Archbishop Tutu was one of the most respected and beloved personages in South Africa and the world.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the archbishop’s death marked "another chapter of bereavement in our nation's farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans".

A distraught Ramaphosa said Archbishop Tutu had helped create "a liberated South Africa".

Archbishop Tutu was one of the most respected and beloved personages in South Africa and the world.

A contemporary of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, he was mild-mild mannered but uncompromising when it came to dismantling apartheid.

Apartheid was the system of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority government against persons of color, who were the majority, in South Africa from 1948 until 1991.

Archbishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for his role in the struggle to abolish the apartheid system.

However, despite suffering greatly under the legislative fixtures of that system, Archbishop Tutu never became bitter or vengeful.

In fact, he took a more charitable view to those who were behind apartheid believing that they would have their salvation in the afterlife.

“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low,” he said.

Archbishop Tutu's death comes on hot the heels of the death of South Africa's last apartheid-era president, FW de Clerk, who died at the age of 85 on November 11 this year.

President Ramaphosa said Archbishop Tutu was "an iconic spiritual leader, anti-apartheid activist and global human rights campaigner".

He further described him as "a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”

Adding that Archbishop Tutu was "a man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world."