Desmond Mpilo Tutu OMSG CH GCStJ (born 7 October 1931) is a South African Anglican cleric and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu OMSG CH GCStJ (born 7 October 1931) is a South African Anglican cleric and theologian, known for his perform as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and after that the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases brute the first black African to maintain the position. Theologically, he sought to join ideas from black theology taking into consideration African theology.
Tutu was born of dirty Xhosa and Motswana heritage to a poor family in Klerksdorp, Union of South Africa. Entering adulthood, he trained as a theoretical and married Nomalizo Leah Tutu, with whom he had several children. In 1960, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and in 1962 moved to the United Kingdom to testing theology at King’s College London. In 1966 he returned to southern Africa, teaching at the Federal Theological Seminary and then the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1972, he became the Theological Education Fund’s director for Africa, a slope based in London but necessitating regular tours of the African continent. Back in southern Africa in 1975, he served first as dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg and next as Bishop of Lesotho; from 1978 to 1985 he was general-secretary of the South African Council of Churches. He emerged as one of the most prominent opponents of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation and white-minority rule. Although reprimand the National Party dispensation that violence at apartheid would help to racial violence, as an activist he restless non-violent bustle and foreign economic pressure to bring more or less universal suffrage.
In 1985, Tutu became Bishop of Johannesburg and in 1986 the Archbishop of Cape Town, the most senior face in southern Africa’s Anglican hierarchy. In this point he emphasised a consensus-building model of leadership and oversaw the initiation of women priests. Also in 1986, he became president of the All Africa Conference of Churches, resulting in supplementary tours of the continent. After President F. W. de Klerk released the anti-apartheid dissenter Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and the pair led negotiations to terminate apartheid and introduce multi-racial democracy, Tutu assisted as a mediator between enemy black factions. After the 1994 general election resulted in a coalition running headed by Mandela, the latter agreed Tutu to seat the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate next human rights abuses on the go by both improvement and anti-apartheid groups. Since apartheid’s fall, Tutu has campaigned for cheerful rights and spoken out upon a broad range of subjects, among them the Israel-Palestine conflict, his enemy to the Iraq War, and his criticism of South African presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. In 2010, he retired from public life.
Tutu polarised recommendation as he rose to notability in the 1970s. White conservatives who supported apartheid despised him, while many white liberals regarded him as too radical; many black radicals accused him of bodily too teetotal and focused on cultivating white goodwill, while Marxist–Leninists criticised his anti-communist stance. He was widely popular among South Africa’s black majority, and was internationally praised for his anti-apartheid activism, receiving a range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize. He has as a consequence compiled several books of his speeches and sermons.