In the 1980s Archbishop Desmond Tutu (born 1931) became South Africa's most prominent opponent of apartheid, that country's system of racial discrimination.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1984 to Desmond Mpilo Tutu made him the most visible representative of the struggle in the Republic of South Africa against apartheid, the system by which the minority white population of South Africa dominated the black majority until 1994. It allowed whites, who constituted 20 percent of the population, to reserve for themselves about 87 percent of the land, most natural resources, and all meaningful political power. Blacks who found themselves in lands reserved for whites were arbitrarily made citizens of one of ten homelands, which the white government (but virtually no one else) called nations. In order to remove Blacks from areas reserved for whites, the government forcibly evicted many from their homes, though their families had in some cases occupied them...