atrocities committed during the segregation period.
He is on record to have led numerous marches and campaigns to end apartheid from St. George’s front steps, and as a result it became known as the “People’s Cathedral” and a powerful symbol of democracy, according to the local government.
The deceased Desmond Tutu was a longtime friend of former South Africa’s President, Nelson Mandela and lived for a time on the same street in the South African township of Soweto, Vilakazi Street, the only one in the world to host two Nobel Peace Prize winners.
His passing is said to have devastated the South African people because he was a personality who had a huge role in the fight against apartheid.
His death was confirmed in statement on behalf of his family by Dr Ramphela Mamphele, acting Chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and Co-ordinator of the Office of the Archbishop.
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