Desmond Tutu Has Died at 90

World mourns South African freedom fighter
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 26, 2021 5:45 AM CST
Desmond Tutu Has Died at 90
FILE - South African Bishop Desmond Tutu receives the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Prize from Coretta Scott King, left, and Christine King Farris, King's sister, center, during an ecumenical service at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King was pastor in Atlanta, Ga., Jan. 20, 1986. Tutu's daughter...   (AP Photo, File)

Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice and LGBT rights and retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has died, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Sunday. He was 90. An uncompromising foe of apartheid—South Africa’s brutal regime of oppression against the Black majority—Tutu worked tirelessly, though non-violently, for its downfall. The buoyant, blunt-spoken clergyman 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. Tutu's death on Sunday “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 said.

Tutu died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Center in Cape Town, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Trust said in a statement Sunday obtained by the AP. Tutu had been hospitalized several times since 2015, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997. In recent years he and his wife, Leah, lived in a retirement community outside Cape Town. Throughout the 1980s—when South Africa was gripped by anti-apartheid violence—Tutu was one of the most prominent Blacks able to speak out against abuses. A lively wit lightened Tutu’s hard-hitting messages and warmed otherwise grim protests, funerals and marches. Short, plucky, tenacious, he was a formidable force, and apartheid leaders learned not to discount his talent for quoting apt scriptures to harness righteous support for change.

The Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 highlighted his stature as one of the world’s most effective champions for human rights, a responsibility he took seriously for the rest of his life. With the end of apartheid and South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, Tutu celebrated the country’s multi-racial society, calling it a “rainbow nation,” a phrase that captured the heady optimism of the moment. Nicknamed “the Arch,” Tutu was diminutive, with an impish sense of humor, but became a towering figure in his nation’s history, comparable to fellow Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela, a prisoner during white rule who became South Africa’s first Black president. Tutu and Mandela shared a commitment to building a better, more equal South Africa. Full story from the AP.

(More Desmond Tutu stories.)

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