Anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu hospitalized with ‘stubborn infection’

Dec. 5 (UPI) — Anti-apartheid activist and international human rights icon Desmond Tutu has been hospitalized in South Africa to treat a “stubborn infection,” his foundation said.

The 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Cape Town’s first Anglican archbishop was admitted Wednesday. He has been hospitalized for multiple infections in recent years and has fought prostate cancer since 1997.

Tutu fought against South Africa’s apartheid policies for years and chaired former President Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the fall of white-minority rule in 1994.

“I went to see him this evening, where I found him lucid and engaging,” Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba wrote in a blog Wednesday. “He said he is as good as he can be for an 88-year-old, especially in view of his ill-health in childhood.”

Makgoba added that Tutu has maintained his sense of humor.

“When I told him that I had told [Tutu’s wife] Leah I was coming to scold him out of the hospital, he chuckled warmly, which is a good sign,” Makgoba said. “He also said he apologized for making me do so many hospital visits.”

The archbishop was last seen in public when he welcomed and congratulated the South African national rugby team last month after it won the World Cup in Japan.