Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu says it is time to start aging gracefully.
Many would say it was a life lived with grace, often with at least congeniality if not an outright smile, and less often with a frown as he said in public what Nelson Mandela couldn't say while he was held on Robben Island.
The Nobel Peace Prize Winner is retiring at age 79. Barely 5 foot 3 he became the bete noire of the apartheid regime.
"The time has now come to slow down," Tutu said in Cape Town during a nationally televised news conference, SA24 News reported. He was archbishop emeritus for the Anglican church in Cape Town.
"Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family -- reading and writing and praying and thinking -- too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels," the Nobel laureate said in a statement.
"The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses," he said.
Those who have met him no doubt will have their own memories, ranging from quotations to his direction of the funeral of white anti-apartheid activist Dr. Neil Aggett in 1982. Police claimed Aggett, who was organizing union workers, had hung himself in his jail cell.
At the time Tutu was still a bishop. He and others disputed the government account and said Aggett's death was the result of torture. It could be said Tutu stepped up to be the public voice of the anti-apartheid movement at Aggett's funeral. Something was in the air. Two years later he won the Nobel Prize.
"He paid a high price for it at times, but always triumphed through his blend of faith and self-deprecating humour. The 'Arch' was always a voice of reason in times of trouble, and gave us a steady moral compass. That is why he was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize," said one of the journalists who fought hardest against apartheid, and now the Eastern Cape Premier for the opposition Democratic Alliance.
There are many quotations. Here is one of the best:
"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land."
After he had helped end white minority rule he remained active fighting AIDs and helping with other issues.
But most importantly he became chairman of the country's truth and reconciliation commission, which tried to bring justice or at least exposure for some crimes committed while the white minority ruled. At the same time it was necessary to avoid ripping the nation apart.
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