South Africa President, Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday, announced the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The celebrated Nobel Laureate died at 90.
This is five years after the South African anti-apartheid icon celebrated his 85th birthday in October 2016, saying he would like to be allowed the option of dignified assisted death.
“I have prepared for my death and have made it clear that I do not wish to be kept alive at all costs.
“I hope I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life’s journey in the manner of my choice.
“For those suffering unbearably and coming to the end of their lives, merely knowing that an assisted death is open to them can provide immeasurable comfort,” he wrote in Tutu wrote in an op-ed published in The Washington Post.
Before his death, one reason for his regular hospitalisation was an infection resulting from the prostate cancer treatment he has been receiving for over 24 years.
Medically-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia is illegal in South Africa, but in recent years there have been growing calls for it to be legalised.
Here are a dozen things to know about the late Archbishop
1 – He is the first black Archbishop of Cape Town and bishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).
2 – Tutu received many international accolades during his long and illustrious life, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
3 – Initially trained as a teacher after leaving school, he began studying theology after having taught at a high school for three years and was ordained as a priest in 1960.
4 – He bagged a Master of Theology degree in 1966 in England.
5 – In 1975 he was appointed Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, the first black person to hold that position. From 1976 to 1978 he was Bishop of Lesotho.
6- In 1978, he became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches.
7 – After the fall of apartheid, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
8 – He retired as Archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 after serving in that capacity for 10 years, and was made emeritus Archbishop of Cape Town, an honorary title that is unusual in the Anglican church.
9 – In 1997, Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent successful treatment in the US. He was readmitted to the hospital at various times thereafter to address the cause of recurring infections.
10 – In September 2019, the world got its first proper look at Prince Harry and Meghan’s baby son when the pair relished their meeting with Tutu in Cape Town, a photograph of which they shared on their official Instagram as “Arch, meet Archie.”
11 – Tutu was married to Leah, whom he met at college, and shared four children with.
12 – Their only son, Trevor Tutu, is the eldest child. He was named after Tutu’s mentor and fellow apartheid activist Trevor Huddleston.
Their eldest daughter is Theresa Thandi Tutu, who leads a largely private life. Naomi Tutu studied in the US where she also started a foundation to provide scholarships and other help to South African refugees.
Mpho Tutu, their youngest daughter, followed in her father’s footsteps by becoming a cleric and champion of human rights issues. In 2010, she co-wrote a book with her father called Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference.
Below are some of his most famous quotes:
– “Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.” (New York Times, October 19, 1984)
– “For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognise that we are humans, too. When you scratch us, we bleed. When you tickle us, we laugh.” (Statement urging sanctions against South Africa, 1985)
– “Your President is the pits as far as blacks are concerned. He sits there like the great, big white chief of old can tell us black people that we don’t know what is good for us. The white man knows.” (Interview with US press, reacting to Ronald Reagan’s vetoing of economic sanctions apartheid government, 1986)
– “At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: ‘Raise your hands!’ Then I’ve said, ‘Move your hands,’ and I’ve said, ‘Look at your hands — different colours representing different people. You are the rainbow people of God’.” (His book “The Rainbow People of God”, 1994)
– “I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid.” (Speech at a UN’s gay rights campaign, 2013).
– “I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: ‘You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he’s not a Christian’? I don’t think that is the case, because, you see, God is not a Christian.” (Speech at Dalai Lama’s birthday, June 2, 2006)
– “He has, I mean, mutated into something that is quite unbelievable. He has really turned into a kind of Frankenstein for his people.” (commenting about Robert Mugabe to Australia’s ABC TV)
– “One day I was in San Francisco, minding my own business, as I always do, when a lady came up gushing. Oh, she was so warm and she was greeting me and she said, ‘Hello, Archbishop Mandela!’ Sort of getting two for the price of one.” (Speech at University of Michigan, 2008)
– “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” (Announcing retirement from public life, July 22, 2010)
– “Our government… says it will not support Tibetans who are being oppressed viciously by the Chinese… I am warning you, I am warning you, that we will pray as we prayed for the downfall of the apartheid government, we will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us.” (On South Africa refusing the Dalai Lama a visa, 2011)
– “I am ashamed to call this lickspittle bunch my government.” (After South Africa again denied the Dalai Lama a visa, 2014).
– “Did he have weaknesses? Of course he did, among them his steadfast loyalty to his organisation and to some of his colleagues who ultimately let him down. He retained in his cabinet under-performing, frankly incompetent ministers. But I believe he was saintly because he inspired others powerfully.” (At Mandela’s death, 2013)
– “Once a Zambian and a South African, it is said, were talking. The Zambian then boasted about their minister of naval affairs. The South African asked, ‘But you have no navy, no access to the sea. How then can you have a minister of naval affairs?’ The Zambian retorted, ‘Well, in South Africa you have a Minister of Justice, don’t you?’” (Nobel lecture, 1984)
– “I have prepared for my death and have made it clear that I do not wish to be kept alive at all costs. I hope I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life’s journey in the manner of my choice.” (Op-ed in The Washington Post, 2016)
AFP
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