Desmond Tutu's laugh was contagious. His fight for freedom was deadly serious
Desmond Tutu will be remembered for helping end apartheid. But also for his memorable laugh, an infectious, cackling, howl employed in the service of easing tensions in a very tense nation.
Let's start with the laugh.
Desmond Tutu will always be remembered as the South African Anglican cleric who won the Nobel Peace Prize, helped bring down apartheid and served as the moral beacon of a troubled nation for decades.
Yet Tutu's most extraordinary and unique feature was his infectious, cackling laugh, usually triggered by one of his own jokes. He almost always launched his sermons with an amusing tale, and the more fraught the moment, the more likely he was to tap into his endless reservoir of stories to ease the tension.
If his joke fell flat, he'd just keep laughing until everyone joined him. Here, have a listen in this video:
I covered South Africa in the late 1980s
