Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies

Africa | South Africa December 26, 2021

South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu is dead. He died on December 26, 2021, in Cape Town at the age of 90.

South Africa’s first Anglican African bishop, Desmond Tutu was renown for his unwavering stance against South Africa’s previous pathetic apartheid system against which he advocated for non-violent response.

After the apartheid regime was defeated and South Africa gained a majority African rule in 1994 under the African National Congress (ANC) party, Archbishop Desmond Tutu refocused his social and political activism, to emerging issues in the new South Africa.

He was appointed by the ANC government to lead an agency aimed at probing the crimes committed during the apartheid era, called Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The role of the commission has, however, been debatable and even questioned in some quarters for, among others, letting hard-core perpetrators of apartheid crimes go free.

Notwithstanding, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s closeness with the ANC government was rather short-lived. He soon became very critical about the government, accusing it of grave failures and even wishing it to go. That was not amusing to the ANC government that reportedly retaliated by advising him to retire from politics.

In the years that followed his alienation from the government, the charismatic and humoristic Archbishop Desmond Tutu became even more active in political and social activism, widening it beyond South Africa, and became a powerful global campaigner for social justice and human rights.

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