South African anti-apartheid campaigner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, one of the world's most revered religious leaders, died in Cape Town on Sunday at age 90, bringing to an end an extraordinary life filled with courage, love and a passion for justice.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Tutu's death, saying it marks "another chapter of bereavement in our nation's farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa." Fellow anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela died in 2013, and F.W. de Klerk – the last white South African president, who worked to dismantle the South African government's apartheid system – died in November.
Ramaphosa paid tribute to Tutu's work, both in ending apartheid and in fighting for human rights everywhere: "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."
Tutu had been hospitalized several times in recent years following a 1997 prostate cancer diagnosis.
A globally recognized icon of peaceful resistance to injustice, Tutu is best remembered for his courageous leadership of the Anglican Church in South Africa even as he spearheaded the fight against apartheid. Like fellow human rights activists Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., he used his religion as a platform to advocate for equality and freedom for all South Africans, regardless of race. He often noted that the apartheid system, while devastating for South Africa's blacks, was nearly as corrosive to the spiritual, physical and political development of the white population it was supposed to protect. "Whites, in being those who oppress others, dehumanized themselves," he was quoted as saying.
Deftly wielding the Christian principles of love and forgiveness as a weapon in his fight to dismantle apartheid, he regularly, and publicly, prayed for the wellbeing of his opponents, even those who were most vociferous in their attacks against him. But even as he preached forgiveness, he was uncompromising when it came to his fundamental moral philosophy. "You are either in favour of evil, or you are in favour of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral," he wrote in a statement to the United States Congress in 1984. He expanded his thinking in later speeches and sermons, noting that "If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
It was a philosophy that continued to animate his activism long after the end of apartheid. When full democracy finally came to South Africa in 1994, Tutu applied his elder-statesman stature and boundless energy to advocate for social justice and equality globally, taking on issues of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, climate change and the right of the terminally ill to die with dignity. He became a globe-trotting peace advocate, pushing for justice, freedom and an end to conflict in Israel-Palestine, Rwanda, Burma and Iraq. He campaigned against the United States' illegal detention of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and became an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights, even as he risked conflict with members of his own church. "Opposing apartheid was a matter of justice," he said in 2006. "Opposing discrimination against women is a matter of justice. Opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a matter of justice." Though Tutu was routinely confronted with some of the most egregious aspects of human behavior at home and in his travels , he never lost his faith in his fellow man. "Despite all of the ghastliness in the world, human beings are made for goodness," he once said.
His sermons, unfailingly lucid, penetrating and inspired, went beyond the homily of the day to encompass the news of the world. A tremendous orator, he wove jokes, observations and passion into his speeches, deftly conducting his audiences into a state of uproar over injustice. Once there, he gently directed the heightened emotions towards constructive action. As the title of his authorized biography, published to great acclaim in 2006, put it: He was a rabble rouser for peace. As Mandela said: "Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humor, Desmond Tutu's voice will always be the voice of the voiceless."
Born on Oct. 7, 1931, to a school headmaster and a domestic servant in Klerksdorp, South Africa, Desmond Mpilo Tutu grew up to become a teacher like his father. But when the South African government started instituting discriminatory education policies that restricted black South Africans' employment opportunities, he quit in disgust. In 1958 he enrolled at a theological college instead, and in 1961 was ordained as priest in the Anglican church. A year later he left South Africa to continue his studies in London, where he experienced, for the first time, a life of freedom from apartheid's race-based restrictions. "I'm sure there was racism there," he noted in his biography. "But we were protected by the church. It was marvelous. We didn't have to carry our passes anymore and we did not have to look around to see if we could use that bath or that exit. It was a tremendously liberating thing."
Tutu returned to Africa in 1975, and became the Anglican Bishop of the country of Lesotho. Two years later he returned to South Africa, where he was elected to become the first Black secretary general of the South African Council of Churches. His elevated position in the church enabled him to advocate for an end of apartheid while granting him a certain degree of protection from the South African authorities. With most of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement jailed or in exile, Tutu become the movement's de facto head, and a leading spokesperson for the rights of Black South Africans.