By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Photo Credit: Stephen Voss.
The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said South Africa and the world have lost one of the great spirits and moral giants of our age.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu overcame polio in his childhood, and nearly succumbed to TB in his youth.
In the late 1990s he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, with which he lived for the past 23 years. In recent years he was hospitalized on several occasions to treat infections associated with his cancer treatment.
Typically, he turned his own misfortune into a teaching opportunity to raise awareness and reduce the suffering of others. He wanted the world to know that he had prostate cancer, and that the sooner it is detected the better the chance of managing it.
Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning. Courageous, gracious, and concerned for the welfare of others to the very end… As Mrs Tutu says, although he was not physically imposing, he had the inner strength of a lion. Archbishop Tutu embraced the core African philosophy of Ubuntu, that God’s creation is interconnected and inter-dependent.
The human family is one and all people should honour one another regardless of colour, class, geographic location, religious belief, sexual orientation etc. His own family was massively important to him.
His role-model was his mother, Mrs Aletta Tutu, whose dignity and compassion he sought to replicate. He had a remarkable 66-year marriage to Nomalizo Leah Tutu.
They made an excellent team, she arguably a little more grounded and pragmatic than he. They regularly placed their deep affection for each other on public display, not least when they celebrated their wedding anniversaries. He was a truly romantic man, who loved his wife and family.
The marriage was blessed with four children, Trevor, Thandeka, Naomi and Mpho. The Archbishop’s sister Gloria Radebe tells the story of the Arch’s excitement when Trevor was born; how he ran miles through the township of Munsieville, Krugersdorp, to inform his parents.
South Africa and the world has lost one its greatest parents and role-models. The Arch was abnormally imbued with a sense of pastoral duty to serve the best interests of his species – the human family – and planet.
To do the right thing. To make people feel part. To advance justice, humanness, peace and joy. His work is not done; it is in our hands now.
All of our hands. There is a paucity of moral leadership in the world. The cliffs of climate disaster, consumptiveness, greed, inequality and injustice lie just ahead. People must find the means to humanize economies, social and political systems, to imbue them with sustainability, before it is too late.
On behalf of the Tutu Family, we thank all across the country and the world who upheld Arch in their prayers, and whose love and respect for him fueled his extraordinary body of work on earth, the foundation concluded.