SOUTH AFRICA’S Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu yesterday announced he will withdraw from public life completely early next year to spend more time with his family.
The anti-apartheid struggle hero who took on South Africa’s racist regime from the pulpit told reporters at a briefing in Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral that the time had come for him to “slow down, to sip rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket and rugby and soccer and tennis”.
“I think I’ve done as much as I can and really I do need time for the other things that I have wanted to be doing. I do want a little more quiet,” he said. When questioned about his health, Tutu said that while he would not be climbing Table Mountain anytime soon, he was fine.
The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town went on to say that, from October 7th, his 79th birthday, until the end of February next year, he would only work one day a week at his Cape Town office. After that he would withdraw from public life completely.
He added that he would also step down from his positions as University of the Western Cape chancellor and member of the United Nations advisory committee on the prevention of genocide.
However, his involvement with the Elders, a group of global leaders, would continue, as would his support for the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in Cape Town.
“As Madiba [Nelson Mandela’s clan name] said on his retirement: ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’” he quipped to journalists before adding: “On the whole I will shut up. Sometimes I might find I can’t resist, but mostly I’m going to be shutting up.”
Archbishop Tutu, who was awarded his Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in the anti-apartheid struggle, retired as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town in 1996, and retired again as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when it finished its work.
However, the man often referred to as South Africa’s moral compass kept returning to the public domain to tackle the injustices he saw at home and abroad.
Most recently, he has been publicly critical of elements of the African National Congress leadership.
When asked what was his career highlight, Archbishop Tutu replied that introducing Nelson Mandela to the world as South Africa’s newly democratically elected president in 1994 was unbeatable. “I said to God: ‘God, if I die now I don’t really mind,’” he recalled.