Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped end apartheid in South Africa, has died aged 90.
The human rights activist, the last surviving South African Nobel laureate, and passed away in Cape Town on Sunday.
Tutu was an outspoken critic of the country’s previous brutal system of oppression against the country’s black majority.
The activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his campaign of non-violent opposition to South Africa’s white minority rule.
Presidency minister Mondli Gungubele said in a statement that President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his “profound sadness” at Tutu’s passing.
President Ramaphosa said: “The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated SA.
“Desmond Tutu was a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.
“A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.”