Africa

Desmond Tutu: Cape Town turns purple in tribute to peacemaker

Table Mountain and town hall lit up in honour of South Africa’s moral conscience

Table Mountain lit up in purple to honour the memory of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in Cape Town. Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty

Mon Dec 27 2021 - 15:09

South Africans remembered anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu with cathedral bells, flowers and warm words on Monday, a day after he died in a Cape Town nursing home aged 90.

Archbishop Tutu, a Nobel laureate who had preached against the tyranny of the white minority, was revered by black and white South Africans alike as the nation’s moral conscience.

His death prompted an outpouring of tributes worldwide, including from US president Joe Biden and his predecessors Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Pope Francis and the foundation of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president and a friend of Archbishop Tutu.

"Fighting for freedom from the trenches of South Africa required a courage that cannot be described. Yet he stood resolute and fearless, leading demonstrations cloaked in his flowing clerical robe," said Mandela's widow, Graca Machel.

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The bells of St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town tolled for 10 minutes at noon local time on Monday, a homage set to be repeated every day until Friday. Archbishop Tutu led numerous campaigns and marches against apartheid from St George’s steps.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, asked all who heard the bells "to pause their busy schedules for a moment in tribute" to Archbishop Tutu.

A woman is comforted outside the historical home of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in Soweto, Johannesburg. Photograph: Shiraaz Mohamed/AP Photo

Tributes to Archbishop Desmond Tutu at St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town. Photograph: Stringer/EPA

Mourners laid flowers outside what is known as the “People’s Cathedral” and a powerful symbol of democracy. Black-and-white portraits of the late archbishop were attached to a fence and five condolence books were available for mourners who braved the wet weather.

“You fought the good fight, you inspired us to continue the fight for peace in the world,” read one message.

National address

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said in a national address late on Sunday that flags would be flown at half-mast nationwide and at South African diplomatic missions abroad until Tutu's funeral, which is set for Saturday.

"His heart was big enough to hold the whole world in love," Archbishop Tutu's daughter Mpho Tutu van Furth said in an interview for the Trouw newspaper in the Netherlands, where she lives and works as an Anglican priest.

“He was in the company of the most powerful people on earth and he sat with the smallest, the weakest, the poorest and the neediest. He did it with the same love and laugh,” she said of her father, who was known for his infectious giggle.

Cape Town’s city hall and the Table Mountain, which rises above the city, will be illuminated every night this week in purple, the colour of Archbishop Tutu’s clerical robes.

Archbishop Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his non-violent opposition to white minority rule. A decade later he witnessed the end of that regime and chaired a truth and reconciliation commission to unearth the atrocities committed under it.

He later called the black political elite to account with as much feistiness as he had the Afrikaners, but his enduring spirit of reconciliation always shone through and he never stopped fighting for a “Rainbow Nation”.

Special tribute

The diocese of Pretoria and the South African Council of Churches will hold a memorial service in the capital, Pretoria, on Wednesday. That evening, Cape Town will also host a special tribute at its city hall, with representatives of Tutu's family, his foundation and various faiths and tribes in attendance.

On Friday, Archbishop Tutu will lie in state at St George’s ahead of Saturday’s funeral service, which will be led by Archbishop Makgoba.

Archbishop Tutu's ashes will be interred in an ossuary behind the pulpit, in accordance with his wishes, the dean of St George's Cathedral, Michael Weeder, told a news conference alongside Archbishop Makgoba on Monday.

Archbishop Makgoba said a list of possible attendees ran to as many as 500 names, but added that Covid-19 regulations limiting funerals to a maximum of 100 people must be respected.

“Only a fraction of those who want to be there can be accommodated,” he said, urging others to pay their respects at services to be held in churches and cathedrals around the country.

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