South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero Desmond Tutu dies at 90

By Hassan Isilow

JOHANNESBURG (AA) - South Africa’s anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu died on Sunday at the age of 90.

“President Cyril Ramaphosa expresses, on behalf of all South Africans, his profound sadness at the passing today, Sunday 26 December 2021, of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu,” said a statement by the presidency.

Tutu rose to prominence in the 1980s for his strong role in opposing apartheid rule in South Africa, emphasizing nonviolent protests.

“The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” Ramaphosa’s office quoted him as saying.

Former South African opposition leader Mmusi Maimane said: “Tutu called for peace and nonviolence even during the most difficult time of apartheid.”

Tutu served as the first Black archbishop at the St. Georges Cathedral in Cape Town in the 1980s and won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

He was the last surviving South African laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tutu was also the chairperson of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the new democratic government in 1995 to help heal and reconcile the country by unearthing human rights violations that occurred during the apartheid regime.

“Desmond Tutu was a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead,” Ramaphosa said.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International described Tutu's death as a great loss to the global rights movement.

“His (Tutu’s) commitment to equality and rights for all served as a much-needed moral compass during the turbulent apartheid era. Even after South Africa obtained freedom in 1994, the Archbishop continued to be an outspoken, passionate human rights activist,” Shenilla Mohamed, Amnesty International South Africa executive director, said in a statement.

“He was never afraid to call out human rights violators no matter who they were and his legacy must be honoured by continuing his work to ensure equality for all,” she added.