Archbishop Desmond Tutu is dead

 

South African anti-apartheid icon, Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu,  has died in Cape Town. He was 90.

“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.

A tireless activist, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for combatting white minority rule in his country. Famously outspoken, even after the fall of the racist apartheid regime, Tutu never shied away from confronting South Africa’s shortcomings or injustices.

It was Tutu who coined and popularised the term “Rainbow Nation” to describe South Africa when Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black president.