Archbishop Desmond Tutu: tributes paid to ‘a moral giant’ after anti-apartheid hero dies – latest updates

David Beresford reported from South Africa for the Guardian in 1986 when Tutu was elected the first black archbishop of Cape Town, becoming leader of South Africa’s two million-member Anglican church.

In St George’s Cathedral, Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, offered prayers for “my brother”, P W Botha, and repeated a call for the state president to start negotiations with “the authentic representatives” of the people to end apartheid.

Scenes from St George’s cathedral in Cape Town:

The mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has invited residents to write remembrance messages for Tutu.

AFP reports that Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, said: “Tutu inspired a generation of African leaders who embraced his non-violent approaches in the liberation struggle”.

The UK’s Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said Tutu’s legacy “echoes through generations”.

He said:

Desmond Tutu was a tower of a man and a leader of moral activism.

He dedicated his life to tackling injustice and standing up for the oppressed. His impact on the world crosses borders and echoes through generations.

May he rest in peace.

South African online newspaper TimesLIVE reports that police have cordoned off sections near Tutu’s home in Milnerton, Cape Town, and that preparations are “underway” at the city’s civic centre for a briefing by Tutu’s family members, foundation and government and city officials.

The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, tweeted:

Saddened to hear of archbishop Desmond Tutu’s death. He was a driving force behind ending apartheid in South Africa and a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

My thoughts are with the people of South Africa.

Strictly Come Dancing stars Oti and Motsi Mabuse, who grew up in South Africa, also paid tribute to Tutu.

Oti, a dancer on the BBC show, wrote on Twitter that his death was “sad news” and a “major loss” for South Africa.

Her sister Motsi, who is a Strictly judge, shared a Tutu quote:

In more reaction to Tutu’s death, Basim Naeem, a senior official for Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, told Reuters:

Our Palestinian people lost a strong supporter of their march towards freedom and independence. Father Desmond Tutu spent his entire life struggling against racism and defending human rights and especially on the Palestinian land.

Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, told Reuters:

Father Desmond Tutu was one of the biggest supporters of the Palestinian cause. He had always advocated the rights of the Palestinians to gain their freedom and rejected Israeli occupation and Apartheid.

Thebe Ikalafeng, founder of Brand Africa, told Sky that Tutu “represented the goodness of humanity”.

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has paid tribute to Tutu:

Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, said:

Extracts from Gary Younge’s 2009 interview with Tutu:

“In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society,” Tutu says in his slow, deep, deliberate voice. “And you are able to say things that people might take more seriously than if you were not a Nobel laureate. And with a world that faces so much conflict and suffering, there seems to be a place for those who just might help us change tack. But I am still deeply longing for a quieter life. And I really mean it when I say it. I’m really going to try. My wife says that she’s heard me say that several times. I will try next year and be ruthless. But what do you say when the prime minister of the Solomon Islands writes and says, please, could you come and be with us when we launch our truth and reconciliation commission? It seems so rude, so hard-hearted in a way, to say no and have them think, ‘We are a small nation. Perhaps we don’t count for a great deal.’ If you do go, it just might lift their morale.”

Tutu has claimed that his greatest weakness is that he loves to be loved. “There are not too many who enjoy being castigated as ogres,” he says, “as someone others love to hate. I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular. I know for myself that it has tended to be a weakness – a tendency to enjoy the limelight, a weakness that would make you soften things that are hard but that you need to say. Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I’m quite shy. I know it doesn’t look like it.”

UK deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, has described Tutu as a “truly great figure”.

Gary Younge quotes from his 2009 interview with Tutu:

More reaction to Tutu’s death from South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba:

Ramaphosa said:

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.

Desmond Tutu was a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.

Makgoba said:

Desmond Tutu’s legacy is moral strength, moral courage and clarity. He felt with the people. In public and alone, he cried because he felt people’s pain. And he laughed * no, not just laughed, he cackled with delight when he shared their joy.

Key dates from Tutu’s life, as reported by Reuters:

• 1931 – Desmond Tutu is born in Klerksdorp, a town around 170 km (105 miles) to the west of Johannesburg.
• 1943 – Tutu’s Methodist family joins the Anglican Church.
• 1947 – Tutu falls ill with tuberculosis while studying at a secondary school near Sophiatown, Johannesburg. He befriends a priest and serves in his church after recovering from illness.
• 1948 – The white National Party launches apartheid in the run-up to 1948 national elections. It wins popular support among white voters who want to maintain their dominance over the Black majority.
• 1955 – Tutu marries Nomalizo Leah Shenxane and begins teaching at a high school in Johannesburg where his father is the headmaster.
• 1958 – Tutu quits the school, refusing to be part of a teaching system that promotes inequality against Black students. He joins the priesthood.
• 1962 – Tutu moves to Britain to study theology at King’s College London.
• 1966 – Tutu moves back to South Africa and starts teaching theology at a seminary in the Eastern Cape. He also begins making his views against apartheid known.
• 1975 – Tutu becomes the first Black Anglican Dean of Johannesburg.
• 1980 – As general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, Tutu leads a delegation of church leaders to prime minister PW Botha, urging him to end apartheid. Although nothing comes of the meeting it is a historical moment where a Black leader confronts a senior white government official. The government confiscates Tutu’s passport.
• 1984 – Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about the end of white minority rule.
• 1985 – Tutu becomes the first Black bishop of Johannesburg. He publicly endorses an economic boycott of South Africa and civil disobedience as a way to dismantle apartheid.
• 1986 – Tutu becomes the first Black person appointed as bishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa. With other church leaders he mediates conflicts between Black protesters and government security forces.
• 1990 – State President FW de Klerk unbans the African National Congress (ANC) and announces plans to release Nelson Mandela from prison.
• 1991 – Apartheid laws and racist restrictions are repealed and power-sharing talks start between the state and 16 anti-apartheid groups.
• 1994 – After Mandela sweeps to power at the helm of the ANC in the country’s first democratic elections, Tutu coins the term “Rainbow Nation” to describe the coming together of various races in post-apartheid South Africa.
• 1994 – Mandela asks Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was set up to listen to, record and in some cases grant amnesty to perpetrators of human right violations under apartheid.
• 1996 – Tutu retires from the church to focus solely on the commission. He continues his activism, advocating for equality and reconciliation and is later named Archbishop Emeritus.
• 1997 – Tutu is diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has since been hospitalised to treat recurring infections.
• 2011 – The Dalai Lama inaugurates the annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture but does so via satellite link after the South African government denies the Tibetan spiritual leader a visa to attend.
• 2013 – Tutu makes outspoken comments about the ANC. He says he will no longer vote for the party because it had done a bad job addressing inequality, violence and corruption.
• 2013 – Dubbed “the moral compass of the nation”, Tutu declares his support for gay rights, saying he would never “worship a God who is homophobic”.
• 2021 – A frail-looking Tutu is wheeled into his former parish at St George’s cathedral in Cape Town, which used to be a safe haven for anti-apartheid activists, for a special thanksgiving service marking his 90th birthday.
• 26 December 2021 – Tutu dies in Cape Town, aged 90.

Tutu was famous for coining the phrase “Rainbow Nation” to describe the new South Africa that emerged with the end of aprtheid and the presidency of nelson Mandela.

However, Reuters reports that in his later years he came to regret that the prediction had not come true and was a fierce critic of successive African National Congress-led governments.

“As an old man, I am sad because I had hoped that my last days would be days of rejoicing, days of praising and commending the younger people doing the things that we hoped so very much would be the case,” Tutu told Reuters in June 2014.

There is a lot of reaction coming in to the death of Desmond Tutu, the anti-apartheid warrior, including from former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba who said “we have lost a giant”.

Desmond Tutu, the cleric who was a giant figure in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, has died at the age of 90, the country’s president has announced.

“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,” president Cyril Ramaphosa said.