Desmond Tutu, Nobel Prize-Winning Theologian Who Advocated Against Apartheid, Dies At 90

Desmond Tutu, the South African theologian who brought both a spiritual and economic dimension to the struggle against his nation’s racist apartheid policies, passed away at the age of 90.

A Rise To Authority: Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on Oct. 7, 1931 in Klerksdorp in northwest South Africa. He was baptized in the Methodist faith, although during his childhood his family changed denominations to the African Methodist Episcopal faith and then to the Anglican faith.

Tutu initially considered a career in medicine, but his family was unable to afford the tuition needed for medical training. He worked as a teacher before deciding on a ministry career. He entered St. Peter’s Theological College in Rosetenville and was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1961.

In 1967, he became chaplain at the University of Fort Hare. In 1975, Tutu made history as the first Black man to be named dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, which many viewed as the Anglican Church’s first major pushback at the racial separation tenets of the apartheid era.

Tutu became bishop of Lesotho, a tiny country neighboring South Africa, and later was chairman of the South African Council of Churches. In 1985, he became the first Black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg and the following year he was ordained as the first Black archbishop of Cape Town.

A Champion Of Equality: Tutu’s authority within South Africa’s theological realm brought him world attention, and he used this platform to call attention to the brutality of the apartheid policies on South Africa’s nonwhite population.

While beloved by South Africa’s Black population for using the pulpit to condemn the nation’s repressive politics, he was also condemned by some Black radicals as being too moderate and by his nation’s Marxist advocates for his anti-Communist statements.

Not surprisingly, the apartheid government of South Africa loathed Tutu and frequently interfered with his global travel. When he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, South Africa’s government ordered the nation’s media to significantly downplay coverage of that achievement.

Tutu played a key role in encouraging the global economic boycott of South Africa as a means to weaken the whites-only government’s rule on the Black majority country. During a 1985 press conference at the United Nations, he stated, “I am a peacemaker, not a pacifist.”

Post-Apartheid Leadership: In 1990, Nelson Mandela met with Tutu in Cape Town, shortly after the anti-apartheid leader’s release from 27 years in prison. Tutu was an active force in transitioning South Africa to universal suffrage, and coordinated the religious component of Mandela’s 1994 inauguration as president by uniting South Africa’s diverse religious groups into an interfaith delegation at the historic event.

In 1995, he chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to bring a degree of restorative healing to the abuses of the apartheid years. When the commission’s 1998 report identified human rights abuses by the anti-apartheid African National Congress during the years of whites-only rule, the organization attempted to stop the report’s release. Tutu bluntly defended the criticism of the ANC by noting, “I didn’t struggle in order to remove one set of those who thought they were tin gods to replace them with others who are tempted to think they are.”

Tutu never shied away from positions that many considered controversial in South Africa, including the ordination of women as Anglican priests and the support of LGBT rights – both of these efforts were seen by many conservative-minded South Africans as an affront to their traditions.

Tutu retired from public life in 2010, but continued to be active in calling attention to human rights abuses around the world, from the Chinese occupation in Tibet to the mistreatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa praised Tutu by noting his death was “another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa.”

Photo: Jmquez / Wikimedia Commons