South African Cleric, Desmond Tutu dies at 90

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who helped end apartheid in South Africa, has died aged 90. Noting the cleric’s death, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that this marked “another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans”.

He added that Archbishop Tutu had helped bequeath “a liberated South Africa”.

Tutu was one of the country’s best-known figures at home and abroad, BBC News reports. A contemporary of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, he was one of the driving forces behind the movement to end the policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority government against the black majority in South Africa from 1948 until 1991. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for his role in the struggle to abolish the apartheid system.