Desmond Tutu: The man behind the icon short version

The passing at age 90 of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is touching a cord of feeling last experienced in South Africa with the passing of Nelson Mandela, just over eight years ago.

There is both profound grief and an upwelling of national pride and gratitude towards Tutu, last of the 'great icons' of South Africa's rebirth from race-based low-level civil war into an age of democracy and the promise of equality for all.

Beyond the peons of praise and the laughing countenance of a man, like Mandela, widely loved around the world, though hardly known in his person, was the side of Tutu which made him so widely beloved – he brought his 'ordinary humanness' to everything.

His capacity to reach a great many was a direct consequence of his obvious love of humanity, which was beyond any issues of race, creed or belief system – a love which was not theoretical but apparent in each and every meeting with anyone; young, old, known or unknown, friend or ostensible enemy.

Very much like his close and good friend Mandela, Tutu had the capacity to 'see' those he came into contact with, whether he agreed with them or not, and whether he liked them, even, or not, in a way which reflected their intrinsic worth as human beings.

In 1986 Tutu was made Archbishop of Cape Town, returning from that ceremony into what seemed to be the arms of waiting police and chaotic scenes at Cape Town's international airport where throngs of admirers, police and media crushed in on him, turning his arrival into an edgy and intense affair.

The apartheid government of PW Botha was worried that here was a voice that would call out the inequities and outrages of apartheid, that race-based system of oppressive policies being then played out in assorted forms of inhumane treatment of the great majority of South Africans in a daily, routinized manner that belied the enormous suffering being constantly inflicted.

Botha and his close confidantes were in a bind as to what to do about "the problem of Tutu."

It was initially thought that the outspoken cleric would "certainly" be arrested on arrival, heading off for Botha and Co an inevitable series of stinging rebukes from the pulpit, as well as any other forum from which he could speak to the inequities and evils, as he saw them, of those days.

But the apartheid authorities, already under fire for a harsh crackdown due to the ongoing 'township rebellion' which it was showing signs of being unable to control, as it had with similar preceding popular anti-apartheid 'uprisings' in 1976 and 1981-83, was unwilling to bring down even more sanctions and other forms of international condemnation if it should simply 'sweep Tutu up', as it had done with thousands of others who had spoken out, protested or engaged in other anti-apartheid activities.

Consequently, Tutu was not arrested on arrival.

Instead, he made his way to the plush residence of the Archbishop of Cape Town, in the leafy suburbs of this city in the lee of famous Table Mountain where he was to 'hold court' and help guide this country out of what seemed an inevitable race-based civil war of unparalleled ferocity.

I had been sent to cover Tutu's arrival, based on the widely held expectation that his time as a free man back in South Africa, after having called while abroad for increased sanctions and the further isolation of the apartheid regime, would quite probably be measured in minutes to hours.

But his profile was too high, and he was already too well loved and liked abroad for such bully-boy tactics to work in anything but a negative way for Botha's government.

Having survived the day as a free man, and having followed him to his vast and impressive archbishop's residence, for which an entire surrounding suburb, Bishop's court, is named, I hung around for a brief while, met his beloved wife Leah and then quietly left with my 'lesser story', of 'Tutu arrives, un-arrested', to be written up for both my then fulltime employers, the Cape Times, plus the Nation Media Group in Kenya and others around the world.

The next day, Tony Heard, then Editor of the Cape Times and future Golden Pen Award winner for the anti-apartheid coverage provided under his leadership, called me into his office and said he wanted me to be the Cape Times's "Tutu man" for the foreseeable future.

Having joined the Cape Times a few years prior as a medical and science reporter, which beat I was still on, I was then much more active daily as a member of the 'unrest coverage team' which brought the Cape Times to international attention as one of the leading S African-based newspapers prepared to flout apartheid laws and emergency measures to tell the whole story.

Tony's instruction to follow Tutu wherever he went and whatever he did, at least for a while until it was clear whether the police would arrest him, or not, changed my life.

Instead of a routine of heading into trouble-spots on the Cape Flats, sprawling dustily away from Cape Town city towards distant mountains in the East, I was daily sent to lush Bishop's court, there to meet with 'that Arch', as he was already insisting on being called, hanging out in his hectically busy office and following him wherever he went.

Initially, the process was fraught and not a little scary as there was always a heavily-armed and apparently ready-to-act contingent of riot and security police in tow, or waiting at a venue where he was to talk.

But Tutu was never bowed nor even, apparently, remotely phased by this show of force and attempted intimidation, maintaining an attitude, of, as he told me early on, "I am about the work of God. They (the police) are doing their jobs. If they arrest me, they arrest me – that's when you get to do your job," a comment delivered with his usual and famously broad smile, and with what came to be something of a silent mutual acknowledgement between us, a theatrical wink.

Despite the always imminent threat of violence, he would not hold back in the severity of his attacks on an inhumane system which, as he said, was not merely intolerable to the people who were its victims, but was "intolerable to God".

But he would also make a point of catching the eyes of ever-present armed policemen, and to speak to them as human beings too, also "children of God", and also caught in a system not directly of their making.

Hence, he was beloved.

Another great African has left us behind.

In four decades of journalism, having met and reported on many leaders, African and other, I have not met another of his kind– whether he knew it or not, his love for all had infected a cynical young journalist every bit as much as it did hardened apartheid policemen.