South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was expected to deliver the keynote address and Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba was presiding over the service at St George’s Cathedral on Saturday.
After Saturday’s expected mass ceremony, Tutu’s body will be cremated in a private ceremony and then buried behind the pulpit in the cathedral.
For decades, Tutu was one of the primary voices that led the South African government to end apartheid, the country’s official policy of racial segregation. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, before apartheid ended in the early 1990s, and the long-jailed Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.
The revered anti-apartheid warrior will be remembered as one of the most important voices of the 20th century. However, his funeral had to be cut short: before he died, Tutu asked for a simple service, according to his two foundations.
“He didn’t want any pretense or grand expenses. He said that the coffin should be the cheapest available, and a bouquet of carnations from his family should be the only flower in the cathedral,” he said.
In line with the current South African government’s COVID-19 regulations, Tutu’s funeral was also limited to only 100 people. St George’s Cathedral has appealed to South Africans to attend services in their local communities instead of traveling to Cape Town.
Events were planned across the country to give South Africans the opportunity to collectively mourn “The Ark” while still practicing social distancing.
A week-long commemoration began on Monday at St George’s Cathedral, a church famous for its role in the resistance to the apartheid regime. St George held a special place in the late Archbishop’s heart, so much so that he requested that his ashes be buried in a special repository.
Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, a town in the Transvaal province of South Africa, the son of a teacher and a domestic servant. He stated that Tutu had plans to become a doctor, partly because of a boyhood bout of tuberculosis, which kept him in the hospital for more than a year, and even qualified for medical school, he said. said.
But his parents could not pay the fees, so he turned to teaching.
“The government is giving scholarships to those who want to become teachers,” he told Achievement Academy. “I became a teacher and I don’t regret it.”
However, he was horrified by the state of Black South African schools, and was even more apprehensive when the Bantu Education Act was passed in 1953, which had racially segregated the country’s education system. In protest, he resigned. Shortly after, the Bishop of Johannesburg agreed to ordain him as a priest – Tutu believed this was because he was a black man with a university education, which had been around since the 1950s. I was scarce – and he took up his new business.
He was appointed in 1960 and began the 1960s and early 70s, alternating between London and South Africa. He returned to his country for good in 1975, when he was appointed dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. As the government became more and more repressive – detaining black people, establishing stricter laws – Tutu became increasingly vocal.
CNN’s Larry Maddow, Chandler Thornton and Niamh Kennedy contributed reporting.
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