End-of-An-Era: South Africa's Anti-Apartheid Icon Desmond Tutu Has Died at The Age of 90

He was a Moral Giant preaching from the pulpit, leaving behind a mixed ambivalent legacy.

South Africa’s 1984 Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice and retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town will be honored at these tenuous times.

‘Touched many of us’: South Africans mourn Desmond Tutu’s death

Memorial services have been organised across the country to pay tribute to the 90-year-old anti-apartheid icon.

The buoyant, blunt-spoken clergyman used his pulpit as the first Black bishop of Johannesburg and later Archbishop of Cape Town as well as frequent public demonstrations to galvanize public opinion against racial inequity both at home and globally

[File: J. Pat Carter/AP Photo]

 

Thabi Myeni

aljazeera.com

"Memorial services are being organised across the country’s main cities of Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, as tributes pour in from African leaders and the international community for a man who was instrumental in building a democratic South Africa. . .

‘Racialised inequality’

However, a section of South African society remains critical of Tutu.

Modibe Madiba, who runs popular alternative media platform, the Insight Factor, told Al Jazeera young Black South Africans “continue to live with the consequences of how leaders like Archbishop Tutu handled the process of nation-building” in the country.

“I feel impacted by the legacy of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I live in a country where there is racialised inequality. This is what Tutu, who fought against apartheid, allowed us to inherit from the apartheid regime in the end,” he said.

“The world must remember the fight against apartheid was not a fight to cast votes. It was a fight for justice, for economic opportunities, for lives lost senselessly, and for people dispossessed of their land by the apartheid regime.”

After the end of apartheid, Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was set up to unearth atrocities committed by the white-minority government from 1948 to 1991 when apartheid laws were repealed. . ."

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‘Moral gi­ant’: How the world re­act­ed to Desmond Tutu’s death

• The arch­bish­op’s lega­cy as an ‘anti-apartheid hero’ is re­mem­bered in South Africa and around the world.

  Published On 26 Dec 202126 Dec 2021

  

• Obit­u­ary: Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s ‘moral com­pass’

  Tutu, who died on Sun­day at the age of 90, was con­sid­ered ‘a thorn in the side of the apartheid gov­ern­ment’.

  Published On 26 Dec 202126 Dec 2021

An un­com­pro­mis­ing foe of apartheid, Tutu worked tire­less­ly, though non-vi­o­lent­ly, for its down­fall.
 
“Archbishop Tutu adopted the restorative justice approach, and rightly so, because bloodshed was not the answer at that time,” Jason, who goes by a single name, told Al Jazeera.
Sikhumbuzo Mgxwati, 32, is among the growing voices of young South Africans who are ambivalent about the legacy of the country’s last surviving Nobel Peace laureate.
 
"Growing up, we were fed the idea of apartheid heroes as people who liberated Black people, but today, you realise that they just assimilated to the same system that kept us oppressed, living precarious lives and without opportunities,” he told Al Jazeera.
• Published On 26 Dec 2021