Popular South Africa’s Archbishop, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and anti-apartheid veteran, Desmond Mpilo Tutu, is dead. He was aged 90.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said the death marked “another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa”.
Tutu was born October 7, 1931 in Klerksdorp, South Africa.
A Nelson Mandela ally, ensured an end to the policy of racial segregation.
They rose against the discrimination by the white minority government against the black majority in South Africa.
Tutu was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for his role in the struggle.
In 1984, he received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his role in the opposition to apartheid in South Africa.
In 1985, at the height of the township rebellions in South Africa, Tutu was installed as Johannesburg’s first Black Anglican bishop.
Also, in 1986 he was elected the first Black archbishop of Cape Town, thus becoming the primate of South Africa’s 1.6 million-member Anglican Church.
In 1995 South African Pres. Nelson Mandela appointed Tutu head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated allegations of human rights abuses during the apartheid era.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Tutu received numerous honours, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), an award from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation that recognized his lifelong commitment to “speaking truth to power” (2012), and the Templeton Prize (2013).
