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On December 26 last year, Gloria Radebe received a phone call from her sister-in-law, Leah Tutu, to tell her that her older brother, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu, had passed away:
She recalled the call came at around 8am, and she cried uncontrollably during the conversation.
Although she was disoriented and confused for several hours after hearing the news, a part of her was expecting Tutu’s death. She had even prayed for it for a while.
READ: Desmond Tutu: fighter for faith freedom and justice in SA
The prostate cancer that had plagued the anti-apartheid icon and Nobel peace prize laureate since he was in his seventies had spread through his body and made him suffer unbearable pain in the past couple of years.
As a result, Radebe, who chatted with us on a stoep outside Tutu’s childhood home in Matlaba Street in Munsieville, outside Krugersdorp, said it was easier to accept his death:
She added: “We were praying for God to remember him so that he could be spared from the terrible pain he was in.”
She said her brother's body was placed in a simple coffin, calling it “a matchbox”, as he was cremated through a process called aquamation, where water is also used to reduce the body to ashes. Radebe revealed that not all of Tutu’s ashes were interred at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town.
On December 28, two days after the first anniversary of his death, the remainder of Tutu’s ashes will finally come home to Munsieville, accompanied by a ceremony that was suggested by his wife.
Watch: Desmond Tutu's funeral
Tutu spent his childhood in Munsieville after his family moved to the area in 1943 from Roodepoort when he was 12 years old. Years later in Munsieville, he met Leah, who was Radebe’s childhood friend.
Radebe says Tutu, who was their mother Aletta's favourite of her five children, will now be united with her. A service will be held at a local Anglican church to welcome his ashes home, but Radebe is not sure what the ceremony will entail. She only knows that the family will be going to the local Munsieville cemetery, where their parents are buried.
She said:
Radebe is sad that she is now all alone, as all her other siblings have passed on: "Ke latlhegile, Mapula, ke latlhegile [I am alone and lost now].
READ: Tutu's sister: why only honour my brother when he is dead
At 88, Radebe says her body is getting old and weak, and she complains of a lot of aches and pains. She uses a wheelchair as a walker but doesn’t sit in it. The chair requires an assistant to wheel her around, but Radebe steers it to help her maintain her balance, as she has no one to help push her around.
Radebe said that people in the township last month spread a rumour that she had passed on.
READ: Elders remember Desmond Tutu as Boy from Munsieville
“We had just gone to church that day as they were praying for my health, but someone in this street told people I had passed on. Maybe my mom will also come for me soon. I think it is time, Mapula. This body has had enough with all these aches and pains I am suffering.”
