biography
| name: |
Tutu, Desmond (Mpilo)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1931– )
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| biography:
| Anglican clergyman, born in Klerksdorp, N South Africa. He studied at the universities of South Africa and London, was briefly a schoolteacher, then became an Anglican parish priest (1960). He rapidly rose to become Bishop of Lesotho (1977), secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches (1979), the first black Bishop of Johannesburg (1984), and Archbishop of Cape Town (1986), retiring in 1996. A critic of the apartheid system, he repeatedly risked imprisonment for his advocacy of the imposition of punitive sanctions against South Africa by the international community. He condemned the use of violence by opponents of apartheid, seeking instead a peaceful, negotiated reconciliation between the black and white communities. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984, and was appointed chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995. |
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