Africa Loses Anti-Apartheid Hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the most notable advocates against apartheid in South Africa, is dead.
A BBC report early on Sunday stated that the revered cleric died at the age of 90. The report also notes that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described Tutu’s death as “another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans”.
Ramaphosa said Archbishop Tutu had helped bequeath “a liberated South Africa”.
BBC describes Tutu as a “contemporary of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, he was was one of the driving forces behind the movement to end the policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority government against the black majority in South Africa from 1948 until 1991.
He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for his role in the struggle to abolish the apartheid system.”
Apartheid was a system of segregation based on race. Under apartheid, black South Africans were prevented from accessing the same rights and privileges as white South Africans. The minority white population dominated the country politically and economically through the use of force and a repressive apartheid legislation.
Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela led many other South Africans to fight against the oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa and inspired the world to join the call for an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In June 1990, the apartheid legislation was repealed and paved the way for the end to apartheid in 1994. Nelson Mandela emerged the first black President of South Africa and succeeded President F. W. de Klerk, whose administration also took several unilateral steps to end apartheid in South Africa.
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