South Africa's presidency announced that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and a veteran of the country's struggle against white minority rule, died on Sunday at the age of 90.

Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his nonviolent resistance to apartheid. He saw the regime come to an end a decade later, and he oversaw a Truth and Reconciliation Commission tasked with uncovering atrocities committed during those dark days.

Both Black and white people regarded the outspoken Tutu as the nation's conscience, a lasting testament to his faith and spirit of reconciliation in a divided country.

Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s, and he has been hospitalized multiple times in the last few years for infections related to his cancer treatment.

"The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa," President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

"Desmond Tutu was a patriot without equal."

The reason for death was not disclosed by the White House.

Tutu preached against white minority oppression, and even after it ended, he continued to struggle for a more equal South Africa, holding the Black political elite to account with the same zeal as the white Afrikaners.

In his later years, he expressed disappointment that his ideal of a "Rainbow Nation" had not materialized.

"He died peacefully in the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning at the age of 90," said Dr. Ramphela Mamphele, acting chairwoman of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and Co-ordinator of the Office of the Archbishop, in a statement on behalf of the Tutu family. 

 

His courage in defending social justice, even at a tremendous personal sacrifice, earned him the nickname "the moral compass of the nation" - and not just under apartheid. He frequently clashed with his former African National Congress allies over their failure to confront the poverty and inequities that they pledged to abolish.

He helped mobilize grassroots campaigns around the world that battled for an end to apartheid through economic and cultural boycotts, despite being only five feet five inches (1.68 meters) tall and having an infectious grin.

Tutu became the face of the anti-apartheid movement abroad throughout the 1980s, speaking and traveling nonstop while many of the rebel ANC's leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were imprisoned.