Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has died at the age of 90.
Tutu, the last surviving South African laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, died in Cape Town.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa.”
Tutu will be remembered for having forced the iconic freedom fighter Winnie Madikizela Mandela, to apologise for the murder of Stompie Seipei. A murder she did not commit. Stompie’s mother told the world that Winnie was framed.
Former Zimbabwe President Mugabe once took a swipe at Desmond Tutu for supporting homosexuality which he says is against African customs. Mugabe and Tutu had always been at each other’s necks.
Mugabe once said Tutu was as “an angry, evil and embittered little bishop”
In an interview aired Sky TV, Stuart Ramsay asked Mugabe why “a well respected man of the church [like Tutu]” would describe him as “a cartoon figure of the archetypal African dictator”.
Mugabe retorted: “He is an angry, evil and embittered little bishop, you see, who thinks that his own view should hold.” When the interviewer said Tutu had been referring to the fact that Zimbabwe was not observing the rule of law and democracy, Mugabe added: “So one little bishop becomes the proponent of our political system here?”
Ramsay; ” No, but he is widely respected throughout the world.”
Mugabe, “Respected for his religion perhaps.”
Ramsay; “No, respected for the [South African Truth and] Reconciliation Commission, for being a man who was able to go through the whole of the apartheid era and still speak out against a repressive regime. He has identified a repressive regime.”
Mugabe: “He was a frightened man during the apartheid era and the little he did was perhaps just to criticise and criticise, even in an innocent way, apartheid. When called upon to do something, something that would distinguish him as supporter of the ANC, he didn’t. He didn’t, he wouldn’t go that way.”
