Nobel peace prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu before his death requested that his body be laid in the cheapest coffin available and that is exactly what the government of south Africa did.
Tutu’s body lay in state for public viewing at various venues in a small unpainted pine wood coffin with ropes for handles.
Tutu, whose fearless campaign helped end South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime and brought democracy to the country, died Sunday at age 90
Tutu, who was South Africa’s fist black archbishop, requested “no lavish spending” on his funeral and he even “asked that the coffin be the cheapest available”, his foundation said.
Emotional family members met the coffin outside the entrance on Thursday, where six black-robed clergy acting as pallbearers carried it inside to an inner sanctuary amid a cloud of incense from the Anglican thurible.
Tutu is widely revered across racial and cultural divides in South Africa for his moral rectitude and principled fight against white-minority rule.
Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his non-violent opposition to South Africa’s apartheid regime.
A decade later, he witnessed the end of that regime and chaired a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help unearth state-sponsored atrocities during that era.
He died aged 90 on Sunday 26 December.
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