“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,” said South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who helped lead the movement that ended the brutal regime of white minority rule in South Africa, has died at age 90.
The cause of death was cancer, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said, adding that Archbishop Tutu had died in a care facility. He was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, and was hospitalized several times in the years since, amid recurring fears that the disease had spread.
“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. 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.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa
Tutu, described by observers at home and abroad as the moral conscience of the nation, died in Cape Town on Boxing Day, weeks after the death of FW de Klerk, the country’s last white president.
For six decades, Tutu was one of the primary voices in exhorting the South African government to end apartheid, the country’s official policy of racial segregation. After apartheid ended in the early ’90s and the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela became president of the country, Tutu was named chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“He was larger than life, and for so many in South Africa and around the world his life has been a blessing. 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
Tutu’s civil and human rights work led to prominent honors from around the world. Former US President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Obama called Tutu a “mentor, a friend, and a moral compass” in a statement after his death.
“Archbishop Tutu was grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere. He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries.”
Former US President Barack Obama
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby issued statements praising Tutu for his sagacity and infectious positivity.
“(He) will be remembered for his spiritual leadership and irrepressible good humor.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Welby called Tutu “a prophet and priest, a man of words and action — one who embodied the hope and joy that were the foundations of his life. “Even in our profound sorrow we give thanks for a life so well lived,” he said.
In 2012, Tutu was awarded a $1 million grant by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for “his lifelong commitment to speaking truth to power.” The following year, he received the Templeton Prize for his “life-long work in advancing spiritual principles such as love and forgiveness which has helped to liberate people around the world.”
Most notably, he received the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, following in the footsteps of his countryman, Albert Lutuli, who received the prize in 1960. The Nobel cemented Tutu’s status as an instrumental figure in South Africa, a position he gained in the wake of protests against apartheid. Despite anger about the policy within South Africa, as well as widespread global disapproval — the country was banned from the Olympics from 1964 through 1988 — the South African government quashed opposition, banning the African National Congress political party and imprisoning its leaders, including Mandela.
The current archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Thabo Makgoba, said that the church will plan Tutu’s funeral and memorial services. “Desmond Tutu’s legacy is moral strength, moral courage, and clarity,” Makgoba said in a statement. “He felt with the people. In public and alone, he cried because he felt people’s pain. And he laughed — no, not just laughed, he cackled with delight when he shared their joy.”
Tutu, an Anglican clergyman, used the pulpit to preach and galvanize public opinion against the injustice faced by South Africa’s Black majority.
The first Black bishop of Johannesburg and later the first Black Archbishop of Cape Town, Tutu, was a vocal activist for racial justice and LGBTQ rights not just in South Africa but around 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, with Mandela leading the country as its first Black president, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which laid bare the terrible truths of white rule.