Uganda names road after Tutu
In this file photo taken on December 11, 2006 South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu gestures during a press conference at the United Nations Office in Geneva.PHOTO/AFP
What you need to know:
- Mr Solomon Sebola, the Chargé d’Affaires at the South African High Commission, officiated at the assigning of the road in Katuuso-Buziga, a suburb in Kampala yesterday.
A road has been named in honour of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a prominent South African clergyman who stood against the apartheid and racial segregation in his country from 1948 until the early 1990s.
Regarded as South Africa’s moral campus, the late Archbishop was a strong advocate of human rights.
Mr Solomon Sebola, the Chargé d’Affaires at the South African High Commission, officiated at the assigning of the road in Katuuso-Buziga, a suburb in Kampala yesterday.
“Like the (late) Archbishop, Ugandans should also advocate for the protection of human rights and freedom of people, stand for the truth and champion the cause of the poor because for Bishop Tutu, that was his hallmark,” Mr Sebola told journalists on the sidelines.
Archbishop Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer during the early 1990s, and is believed to have died of infections associated with its treatment on December 26 last year at the age of 90 years.
Mr Sebola also discouraged corruption like how the late Archbishop Tutu did.
“He believed that if states are free from corruption, then services can easily be rendered to respective communities,” Mr Sebola said.
Mr Emmanuel Katongole,the founder of Quality Chemical Industries Limited, also a resident of Katuuso-Buziga, hailed the late as a great man of admiration in Africa who played a big role in bringing peace in the continent.
“He did not only stop in South Africa, but inspired the whole of Africa to be liberated although his role was as a church leader who sometimes acted as a politician to air out what he felt was oppressing people,” he said.
The late Archbishop Tutu, according to Mr Katongole, hated dictatorship and oppression, which made many African countries heed to his messages hence creating the rule of law.
During the same event, Mr Herbert Wilson Kaweesa, a lay reader at St Paul’s Church of Uganda, Katuuso-Buziga, urged the public to leave reputable legacies.
“We should all aim at doing good things in this world like the late Archbishop so that we leave behind respectable legacies,” Mr Kaweesa said.
He said it is also important to ask for God’s direction while executing worldly deeds.
