South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and anti-apartheid veteran, has died aged 90.
Archbishop Tutu was widely regarded as “South Africa’s moral conscience” because of his staunch opposition to the apartheid regime – famously saying that “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa said his passing was “another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa.”
He described Archbishop Tutu as a “patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”
Renowned for his cheerful disposition, Archbishop Tutu nevertheless was unafraid of using his platform to speak harsh truths, once saying in 2007: “I wish I could shut-up, but I can’t, and I wont’”.
Tutu coined the phrase “rainbow nation” to describe South Africa, and remained a tireless defender of human rights after the demise of apartheid – using his profile to campaign against corruption, poverty, xenophobia, homophobia, and raise awareness for HIV and Aids among many other things.
He abhorred all forms of violence and famously risked his own life in July 1985 to save a suspected police informant from being burnt alive by an angry mob.
Reports about the diminutive priest pulling the badly bleeding man to safety, amid calls of “kill him, kill him”, made headlines around the world.
Tutu later returned to speak to the man’s attackers, telling them that they needed to “use righteous and just means for a righteous and just struggle.”
Although Tutu was first-and-foremost a religious figure rather than a political one, he was not afraid of being fiercely critical of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, under president Jacob Zuma.
He was also vocal in his condemnation of Robert Mugabe, once describing him as “a cartoon figure of an archetypical African dictator”.
The Zimbabwean president in turn called him an “evil and embittered little bishop”.
Born in the small town of Klerksdorp in October 1931, Desmond Mpilo Tutu initially trained as a teacher before choosing to study theology and become ordained as a priest in 1960.
He came to study theology at King’s College London in the 1960s, before going back to South Africa. In 1975 he was appointed Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, the first black person to hold that position.
From 1976 to 1978 he served as Bishop of Lesotho and in 1985 he became Bishop of Johannesburg. Then, a year later, Tutu became the Archbishop of Cape Town – the most senior position in southern Africa’s Anglican hierarchy.
After the fall of apartheid, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – a body assembled to hear witnesses describe past human rights violations and, in some cases, to grant amnesty to perpetrators of crimes if they were willing to testify.
The Commission was seen as a key part of the transition to a fully democratic South Africa.
In Tutu’s address to the first gathering of the commission, he said: “They say those who suffer from amnesia, those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it.
“It is not dealing with the past to say facilely, let bygones be bygones, for then they won’t be bygones.
“Our country, our society would be doomed to the instability of uncertainty – the uncertainty engendered by not knowing when yet another scandal of the past would hit the headlines, when another skeleton would be dragged out of the cupboard.”
Archbishop Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and in recent years he has been in hospital to receive treatment for associated illnesses.
In a statement on behalf of the Tutu family, Dr Ramphela Mamphele, acting chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust, said: “Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning.”
On Sunday morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby described Tutu as a “prophet and priest, a man of words and action”. He added: “one who embodied the hope and joy that were the foundations of his life.
“Even in our profound sorrow we give thanks for a life so well live. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”
-Independent
