Africa-Press – Rwanda. Desmond Tutu aged 90 has passed away this Sunday in South Africa in Cape Town after a long battle with prostate cancer and infections. He rose to prominence as a churchman who berated minority white rule in South Africa and did not spare criticism for the post-apartheid African National Congress (ANC) rulers for failing to deliver for poor Black people.
Tutu was born in 1931 in a Transvaal gold-mining town, Klerksdorp, to Zachariah, a teacher, and Aletta, a domestic servant. He initially followed his father’s footsteps into teaching but resigned to protest against government restrictions on schooling for Black children.
He was influenced by Bishop Trevor Huddleston and other anti-apartheid white clergymen, becoming a priest in 1961 and the first Black Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975.
With Mandela in jail, it was left for Tutu and others to campaign for change. As police brutally oppressed Black student protests in Soweto in 1976, Tutu argued that a white-minority government was racist, doomed and defied God’s will.
His “clear views and fearless stance”, which made him a “unifying symbol for all African freedom fighters”, won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, according to the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
He was elected archbishop of Cape Town in 1986 and continued tackling minority white rule, welcoming President FW de Klerk’s liberalisation efforts upon taking office in 1989, such as the release of Mandela and the lifting of an anti-ANC ban.
In February 1990, Tutu led Mandela, a longtime friend, on to a balcony at Cape Town’s City Hall overlooking a square where the ANC leader made his first public address after 27 years of political imprisonment.
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