Anti-apartheid Veteran, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies @ 90

One of South Africa’s anti-apartheid leaders, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has died at the age of 90, the President’s Office has announced.

While announcing the passage of Archbishop Tutu, President Cyril Ramaphosa noted that; “The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa”.

Mr Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and was hospitalised several times in recent years to treat infections associated with his cancer treatment.

“Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning,” Dr Ramphela Mamphele, acting chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and coordinator of the Office of the Archbishop, said in a statement on behalf of the Tutu family.

Mamphele did not however give details of the cause of death as she only described the Late Archbishop Tutu as a man who “turned his own misfortune into a teaching opportunity to raise awareness and reduce the suffering of others.

“He wanted the world to know that he had prostate cancer, and that the sooner it is detected the better the chance of managing it.

“Courageous, gracious, and concerned for the welfare of others to the very end.

“As Mrs Tutu says, although he was not physically imposing, he had the inner strength of a lion,” the statement states. (Sky News)

Archbishop Tutu was an outspoken critic of the country’s previous brutal system of oppression against the country’s black majority.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his campaign of non-violent opposition to South Africa’s white minority rule.