Anti-Apartheid Icon, Desmond Tutu, 90 Dies; President Ramaphosa Mourns

By Akinwale Kasali

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa is mourning the death of South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. By Tutu’s death, the President said, the country has lost a moral compass.

The late Tutu was 90 years old.

President Ramaphosa in a statement said: “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.”

According to him, “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.

“A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, 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.”

A tireless activist, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his work in trying to reconcile warring communities during apartheid.

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.

He died in Cape Town.