South Africa Begin Week Of Mourning For Anti-Apartheid Giant Tutu

South Africa on Monday began a week of mourning for revered anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, IgbereTV reports.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate passed away on Sunday aged 90, stripping the world of a towering moral figure and the last great protagonist of a heroic South African era.

“He was brave, he was forthright and we loved him just for that, because he was the voice of the voiceless,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters after visiting Tutu’s family in Cape Town.

 

The funeral will be held on New Year’s Day at St George’s Cathedral in his former Cape Town parish, Tutu’s foundation said, although ceremonies are likely to be muted because of Covid-19 restrictions.

Dozens of people braved rain to gather outside the cathedral on Monday, leaving flowers and messages.

The widow of South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel, issued a statement to say she mourned “the loss of a brother”.

Tutu “is the last of an extraordinarily outstanding generation of leaders that Africa birthed and gifted to the world”, she said