South Africa's anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu dies

CAPE TOWN - South Africa's Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, also a Nobel Peace laureate, passed away on Sunday morning in Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa at the age of 90, his Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation announced.

Tutu, born in 1931, became an outspoken prophet for justice of political leaders in prison and exile during the apartheid era as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and later Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, said the foundation in a statement, praising his resistance against the apartheid regime.

The foundation also praised his role in the nation's democratic transition and reconciliation after 1994's first non-racial national elections as the chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the government to help deal with what happened under apartheid.

According to the foundation, Tutu spent the closing years of his life increasingly devoted to prayer and contemplation in his home in Cape Town with his wife, Nomalizo Leah Tutu.

The Church will plan Tutu's funeral and other memorial services with the support of the South African government and the city of Cape Town in accordance with Tutu's instructions, and details will be announced later, said Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, in an announcement of Tutu's death.

In a statement issued by Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on behalf of all South Africans expressed his sadness at Tutu's passing.

The passing away of Tutu followed that of another South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Frederik Willem (FW) de Klerk, the last apartheid president, who died in Cape Town in November.

Tutu's passing is "another chapter of bereavement" in South Africa's farewell to "a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa," said Ramaphosa, commending him for fighting against the forces of apartheid and his compassion for those who suffered under apartheid.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation in a statement looked back upon the friendship between Tutu and South Africa's first black president Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk, saying Tutu is "a man who cared", the words Tutu used to describe Mandela when the latter died in 2013.