Desmond Tutu

The Nobel Foundation’s record gives his birth at Klerksdorp on 7 October 1931 and his death at Cape Town on 26 December 2021, and describes him at the time of the prize of 1984 as bishop of Johannesburg and former secretary general of the South African Council of Churches (Nobel Prize, Desmond Tutu, facts). The biographical note published with the prize says that he was ordained priest in 1960, became dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg in 1975, was bishop of Lesotho from 1976 to 1978, and became general secretary of the Council of Churches in 1978 (Nobel Prize, Desmond Tutu, biographical note).

In his Nobel lecture he described the removal of more than three million people from their homes and said that there could be no peace in southern Africa without justice (Tutu, Nobel Lecture (1984), paragraphs 4 and 13). The archive of the Dutch Reformed Church records that at Rustenburg in 1990 he accepted that church’s confession of its support for apartheid in a spirit of forgiveness (Rustenburg Declaration (1990), introductory note). The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, presented in 1998, names him as its chairperson and gives him the title of archbishop (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Report, vol. 4, second page). See the Churches and Apartheid.