Archbishop, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and veteran of South Africa's struggle against white minority rule and apartheid Desmond Tutu died on Sunday morning in Cape Town, Reuters reports. He was 90.
Diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s, he was hospitalised on several occasions in recent years for infections associated with his cancer treatment.
"Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning," Dr Ramphela Mamphele, acting chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and Co-ordinator of the Office of the Archbishop, said on behalf of Tutu's family without elaborating on the cause of death.
Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent resistance to apartheid. He chaired a Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to dig out the atrocities spurred by racism during the apartheid era a decade later.
Greaving the loss, 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."