South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was instrumental in the fight against apartheid has died at the age of 90, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in Pretoria on Sunday.
The 1984 Nobel Laureate who has been ill for the past five years and underwent surgery earlier this year.
South Africans revere him as “the saint that helped banish apartheid” and coinced the phrase the Rainbow Nation to describe the ethic melting pot in South Africa.
Paying a moving tribute to Tutu, President Ramaphosa described him as “a man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid”
Ramaphosa paid homage to his unmatched compassion for the oppressed and victims of injustice and violence under apartheid in his country and other suffering the same fate around the world.
Tutu was appointed Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985 and became the first black Archbishop of Cape Town shortly afterwards.
He was ordained into priesthood in 1960, a career which would take him to Lesotho as bishop between 1976 and 78.
Always using his position as a tool to campaign actively against apartheid in his native South Africa and oppression elsewhere in the world, Tutu ruffled many feathers both at home and abroad but was widely celebrated as an icon.
After apartheid ended in South Africa, then president Nelson Mandela appointed him to head the country’s truth and reconciliation commission which was charged with probing apartheid-era crimes.
WN/as/APA