: Desmond Tutu, Anti-Apartheid Campaigner Who Tried to Heal the World, Dies at 90 #WorldNEWS South African anti-apartheid campaigner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu,

Desmond Tutu, Anti-Apartheid Campaigner Who Tried to Heal the World, Dies at 90 #WorldNEWS
South African anti-apartheid campaigner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, one of the worlds most revered religious leaders, died in Cape Town on Sunday at age 90, bringing to an end an extraordinary life filled with courage, love and a passion for justice.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Tutus death, saying it marks another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa. Fellow anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela died in 2013, and F. W. de Klerk—the last white South African president, who worked to dismantle the South African governments apartheid system—died in November.
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Ramaphosa paid tribute to Tutus work, both in ending apartheid and in fighting for human rights everywhere: A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.
Tutu had been hospitalized several times in recent years following a 1997 prostate cancer diagnosis.
A globally recognized icon of peaceful resistance to injustice, Tutu is best remembered for his courageous leadership of the Anglican Church in South Africa even as he spearheaded the fight against apartheid. Like fellow human rights activists Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. , he used his religion as a platform to advocate for equality and freedom for all South Africans, regardless of race. He often noted that the apartheid system, while devastating for South Africa’s blacks, was nearly as corrosive to the spiritual, physical and political development of the white population it was supposed to protect. Whites, in being those who oppress others, dehumanized themselves,” he was quoted as saying.
Deftly wielding the Christian principles of love and forgiveness as a weapon in his fight to dismantle apartheid, he regularly, and publicly, prayed for the wellbeing of his opponents, even those who were most vociferous in their attacks against him. But even as he preached forgiveness, he was uncompromising when it came to his fundamental moral philosophy. “You are either in favour of evil, or you are in favour of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You cant be neutral,” he wrote in a statement to the United States Congress in 1984. He expanded his thinking in later speeches and sermons, noting that “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.