Photo: REUTERS / copyright
Desmond Tutu was a smiling South African archbishop whose irrepressible personality won him friends and admirers around the world.
The Nobel laureate of the Paz, who helped end apartheid in South Africa, died this Sunday, in Cape Town, at 90 years.
The president of that country, Cyril Ramaphosa, assured that the death of the ecclesiastic marked “another chapter of mourning in the farewell of our nation to a generation of exceptional South Africans.”
The president noted that the archbishop had helped bequeath “ a liberated South Africa “.
Tutu was one of the best known figures in the country, internally and abroad.
He is credited with having coined the term Rainbow Nation (rainbow nation) to describe the ethnic mix of the South Africa post-apartheid wealthy.
A contemporary of Nelson Mandela, icon of the anti-apartheid struggle, the religious became one of the driving forces behind the movement to end the policy of racial segregation and discrimination imposed by the government of the white minority against the black majority in South Africa, which extended from 1948 until 1991.
Tutu’s death occurs a few weeks after death, at 85 years , who was the last apartheid-era South African president, FW de Klerk.
- Dies FW de Klerk, the last white president of South Africa and controversial leader of the apartheid who freed Mandela
President Ramaphosa said that Tutu was “an iconic spiritual leader, activist against the ap artheid and global human rights activist “.
He described him as “a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical perception that faith without works is dead. ”
“ A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against apartheid forces, 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 added.
From the church
Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born in a small gold mining town in what was then the Transvaal province in northeast South Africa.
He first followed in his father’s footsteps as a teacher, but abandoned that career after the passage of the Bantu Education Law in 1948, which introduced racial segregation in schools.
Joined to the church and was heavily influenced by many white clergy in the country, especially another strong opponent of apartheid, Bishop Trevor Huddleston .
Served as Bishop of Lesotho (of 1976 to 1978), assistant bishop of Johannesburg and rector of a parish in Soweto, prior to his appointment as bishop of Johannesburg.
From those positions he raised his voice against injustice in South Africa and would do so again, starting from 1977, as Secretary General of the Council South African Churches.
Become a high profile figure before the rebellion of 1976 in black townships, white South Africans knew him He first came to be a pro-reform activist, months before violence broke out in Soweto.
His efforts led to him receiving the Nobel Prize de la Paz in 1986, in which the international community considered a great slight to the white rulers of South Africa.
To the ceremony where Tutu became Archbishop of Cape Town, in 1986, attended by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie , and the widow of Martin Luther King.
As head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, he continued to actively campaign against apartheid. In March of 1988 declared: “ We refuse to be treated like the mat for the government to clean its military boots. ”
In 1989, He was arrested for refusing to leave a demonstration that had been banned.
In 1995, he was appointed head of the Reconciliation Commission and Truth.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation was among those who paid tribute to Tutu and assured that his contributions to the “struggles against injustice, locally and world, they are only equaled by the depth of his thinking about building future liberators for human societies. ”
“ He was an extraordinary human being. A thinker. A leader. A shepherd ”, he added.