Desmond Tutu, who has died aged 90, brought a searing moral authority to South Africa’s traumatic transition from apartheid to democracy. Throughout that tumultuous process and beyond, the devout Anglican was revered as a beacon of honesty, conviction, inclusiveness and sheer human decency.

Tutu was thrust on to the political stage in the turbulent last decade or so of white rule because of the enforced absence of other black leaders. Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress colleagues were in jail or in exile in the 1980s, when it was dawning on the white minority government that change would have to come, by whatever means.

His activism was as spirited as it was principled. And his oratory — a mix of humour, humanity and indignation — was as moving and effective at a political funeral in a football stadium as in the cathedral pulpit.