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Tutu: A week of mourning in S. Africa

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa on Monday began a week of mourning for revered anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate passed away on Sunday aged 90, stripping the world of a towering moral figure and the last great protagonist of a heroic South African era.

“He was brave, he was forthright and we loved him just for that, because he was the voice of the voiceless,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters after visiting Tutu’s family in Cape Town.

The funeral will be held on New Year’s Day at St George’s Cathedral in his former Cape Town parish, Tutu’s foundation said, although ceremonies are likely to be muted because of Covid-19 restrictions.

Dozens of people braved rain to gather outside the cathedral on Monday, leaving flowers and messages.

The widow of South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel, issued a statement to say she mourned “the loss of a brother”.

Tutu “is the last of an extraordinarily outstanding generation of leaders that Africa birthed and gifted to the world”, she said.

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M M Alam

M. M. Alam is a Pakistan-based working journalist since 1981. Karachi University faculty gold medalist Alam began his career four decades ago by writing for Dawn, Pakistan’s highest circulating English daily. He has worked for region’s leading publications, global aviation periodicals including Rotors (of USA) and vetted New York Times as permanent employee of daily Express Tribune. Alam regularly covers international aviation and defense-related events including Salon Du Bourget (France), Farnborough (United Kingdom), Dubai (UAE). Alam has reported thousands of events and interviewed hundreds of people in Pakistan, UAE, EU, UK and USA. Being Francophone Alam also coordinates with a number of French publications.