The News of the passing on of Archbishop Desmond Tutu was announced by South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa who described him as a distinguished and a perfect champion of human rights not only in South Africa but also in the neighboring countries.
“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. He “distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights”, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday.
President Ramaphosa continued: “Tutu was “an iconic spiritual leader, anti-apartheid activist and global human rights campaigner”.
He further described him as “a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead”.
“A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.” He stated.
According to a family statement, Desmond Tutu died at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town.
“Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning,” read a statement by Dr Ramphela Mamphele, acting chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and Co-ordinator of the Office of the Archbishop, on behalf of the Tutu family.
Apparently, Desmond Tutu was in the late 1990s diagnosed with prostate cancer which saw him get treatments associated with the same on several occasions.
Desmond Tutu is often hailed as South Africa’s moral conscience and the great reconciler of a nation divided by politics of racism and was celebrated both at home and abroad.
He was one of the driving forces behind anti apartheid movement to end the policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority government against the black majority in South Africa from 1948 until 1991.
This saw Desmond Tutu be rewarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for his role in the struggle to abolish the apartheid system
Tutu’s death comes just weeks after that of South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, FW de Clerk, who died at the age of 85.
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