Leaders across the world including presidents, religious figures and royals have paid tribute to South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was hailed as the country’s ‘moral compass’.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winner has died aged 90 after years of health challenges. For six decades, Archbishop Tutu was one of the primary voices in exhorting the South African government to end apartheid, the country’s official policy of racial segregation.
Alongside late Nelson Mandela, Tutu was one of the most prominent voices against the system of white minority rule known as apartheid. The Anglican cleric also headed the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the post-apartheid era, and was seen by many as the conscience of the troubled nation.
Former US president Barack Obama said that Tutu was a mentor, a friend, and a moral compass for me and so many others.”
“He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries, and Michelle (Obama) and I will miss him dearly,” he said in a statement.
As a leading icon in the fight for justice and equality, an uncompromising foe of the brutal regime of oppression against the Black majority, Tutu worked tirelessly, through non-violence, for its downfall.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said Tutu’s passing was “a big blow not only to the Republic of South Africa, where he leaves behind huge footprints as an anti-apartheid hero, but to the entire African continent where he is deeply respected and celebrated as a peacemaker”.
“Archbishop Tutu inspired a generation of African leaders who embraced his non-violent approaches in the liberation struggle,” he said.
In his bereavement, President Cyril Ramaphosa said 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.”
“From the pavements of resistance in South Africa to the pulpits of the world’s great cathedrals and places of worship, and the prestigious setting of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, the Arch distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights.”
The Nelson Mandela Foundation said Tutu was “larger than life.”
“His contributions to struggles against injustice, locally and globally, are matched only by the depth of his thinking about the making of liberator futures for human societies. He was an extraordinary human being. A thinker. A leader. A shepherd,” the foundation said in a statement on Sunday.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Chief Femi Adesina said he believes the death of the iconic teacher, human rights activist, leader of thought, scholar and philanthropist, further creates a void in a world in dire need of wisdom, integrity, courage and sound reasoning, which were qualities the reformer typified and exemplified in words and actions.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, said that he cherished their friendship and the spiritual bond between, adding that Tutu was “entirely dedicated to serving his brothers and sisters for the greater common good.”
“He was a true humanitarian and a committed advocate of human rights,” the Dalai Lama stated.
UK deputy prime minister Dominic Raab described Tutu as “a truly great figure”.
Martin Luther King’s daughter, Bernice King, said that Tutu was a “global sage” and “powerful pilgrim on Earth…We are better because he was here,” King said in a tweet.
Tutu had been hospitalised several times since 2015, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, west of Johannesburg, and became a teacher before entering St. Peter’s Theological College in Rosetenville in 1958 for training as a priest.
He was ordained in 1961 and six years later became chaplain at the University of Fort Hare. Moves to the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho and to Britain followed, with Tutu returning home in 1975.
He became bishop of Lesotho, chairman of the South African Council of Churches. In 1985 he was named as the first Black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg and then in 1986, the first Black Archbishop of Cape Town.
Tutu was arrested in 1980 for taking part in a protest and later had his passport confiscated for the first time. He got it back for trips to the United States and Europe, where he held talks with the U.N. secretary-general, the pope, and other church leaders.
Throughout the 1980s , at the height of anti-apartheid violence and a state of emergency giving police and the military sweeping powers, Tutu was one of the most prominent Blacks able to speak out against abuses.