Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies At 90 Years

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies At 90 Years

South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a veteran of South Africa’s struggle against white minority rule, has died today at the age of 90.

The presidency in South Africa has announced the death but has given no details on the cause of death.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said Tutu distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights.

Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent opposition to apartheid.

A decade later, he witnessed the ends of that regime and he chaired a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up to unearth atrocities committed during those dark days.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies At 90 Years

Even after the end of apartheid, Tutu never wavered in his fight for a fairer South Africa and he called on the Black political elite to account with as much feistiness as he had the white Afrikaners.

Tutu was a longtime friend of Nelson Mandela and lived for a time on the same street in the South African township of Soweto, Vilakazi Street, the only one in the world to host two Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and in recent years he was hospitalized on several occasions to treat infections associated with his cancer treatment.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu OMSG CH was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position