S Major dates in the life of the African anti – apartheid icon Desmond Tutu | News

Desmond Tutu, a South African Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist and retired retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, is dead on Sunday at the age of 90.

An uncompromising enemy of Apartheid, the savage oppressive regime of South Africa once again with a black majority, Tutu worked tirelessly, albeit without violence, for his downfall.

Here is a timeline of Tutu’s life:

1931: He was born in Tutu Klerksdorpe, a town 170 km (105 miles) west of Johannesburg.

1943: Tutu’s Methodist family joins the Anglican Church.

1947: He fell ill with tuberculosis while studying at a secondary school near Sophiatown in Johannesburg. He befriends a priest and serves in his church after being cured of his illness.

1948: The White National Party launched apartheid in the run-up to the 1948 national elections. He gets popular support among white voters who want to maintain their dominance over the Black Majority.

1955: Tutu Nomalizo marries Leah Shenxane and starts teaching at his father’s high school in Johannesburg.

1958: Tutu leaves school, refusing to be part of a teaching system that promotes inequality against black students. He enters the priesthood.

1962: Tutu went to Britain to study theology at King’s College London.

1966: Tutu returns to South Africa and begins teaching theology at a seminary in the Eastern Cape. It also begins to spread anti-apartheid views.

1975: Tutu becomes the first black Anglican dean of Johannesburg.

1980: As General Secretary of the Council of Churches of South Africa, Tutuk leads a delegation of church leaders to meet with Prime Minister PW Botha and call for an end to apartheid. Although nothing comes of the meeting, it is a historic moment when a black leader confronts a senior government official. The government has confiscated Tutu’s passport.

1984: He has received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the rule of white minorities.

1985: Tutu becomes the first black bishop of Johannesburg. He publicly supports South Africa’s economic boycott and civil disobedience as a way to dismantle apartheid.

1986: He becomes the first black person to be appointed bishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican Church in the Province of South Africa. With other church leaders, he mediates conflicts between Black protesters and government security forces.

1990: President FW de Klerk has announced his intention to lift the ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and release Nelson Mandela from prison.

1991: Apartheid laws and racist restrictions are repealed, and power-sharing talks begin between the state and 16 anti-apartheid groups.

1994: After Mandela came to power at the head of the ANC in the country’s first democratic elections, Tutu coined the term “Rainbow Nation” to describe the unification of various post-apartheid South African races.

1994: Mandela has asked Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up to listen to, record and in some cases grant amnesty to human rights abuses apartheid.

1996: Tutu retires from church to focus solely on the committee. He continues his activism, advocating for equality and reconciliation and was later appointed Archbishop Emeritus.

1997: She has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has been hospitalized to treat recurrent infections.

2011: The Dalai Lama inaugurates the annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Conference, but does so via a satellite link after the South African government denied a visa to the Tibetan spiritual leader.

2013: Tutu makes harsh comments about the ANC. He says he will not vote for the party anymore because it has done a bad job of tackling inequality, violence and corruption.

2013: Called the “moral compass of the nation,” Tutu has stated his support for the rights of homophobia, saying he will never “worship a God who is homophobic.”

October 7, 2021: A weak-looking pipe will enter his former parish of St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, a safe haven for apartheid activists, for a special thank-you service to celebrate his 90th birthday.

December 26, 2021: He died in Cape Town at the age of 90.