Anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu dies at 90

SARAJevo, (Patria) - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a prominent veteran of the fight against apartheid in South Africa, has died at the age of 90, the South African president announced on Sunday.

“The death of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another sad chapter in our nation’s farewell to a generation of South Africans who bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1961. After studying in the United Kingdom, he served as a priest and bishop in South Africa and Lesotho, and by the late 1970s, he had become the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his opposition to apartheid, and a year later, he was appointed Bishop of Johannesburg. He held this position for about a year before moving to become Archbishop of Cape Town. He held this post, as the first black person, until 1996.

After the fall of apartheid, he led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 1995 to investigate human rights violations during the period of white institutional dominance in South Africa.