16 OCTOBER 1984:
(“Desmond Tutu” is awarded the “Nobel Peace Prize”)
(“Desmond Mpilo Tutu” OMSG CH (born 7 October 1931) is a South African anti-apartheid and social rights activist and Anglican clergyman)
He was the first black Archbishop of Cape Town and bishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).
Born to a poor family in Klerksdorp, Tutu is of mixed Xhosa and Motswana heritage.
Moving around South Africa as a child, he trained as a teacher and married Nomalizo Leah Tutu, with whom he had several children.
In 1960, he was ordained as a priest and in 1962 moved to the United Kingdom to study theology at King’s College London.
After this education he returned to South Africa and took an active role in opposition to the apartheid system of racial segregation and white-minority rule.
During the 1980s, he emerged as one of the most prominent anti-apartheid activists within South Africa.
Unlike other sectors of the anti-apartheid movement, he stressed non-violent protest.
After Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990 and negotiated the dissolution of apartheid with President F. W. de Klerk, Tutu became a supporter of the new government.
Mandela selected Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.
Since apartheid’s fall, Tutu has campaigned on other social justice issues; combating poverty, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis, as well as opposition to forms of prejudice like racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
Tutu has been widely praised for his anti-apartheid activism.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
He had attracted some criticism for his views on Zionism and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
(he has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings)