The late Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu will be granted his wish to have a simple funeral, “with the cheapest coffin available,” his foundation said on Wednesday.
The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said they would honour the archbishop’s wish to have “no lavish spending for his funeral.”
“The Arch made it clear that he wanted the cheapest coffin available and that a bouquet of carnations from his family be the only flowers in the cathedral,” the foundation said.
Tutu will lie in state at the St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town for two days – Thursday and Friday – while his funeral service will take place at the same house of worship on Saturday, the foundation said in a statement.
The archbishop will be cremated in a private ceremony and his ashes interred in the Cathedral, it added.
Meanwhile, South Africans continued to pay tribute to the fallen apartheid struggle leader and the Nobel Prize laureate who died in Cape Town on Sunday after a two-decade-long battle with prostate cancer.
Tutu, aged 90, leaves behind a wife, Leah, and four children.
NM/jn/APA