Tutu sets retirement plans, thanks South Africans

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has announced his intention to wind down his public engagements when he turns 79 this October.

"I think I have done as much as I can, and I really do need time for other things that I have wanted to do," Tutu told a July 22 media briefing at St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town. He also thanked South Africans for their contribution to the world, including their "panache" during the World Cup games.

Tutu became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches in 1978, and then in 1986 the first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, a post from which he retired in 1996. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, he chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated human rights violations in the apartheid era.