Bishop Desmond Tutu, who helped lead the movement that ended the brutal regime of white minority rule in South Africa, has died. He was aged 90 years.
The country’s president confirmed, on Sunday.
“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,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement early Sunday.
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.”
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Tutu gained prominence through his work as a human rights campaigner. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless and nonviolent fight against apartheid in South Africa, and later played a key role in the segregationist policy’s downfall.
Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and was hospitalized on several occasions in recent years to treat infections associated with his cancer treatment.
“Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning,” Dr. Ramphela Mamphele said in a statement on behalf of the Tutu family.
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Tutu largely retired from public life in 2010, but never stopped speaking his mind with wit and tenacity.
He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Leah, and their four children.
His death comes little more than a month since the passing of F. W. de Klerk, the country’s last apartheid president.
