A humble pine coffin and plain carnations as Desmond Tutu is ‘aquamated’
THE world said farewell to antiapartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu yesterday in a state funeral stripped of the usual pomp and circumstance.
The cleric had insisted on ‘no ostentatiousness or lavish spending’ at his funeral before his death last week, aged 90, meaning that mourners gathered before a plain rope-handled pine coffin, adorned only by a bunch of carnations, at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town.
Tutu’s ashes will be buried behind the pulpit of the Cathedral – where he served as an Anglican Archbishop for 35 years – after he is aquamated, an eco-friendly alternative to cremation using water and chemicals.
Close to the pulpit where, for years, Tutu railed against South Africa’s brutal white minority regime, President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday described the Nobel Peace Prize winner as ‘the spiritual father of our new nation’ and a ‘humble and brave human being who spoke up for the oppressed, the downtrodden and the suffering’.
He added: ‘Our departed father was a crusader in the struggle for freedom, for justice, for equality and for peace, not just in South Africa, the country of his birth, but around the world.’
The tributes reflected Tutu’s pivotal role in the campaign to end racial segregation and discrimination by South Africa’s white minority government between 1948 and 1991.
In a video message played to the congregation, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, described himself as a ‘mouse giving tribute to an elephant’, adding: ‘People have said, “When we were in the dark, he brought light”, and that has lit up countries globally that are
struggling with fear, conflicts, persecution, oppression.’
Tutu’s widow Nomalizo Leah was seen wiping away a tear at the front of the congregation. A few hundred people followed the funeral on a big screen opposite City Hall, where Tutu joined Nelson Mandela when he gave his first speech after being freed from prison in 1990.