TutuLegacy

Est. 2011 Preserving the Tutus’ legacy by growing and facilitating powerful and courageous voices of uncompromising bravery in the world.

[TutuLegacy @TheTutuLegacy]

How do we ensure the story of South Africa's journey toward justice continues to inspire future generations?

By creating spaces where history can be experienced, not simply remembered.

We recently had the pleasure of welcoming students from Stellenbosch University to the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Exhibition. Their thoughtful questions, reflections, and conversations reminded us why preserving and sharing this legacy matters.

The lives of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mama Leah Tutu continue to inspire courage, compassion, and hope. Every group that walks through our doors becomes part of that ongoing conversation.

If you're part of a school, university, or community organisation, we'd love to welcome you for a guided exhibition experience.

Book your visit today: [email protected]

#TutuLegacy #DLTLF #StellenboschUniversity #ExhibitionVisit #SouthAfricanHistory #Education

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Some friendships don’t simply shape history. They shape the future that follows.

This Nelson Mandela Day, we celebrate a friendship that helped shape a nation.

Their friendship reminds us that the struggle against apartheid required many forms of courage.

While Nelson Mandela sacrificed 27 years of his freedom in prison, Archbishop Desmond Tutu became one of the world’s strongest moral voices against apartheid, rallying the international community, calling for sanctions, and campaigning tirelessly for Mandela’s release. Together, they helped South Africa imagine not only how to end apartheid, but how to begin the long work of healing a divided nation.

This year carries extraordinary significance.

It marks 50 years since the Soweto Uprising, 30 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began its work under Archbishop Tutu’s chairmanship, and 30 years of South Africa’s Constitution. Three defining milestones in our ongoing journey toward dignity, justice, and democracy.

As we honour Madiba today, perhaps the most important question is not simply what he achieved.

It is what his legacy now requires of us.

How do we choose hope when division seems to grow louder?
How do we protect the dignity of others when it is under threat?
How do we become the kind of citizens who continue the work they began?

These rare photographs by Benny Gool, alongside images from the Desmond Tutu Truth to Power Museum, capture more than two extraordinary leaders.

They capture trust.
Friendship.
Shared purpose.
And an enduring belief that South Africa could become more than the sum of its wounds.

Today, may we honour that belief not only with our words, but with the choices we make, the people we serve, and the future we continue to build together.

Visit the Desmond Tutu Truth to Power Museum in District Six and discover the stories that continue to challenge, inspire, and shape South Africa’s journey toward justice, reconciliation, and our shared humanity.

📍 Desmond Tutu Truth to Power Museum
District Six, Cape Town

#NelsonMandelaDay #MandelaDay #TutuLegacy #TruthToPower #SharedHumanity #Tutu95 #SouthAfrica

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Tutu and Mandela Foundations reject attempts to appropriate the legacies of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, reject attempts to invoke the names and legacies of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in support of rhetoric, campaigns or actions that undermine the values they championed throughout their lives.

A poster circulated this week by March & March, headed "Honouring the People's President", invokes the names of Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Zephania Mothopeng in support of marches planned for Mandela Day.

Both Mandela and Tutu championed the right of citizens to organise, protest peacefully and hold governments accountable. They understood that democracy requires active participation, robust debate and the freedom to express dissatisfaction with those in positions of power.

Read more here: https://t.co/p83bB5UhLr

[TutuLegacy @TheTutuLegacy]

As Nelson Mandela Day approaches, we’re reminded that both Madiba and the Arch believed a nation is built not only through politics, but through its stories, music, languages, artists, and its willingness to celebrate one another.

This September, WOMAD Cape Town brings the world together through ten days of music, dance, storytelling, and cultural exchange.

✨ Featuring Dyskinetic, Jitsvinger, Unmute Dance Company, and artists from across the globe.

Part of Heritage Month.
30 years of our Constitution.
The Road to #Tutu95.
Including the United for Humanity Concert on 19 September.

📍 Cape Town | 15–24 September 2026

#NelsonMandelaDay #WOMADCapeTown #Tutu95 #TutuLegacy #SharedHumanity

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Some conversations wait years for the right room.

The school after the incident. The church council split over who belongs. The team whose numbers and corridors disagree. The neighbours divided over migration, in a year when some call ubuntu negotiable.

The Arch spent his final working years here. The same man who chaired the hardest conversation a country ever attempted. The building remembers how honesty is done.

These rooms do this work all year. One of the most recent: a TUTU Masterclass and Legacy Panel. Nobody hurried to leave.

Bring yours here. 🖤

📩 [email protected]

#CourageousConversations #DesmondTutu #Ubuntu #TutuLegacy

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Almost every nonprofit begins the same way: a heart breaks, and someone refuses to leave it at that.

What happens next is where most of them die. Judith N. Mtsewa built her calling on what happens next.

Ten years in nonprofit leadership. Women's rights. Gender justice. Change Leadership MPhil at GIBS. Founder of a consultancy that accompanies emerging NPOs until they can stand.

We are honoured to journey with her as part of our 2026 Leading for Humanity cohort.

Her mission: societal repair.

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." — Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Judith makes sure the little bits of good survive. 🙌🏾🖤

#LeadingForHumanity #WomenInLeadership #CivilSociety #Ubuntu #TutuLegacy

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The Arch wanted to be a doctor. His family could not afford the fees. He became a teacher instead, and history got lucky with the detour.

Most detours are not so kind.

Today, one in five young people worldwide is not in employment, education or training. Not for lack of talent. For lack of a door.

World Youth Skills Day 2026: Skills for a Shared Future.

There is no shared future while half a generation waits outside it. A skill is dignity you can hold in your hands.

I am because we are. 🖤

#WorldYouthSkillsDay #Ubuntu #TVET #TutuLegacy

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Somewhere between the entrance and the exit, Cape Town stops being a postcard. 👣

🎓 Last week our exhibition floor belonged to international students from Stellenbosch University. For students who crossed oceans to study here, this is the morning Cape Town stops being scenery and becomes a story they are standing inside of. Some read the walls in their second or third language, slower and closer. Nearly all of them find something that reminds them of home, because every country has a chapter it finds hard to face. Ours just happens to be told here, honestly, in full.

The Arch did not just witness history. He shaped it. And everyone who walks these halls leaves carrying a little of that fire, whichever passport it travels home on. 🖤

Teachers, principals, lecturers, programme coordinators - local or international - we would love to host your group. Primary schools, high schools, universities, independent travellers, all welcome.

📍 Desmond & Leah Tutu House, Cape Town
📩 [email protected]

Tag someone who needs to see this 👇

#DesmondTutu #TruthToPower #StudyAbroad #SouthAfricanHistory #CapeTown #TutuLegacy

[TutuLegacy @TheTutuLegacy]

On World Population Day, we are reminded that population is not only about numbers. It is about dignity, opportunity, education, health, equality, and the right of every person to shape their future.

Behind every statistic is a life, a family, a community, and a story.

For the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, this day speaks directly to Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”

A just world is not measured only by how many people live in it, but by how well we care for one another.

World Population Day. I am because we are. Ubuntu.

#WorldPopulationDay #Ubuntu #TutuLegacy

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Tomorrow, the Office of Tibet in Pretoria celebrates the 91st birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in this, his Year of Compassion. 🖤

The Arch adored him. Theirs was one of the great friendships of our age: two men who understood that laughter is medicine for the soul, who held firm together on everything that mattered, and who wrote a book on joy to prove that suffering never gets the final word.
The Arch called him his mischievous, beloved brother. We call him family.

Happy 91st birthday, Your Holiness. May the world keep learning what you and the Arch never stopped teaching: that compassion is not softness. It is the bravest thing there is.

📍 Celebration: 11 July, 12:30pm, Office of Tibet, Pretoria

#DalaiLama91 #YearOfCompassion #TutuLegacy #DesmondTutu #BookOfJoy

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The Arch never could keep still when music played. 🎶

So consider this announcement made under his instruction:

Desmond Tutu United 4 Humanity returns as part of WOMAD South Africa, Peter Gabriel's legendary world music festival, coming to Cape Town.

Gabriel wrote "Biko" while apartheid still ruled. He helped conceive The Elders, which the Arch chaired. This is a friendship, continued in song.

Presented in support of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

📅 Save the date. Line-up coming soon.

He would already be practising his moves. 🖤

#WOMADSA #United4Humanity #DesmondTutu #TutuLegacy

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Every school visit has the same soundtrack.

Loud at the door. Quieter at the Bantu Education wall. Silent at Sharpeville. Then a hand goes up: did this happen to my grandmother?

That question is the whole programme.

Teachers tell us the bus ride home is the loudest part. We take that as a five-star review. 🖤

Bring your school.

📍 Desmond & Leah Tutu House, Cape Town
📩 [email protected]
#TruthToPower #DesmondTutu #HistoryEducation #TutuLegacy

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Somewhere in a provincial head office, an officer reads the word "youth" in a policy document and sees faces.

His name is Landile Nkomba.

Community developer. Social policy graduate. LLB candidate at Wits by night. By day: making sure young people are meaningfully represented in Gauteng's social and economic landscape.

We are honoured to journey with him as part of our 2026 Leading for Humanity cohort.

His measure of leadership: empathy, authenticity, integrity.

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." — Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This is what investment in the next generation looks like. 🙌🏾🖤

#LeadingForHumanity #YouthLeadership #Ubuntu #TutuLegacy

[TutuLegacy @TheTutuLegacy]

Joy as Resistance: Marking the Dalai Lama's 91st Birthday

Across the world, Tibetan communities and friends of Tibet will mark the occasion with prayer and celebration. At the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, we mark it with something Archbishop Tutu taught us to hold together: gratitude and grief. Gratitude for a life that has embodied compassion in the face of suffering. Grief for the conditions that have made such endurance necessary.

Earlier this year, the Chairperson of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation - Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke - and I had the privilege of travelling to Dharamsala, the hill town in northern India that has been the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile since 1959. For decades it has been home to His Holiness. We went as representatives of the Foundation that bears Desmond Tutu’s name. I came away carrying something heavier and more clarifying than I had expected.

The audience with the Dalai Lama was brief. What struck me was his warmth and beneath it, his discipline. Here is a man who has spent sixty-seven years in exile, who has watched a generation of his people born and grow old outside their homeland, who has seen waves of refugees escape from Tibet, and who nonetheless chooses - every day – to refuse bitterness as a response to loss. That is a form of resistance as radical as any I have encountered.

Read the full article here: https://t.co/bR6gxtB5vF

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When Rev. Peter Storey pauses at a photograph in our Truth to Power museum, it is usually because he was standing just outside the frame.

SACC President beside the Arch's General Secretary. Chaplain to Mandela on Robben Island. Witness, comrade, friend of this Foundation.

His charge to us: "If you miss the commentary, you miss half of the picture."

Book a guided tour. Get the commentary. 🖤

📩 [email protected]

#TutuLegacy #RipplesOfHopeFellowship #DesmondTutu

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Yellow vuvuzela. Full Bafana kit. Writing Viva Bafana Viva on the wall.

This is the Arch, and he would have been awake for every single minute. 🇿🇦🖤

"It's unbelievable! I'm dreaming man, I'm dreaming! Wake me up! What a lovely dream!"

He said that in 2010. He meant it every time Bafana played.

This month they made history - knockout stages of a FIFA World Cup for the first time ever. They went down fighting, in the 92nd minute, in Los Angeles. Not their heart. Not their pride.

Welcome home, Bafana. You made the Arch proud.

"Never before have we experienced this overwhelming joy of unity in purpose." — Archbishop Desmond Tutu 🖤

📷 Image 2 of 95 | Photo credit: Benny Gool & contributors

#Bafana2026 #WorldCup2026 #DesmondTutu #TutuLegacy #95Images #BafanaBafana

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Rest in peace, Trevor Tutu. 🕊️

The Foundation mourns the passing of the beloved firstborn and only son of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mrs Leah Tutu.

No words reach far enough into a loss like this. So we simply stand with the family, in love and in prayer.

Our hearts are with Mam’ Leah. With Thandeka, Naomi and Mpho, with his children, and with all who loved him.

“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

May he rest in peace and rise in glory. 🖤

Photos courtesy of Benny Gool

#TrevorTutu #TutuLegacy

[TutuLegacy @TheTutuLegacy]

He was here. In these rooms. Walking through the story of his own life - the vestments, the words, the personal moments, present for a moment that very few people ever experience: seeing their own legacy told, while they are still alive to witness it. 🔥

Truth to Power is open every day but Sunday. And walking through it feels less like visiting an exhibition and more like stepping into the room where history was still being decided.

Stand in front of the robes and mitre he wore at his enthronement. Read the words that called out a system built on injustice - and feel the weight of what it took to say them out loud, knowing exactly what they might cost. Walk the labyrinth where he prayed before stepping back into the fire.

And then look at the photographs.

The Arch with his children - laughing, always laughing. The Arch and Mam' Leah, steady and together through everything. The Nobel Prize. The protests. The funerals, individual and mass, where he carried the grief of a nation in his own body, openly, without apology. The TRC wall, where survivors spoke and the world was asked to listen.

This is not history at a safe distance. This is the story of what ordinary conviction looks like when it refuses to stay quiet - told through the life of the man who lived it. 🖤

He believed, and said so publicly, at great personal risk, that "the world has an even greater instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love" than it has for evil.

That belief was not naive. It was a choice. Made daily. Under pressure. With full knowledge of the cost.

Come and see what that looks like when it is told without apology. 🖤

📍 Desmond & Leah Tutu House, District Six, Cape Town

Open to the public every day but Sundays, bring a friend, bring your children, bring your questions.

#TruthToPower #DesmondTutu #ArchbishopTutu #CapeTown #ApartheidHistory #SouthAfricanHistory #TutuLegacy

[TutuLegacy @TheTutuLegacy]

Seventy-one years ago today, Desmond Tutu married the woman he said made everything possible.

At their 60th anniversary, Leah was asked if she took him for better or for worse.

"For better and for better!" she said.

The Arch laughed until he couldn't stop.

That laugh is as much his legacy as anything else.

Today we begin sharing 95 images, many never seen before, in the 95 days leading to what would have been his 95th birthday on 7 October.

Not to build a monument. To remember the man.

This is the first. Reflect with us. Share your stories. 🖤

📷 Photo credit: Benny Gool & contributors

#DesmondTutu #LeahTutu #LegacyOfLove #71Years #TutuLegacy #95Images #October7

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Play. Creativity. Clowning. These are not words most education systems take seriously. That is exactly why Julia Daniels does.

She did not set out to disrupt education. She set out to make it kinder. It turns out those are the same thing.

Teacher. Founder of The Difference Institute. Clown Fellow. Fifteen years of building trauma-informed, emotionally safe learning spaces, and disrupting the education landscape from the inside out.

We are honoured to journey with Julia Daniels as part of our 2026 Leading for Humanity cohort.

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." — Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This is what investment in the next generation looks like. 🙌🏽🖤

#LeadingForHumanity #EducationForChange #SocialJustice #Ubuntu #TutuLegacy