The South African human rights defender died peacefully at the age of 90 on Sunday, December 26. The public will be able to go to the cathedral until 5 p.m. and then again on Friday.
The remains of Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived Thursday, December 30 in the morning at Saint-Georges Cathedral in Cape Town, his former parish where he had long defended the racist apartheid regime, so that South Africans could pay him homage for two days. The light pine coffin – he had asked “the cheapest possible“-, simply decorated with a bouquet of white carnations, was carried in the choir by six priests in chasubles, AFP journalists noted. The indefatigable human rights defender died peacefully at the age of 90 on Sunday.
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After the planetary homage, paid by the great of this world, from his friend the Dalai Lama to Pope Francis through many heads of state, it is the turn of ordinary citizens. “We came to pay homageยป, Told AFP Joan Coulson who, with her sister, showed up early in the morning to be the first to enter the choir to see the coffin. “I met him when I was fifteen, I’m 70 now“, She said, affirming that for her it is a rock star”like elvis“. The public will be able to attend the cathedral until 5 p.m. (3 p.m. GMT), then again on Friday, before the funeral scheduled for Saturday. After a private cremation, his ashes will be buried there.
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Since Sunday, hundreds of South Africans have flocked to the cathedral, where a register has been opened to deposit messages and bouquets of flowers. His bells ring every day at midday, for ten minutes, in his memory. Flags are at half mast across the country and Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town is lit purple every night in homage to “The Arch“. The Nobel Peace Prize winner had retired from public life in recent months, weakened by his old age and cancer. After the advent of democracy in 1994 and the election of his friend Nelson Mandela, it was he who found the formula, to describe the post-Apartheid country, of “Rainbow“.
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