Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dead at 90

By Stephanie Downs

On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that Desmond Tutu, who was a human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, died at the age of 90. Tutu, who was the first Black Bishop of Johannesburg and later became the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, worked at length to end apartheid in South Africa. In light of his passing, many around the world have paid tribute to Tutu, including several world leaders. 

Tutu's passing was announced by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Trust on Sunday. The clergyman's death came over two decades after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997. Tutu, who died at the Oasis Frail Care Center in Cape Town, had been hospitalized multiple times since 2015. The Archbishop Desmond Tutu Trust stated, "Typically he 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."

Tutu, who was also known as the "Arch," worked tirelessly to end apartheid, a regime rooted in oppression towards the Black majority in his native South Africa. Apartheid came to an end in 1994. That same year and weeks after the end of apartheid, former South African President Nelson Mandela appointed Tutu to be the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a statement upon Tutu's passing in which he spoke about the late human rights leader's legacy.

Ramaphosa said that Tutu's death "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." He continued, "From the pavements of resistance in South Africa to the pulpits of the world's great cathedrals and places of worship, and the prestigious setting of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, the Arch distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights."

Tutu was born in 1931 in Klersdorp, South Africa. He rose to prominence after becoming the first Black Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985. Throughout the 1980s, he was one of the most vocal leaders calling for the end of apartheid. Due to his extensive work as a human rights activist, Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist in his own right and South Africa's first Black head of state, called Tutu the "people's archbishop."

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