Photo Courtesy of People
Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who helped lead the movement that ended the brutal regime of white minority rule in South Africa, has died at the age of 90. The country’s president confirmed Sunday. He was 90.
His death was announced by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who called Tutu “a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”
Tutu gained prominence through his work as a human rights campaigner. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless and nonviolent fight against apartheid in South Africa.
The first Black bishop of Johannesburg and later first Black Archbishop of Cape Town, Tutu was a vocal activist for racial justice and LGBTQ rights in South Africa and across the world.
In 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela spent his first night of freedom at Tutu’s residence in Cape Town.
After the fall of the apartheid regime and with Mandela leading the country as its first Black president, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that laid bare the terrible truths of white rule.
“His contributions to struggles against injustice, locally and globally, are matched only by the depth of his thinking about the making of liberatory futures for human societies,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement after Tutu’s death.
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The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation noted the Nobel Peace Prize he passed away in Cape Town.
“Tutu was a living embodiment of faith in action, speaking boldly against racism, injustice, corruption, and oppression, not just in apartheid South Africa but wherever in the world he saw wrongdoing, especially when it impacted the most vulnerable and voiceless in society,” his foundation wrote.
“Officially ‘retiring’ from public life on his 79th birthday, Tutu continued to speak out on a range of ethical and moral issues: illegal arms deals, xenophobia, oppressed people in Palestine, respect for the rule of law, HIV/Aids, Tibet, China, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, and LGBTQI+ rights,” the notice continued. “He also vociferously campaigned for gentler stewardship of the Earth, and against the coming ravages of climate change, a very real example of how human survival rests on our ubuntu-spirited ability to cooperate and work together.”
Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and was hospitalized on several occasions in recent years to treat infections associated with his treatment.
“Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning,” Dr Ramphela Mamphele said in a statement on behalf of the Tutu family.